How to read 88 books this year [10 Tips]

If you’re here, you’ve likely wanted to read more books and generally haven’t gotten as far you planned. Growing up I didn’t particularly love reading. My sister did. I’d rather have been outside running around like a crazy person or inside playing video games. The only books I did enjoy were the ones I got to choose and those were more often than not stories of grand adventures like 20,000 Leagues under the sea or By the Great Horn Spoon by Sid Fleischman.

Thankfully as adults, we don’t have a reading list given to us at the start of each year so every single book we read can almost always be by choice. The benefits of reading are huge and the last couple of years spent voraciously reading have been really eye-opening. In 2019 I read 46 books and as we finish 2020, I’ve read 88 for a total of 134 books in 2 calendar years.

My book spreadsheet dashboard with ratings

It took time to find the path to this particular point. In college, I THOUGHT I wanted to read a lot but functionally spent as much time shopping for books as I did actually reading them. I think the hobby was more along the lines of personal library development than it was reading. Plus, thrift store books for $0.50 just felt like too good of a deal to pass up. As my wife and I cleaned out a spare bedroom this year, the vast majority of those books circled right back to our local thrift store without ever being opened in my possession. Rightfully so.

Since then the way I go about things has changed quite a bit. Almost all of the books I’ve read over the last 730 days were all free. Also, it rarely felt like I had to choose to read over other activities. Those 134 books were read almost exclusively in my spare time or during other activities. It was less work and more fun than I anticipated. Which is the exact opposite of how I feel during all home improvement projects. Ha!

The beginnings of my Notion book-note-dashboard-of-awesomeness

Here are 10 Tips I learned this year on How to Read More Books

1. One at a time: There are a few special people in the world who can effectively juggle the reading of many books simultaneously. I am not one of them and assume you also aren’t. Often, this only slows us down and divides our attention. Instead, insisting on the habit of reading only one book at a time helps us to actually focus on its content. It also has the beneficial effect of encouraging you to finish it so you can get to the other books you also want to read!
2. Choose a goal for completion: Creating a deadline, even an arbitrarily imposed one, has been proven to increase our productivity. Pretending like you “have to finish this book by Saturday night” helps you to read more throughout the week. I personally prefer audiobooks and average 3–4 days per book. Picking a timeline to finish or just shooting for ASAP helps move things along, especially if the book is turning out to not be as good as you had hoped.
3. Be open-minded on topics: Listen for what the author is saying between the lines. You get to be inside their head for a few hours and hear their story. Take advantage of that opportunity even and especially if you think differently than they do. Don’t self-limit the topics and just listen to an echo-chamber of your own beliefs. This keeps things fresh and interesting and challenges your own pre-conceived notions that otherwise would be left unchecked.
4. Vary genres: I read about 6 non-fiction books for every 1 fiction book. That’s just my preference but you should also mix it up! Even if you naturally love specific genres, try branching out! Even though I prefer nonfiction books for the majority of my reading, even within the nonfiction umbrella, I rotate between business, leadership, a bit of science, biographies, self-help, and more.
5. Routine: Create routines around reading. Remove the element of decision fatigue and just let it be a foregone conclusion that at a time of day, at a particular spot, or after another trigger, you read. This is especially easy with audiobooks because you can listen while you do other activities. I listen so predictably in my truck while driving that my iPhone has started suggesting I open the audiobook app whenever I connect to a Bluetooth device. (I use Libby, but more on that after these tips!) Some ideas for activities that can give you time to listen to audiobooks are: washing dishes, running, driving, doing laundry, exercising in the gym, landscaping, showering, other manual labor, taking a walk or hike, waiting in line, or going to sleep.
6. Lean on your wish list: You may have a few books to start off your reading endeavor and if you’re motivated you will get through them quickly just to find that now you don’t know what to read or listen to! Do not run out of ideas. Instead, create a list or multiple lists of books you think you may like. I categorize my list by subject so when I’m in the mood for a leadership book or a fiction book or whatever, it’s easy to scroll through the list and pick a couple. Keep that pipeline full, and keep the books coming non-stop to prevent falling out of the habit!
7. Sacrifice the competing noise: There are approximately 0% of people alive today who aren’t doing something every minute of every day. We all find a way to use our given time, so to accomplish the worthwhile goal of reading more books, we have to cut something else out. Replace it. From July 2019-July 2020 there was a 92% increase in time spent by Americans watching various streaming services. That equates to an additional 4 hours per day on average! Yikes. There is definitely an opportunity to replace some of that time with reading/listening to books. Another competitor for our time is podcasts. With a few exceptions, I feel like the actual information you gather is greater from books than from conversational podcasts. Also, it’s generally delivered in a more concise way. A 6-hour long audiobook likely delivers more content than 6 hours of podcasts because the podcasts have the fluff of ads, introductions, conversational or relational topics between the guest(s) and host(s), etc…
8. Data! Tracking the number of books and their rating has gameified an otherwise very non-game-like hobby. Making something into an activity more like a game generally helps the average person want to do it. It can be really satisfying to have a concise record of the books you read and how good or bad they were. If you want to get really nerdy, try using Notion.com to create a database dedicated to tracking your books and your takeaways during reading. I’ve only just started this in December of 2020, but look forward to having a massive index of thoughts-worth-keeping in a way that is easy to access.
9. Talk about it: Even if you don’t like it. Summarizing an entire book in your own words helps you to process the content better and remember it for future use. This is easier when the book is awesome and has taught you something new. However, even a book you hated helps teach you what makes for good writing and can be an effective tool in your own communication as you attempt to explain to your friend why they should never consider reading that book.
10. If audiobooking: ALWAYS listen at an increased speed. Depending on how well the book’s narrator annunciates, the quality of the recording, the complexity of the subject matter, and your overall interest level, you can potentially speed up the time it takes to complete the book tremendously. For the most complicated and interesting books, I listen at 1.5X speed. The books with the least interesting subject matter that is likely easy to understand, I listen at up to 2.3X speed and still feel like I am not missing out on anything. For example, I listen to fiction books like “The Water Dancer” and “Fight Club” a lot slower than nonfiction books on average. A fiction book has an intentionality built into the dialogue both in speed and in specific uses of keywords or phrases that I do not want to overlook. A nonfiction book is generally conveying an idea or something that is less crucial to hear at exactly the right speed. “Good Leaders Ask Great Questions” is rich with advice for people in business who want to lead well, but can be easily understood at 2x speed.

Standard kit

James Clear is the author of an incredible book called “Atomic Habits”. It can help you along this journey of developing a new habit. He also has a weekly email newsletter that is incredibly brief and thoughtful. And free! This is a quote from a recent one that I loved regarding reading:

Inventor and writer Lin Yutang from his book “The Importance of Living” on the magic of reading:

“Compare the difference between the life of a man who does no reading and that of a man who does. The man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world, in respect to time and space. His life falls into a set routine; he is limited to contact and conversation with a few friends and acquaintances, and he sees only what happens in his immediate neighborhood. From this prison there is no escape.

But the moment he takes up a book, he immediately enters a different world, and if it is a good book, he is immediately put in touch with one of the best talkers of the world. This talker leads him on and carries him into a different country or a different age, or unburdens to him some of his personal regrets, or discusses with him some special line or aspect of life that the reader knows nothing about. An ancient author puts him in communion with a dead spirit of long ago, and as he reads along, he begins to imagine what that ancient author looked like and what type of person he was…

Now to be able to live two hours out of twelve in a different world and take one’s thoughts off the claims of the immediate present is, of course, a privilege to be envied by people shut up in their bodily prison.”