I read 180 books a year..This is what I learnt..

ADL
ADL
Sep 6, 2018 · 6 min read

I wondered how is Warren Buffet so successfully and knowledgeable, In a article,Buffett said —

“Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will…”

In January of 2017, I read Buffett’s quote and I promised myself to read. I was going to read and read until I read 500 Pages a day for a consistent period.

Honestly, I didn’t read 500 pages a day, but, but I’ve read over 180 books in a Year. This decision to start reading was one of the most important & awesome decisions in my life.

Books gave me the freedom to think freely. Books gave me the courage to think out of the box and not to stick with crapy old conventional ideas. Books gave me my heroes & role models and also gave meaning to my life...

Reading 180 books a year is not a impossible job I did …I truly believe anyone can do it..

All it takes is some simple math , some right tools and some consistency.

Never Give up

When the average Tom , Dick or Harry hears the advice of “Reading 500 pages every day,” his immediate reaction is — “Na…That’s impossible!”

After commenting, the average person will then go on to make up several lame excuses to justify his/her belief without doing any deep thinking at all. These may include “I’m very busy,” “I’m not smart enough,” or “Books just aren’t for me”.

But what if we did some basic Math before giving the above lame excuses.I did it and I succeed in reading 180 Books a year.

Buffett said it correct — Anyone can do it, but most people won’t.

Let’s do some bare simple Math..

My First question to myself was — How long does it take to read 180 books a year?

I went through some statistics as below:

  • The average person reads 250–350 words per minute
  • A typical non-fiction book has average 48,000 words.

Now, Let’s do some quick calculations…

180 books * 48,000 words / book = 8640000 words8640000 words / 350 word per minutes(Speed of Reading) = 24685 minutes24685 minutes / 60 = 411 hours  

So,To read 180 books, I will need 411 Hours…

I guess 411 Hours seems big ….but that’s not the case.There are 365 days in a year, So let’s extend our calculation further.

411 Hours / 365 days = 67 Mins a Days...

I think,67 Mins a day in a 24 Hours days is not a big deal…

Still not convinced..Ok, Let’s Dig Deeper…

Statistics

So, You are not convinced that you can provide 67 Mins a days in a 24 Hours day…. Let’s try to get some more perspective from the other side of the coin…

Below how much time the average person spends on social media and TV in a year:

705 hours on social media & 2737.5 hours on TV

Wow..Well done... That’s 3442 hours a year spent on UnProductive Activities. If those hours were spent reading instead, you could have read over 1600 books a year and even if you spend half the time on book, you could have read 800 Books a year…Just think about it…

The simple truth is that we ignore….but I question myself Why and how can we ignore self development…if you can afford to ignore self development that means you are satisfied or basically you have stopped growing. I have heard people saying I do not have enough money to spend on book, I think this is a crapy statement in the age of internet where most books are available freely..

All this theory is ignored because all the desperate people around the world will scrap this theory and even close this article and go away and visit social media or watch TV..

But Hey…Hold on..Give me a chance to show you the implementation of the above theory..I know it’s hard but it’s not impossible.

Execution

We know reading is important for self development. We all know we should do it as much as possible. But we don’t. The main reason I know is failure to execute.

I’m not perfect at it, but below are some tips I used to achieve my reading habit :-

I.Design The Environment and make it functional

If you want to read, make sure

  1. you remove all distractions from your environment
  2. you make books as easy to access as possible.

I work a lot most of the times 18–19 Hours a day. That doesn’t stop me from reading. I keep my book with me on my Kindle , on my phone & even a hard copy of the same. If I do not feel like reading, I listen to audio Books..But I never will place an excuse for not reading or improving ..

I keep every bit of resource with me in Audiobooks, PDFs, Kindle and hardcopy, so that I am able to read wherever I am.Be a jack of all trades, not a specialist.

If your goal is to read more, you can’t be specific about where you read or what mediums you use. I read paper books, I read PDFs on my phone. I listen to audiobooks…

But I say to myself — No Excuses pls..

II. Deploy Habits

Willpower is of no use if consistency is not mixed with it. It will always fail when you need it the most. So, Instead of relying on willpower, try building habits.I will cover a techniques called Neuroplasticity in my next article.I learnt this technique and has been a great help to me in controlling my life.

I would also recommend reading the book — Superhuman by Habit to understand the habit science.

Getting good at habit-forming took many days and Neuroplasticity helped me a lot.I will share my insights on Neuroplasticity in my next article. Neuroplasticity can change your life for good.

Breaking problem into small statements then logically solving them without any emotional bias is the key to success.Just thinkBefore you started this article, you would have never imagined that reading 180–200 Books is possible in a year, but now I guess you know that spending 67 mins a day will take you there….it’s so simple.

If you’re in a position where you desire to read but can not start or continue,I think this is a high time, you start thinking in the ways, we discussed above.

At Last — Close your Eyes and Say — I will … I can..

Best of Luck..

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ADL

Written by

ADL

Web & Mobile Dev, AI, ML , Crypto ….. :)

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