How to Establish a Good Habit of Reading

There are a lot of bookworms in the world, and while they have read so many books during their high school days, many of them would lose the time to read books in college or while working in an office even if they wanted to. However, by having an effective reading routine, you will be able to spend some time reading books even if you are quite busy with work and school. All it takes to follow a routine in reading is to just stay motivated to read books and enjoy them.

Once you have the motivation to read books, even for just a few minutes or hours per day, you should then try to create a proper reading routine that you can follow to keep the motivation and your goals in reading going. Here are tips on how to establish a good habit of reading.

Create a List of Books to Read

The first thing you will have to do before creating a good reading routine is to decide what you actually want to read. You can just choose one for now, but if you want to follow the routine for longer, you should try to create a list of books that you want to read. The list may have books that you will be able to read for one month, but you can also lengthen the list to books that you can read for one year.

If you want to read more books, you should pick the ones that are shorter in length, as longer novels and non-fiction books can be quite difficult to read and will take a lot of time for you to finish, especially if you don’t have a lot of free time to read books. When you plan out the books you want to read for the year, you should also sort out the order of books to read per month so that you won’t have to spend time deciding on what’s next after reading a book.

Get an E-Reader

a kindle e-reader

If you don’t have enough space in your bag to store books, or if you don’t have space in your room anymore to place a lot of books that you will be reading for a year, you should just get an e-reader like a Kindle or a Kobo. An e-reader is a very convenient gadget to have, as it would allow you to store thousands of books in just one device, so you can get access to those books in just one press of a physical or digital button instead of pulling them out of the shelves and putting back the one you’ve read back in.

A lot of high-quality e-readers would even have screens that look and feel like paper, so you are basically getting an authentic book reading experience from the gadget. What’s also great about e-readers is that you will receive your book in an instant after you buy it from an online store, so you don’t have to go to a local bookstore anymore or wait for your online order to arrive at your doorstep. For convenience and to make it less stressful to read books, we highly recommend that you get an e-reader.

Read Daily

You should make it a good habit to read every day, even if you just read one page of a book. This is a nice habit to adopt because you may often forget about reading on certain days of the week, mainly due to being busy or being too tired to do anything besides sleep. So, in order for you to get used to reading, you should read every day. Although it is fine to read one page in a day, we highly recommend that you spend about 30 minutes reading a book each day.

Have Dedicated Reading Sessions

shelf with books

In addition to reading daily, we also recommend that you have dedicated reading sessions on specific days of the week. It would always be best to read a book during the morning, specifically while eating breakfast. Of course, if you wake up late, you will most likely not have time to read anything, so it would really be best if you could wake up early too so that you will have enough time to read or do other activities. 

Waking up early would be challenging if you don’t sleep early, so make it a habit of sleeping and waking up early, which are not only beneficial for your reading time but also for your physical health since getting enough sleep is good for you. After waking up, you should then do your usual morning routine and then spend at least 30 to 40 minutes reading a book. Besides mornings, you should also try to read a book before going to bed. If you want to sleep early, reading a book would help you get sleepier.

Give Ratings or Reviews of the Book You’ve Read and Log Them

To give you extra excitement in reading a book, you should give ratings or reviews to them after logging them in book review websites like Goodreads. Ratings or reviews would allow you to share your opinions about a book with fellow bookworms, and you may find some that agree with your opinions while others won’t. But, if you don’t want to share your opinions with others, you can just simply log the book on the website as a sign that you have finished reading it.

Having discussions with fellow bookworms on Goodreads and other book review websites would get you even more excited to read more books, as you will have the chance to talk to people that have the same hobby as you. So, if you are new to review platforms, give it a try so that you can make the reading habit much more fun.

And, there you go, the best tips that we can offer you to establish a good habit of reading books every day or during your free time. Make it a habit to read a few minutes a day, and you will eventually have enough energy and time to finish reading books in just a few days or weeks.