Building A Daily Habit Of Reading
written by Nwando Eze | Productivity
A dedication to lifelong learning is the best way to sharpen your purpose and live your best life. Reading remains one of the best avenues to achieve this. A good goal is a book every 2 weeks. This equates to about 2 books a month and 24 books a year. Imagine how your life and perspective would change with the knowledge acquired from building this daily habit. Here are tips to help you along.
1) Get Audible:
As life has gotten busier and faster, it has become harder to sit with a good book. Between driving kids to activities, driving to school, work, working out, etc. our world is set up for very little time to settle down. Our attention spans are much shorter now. It’s more difficult to visually concentrate and read a book for long. Audio books allow me read while living life. The nice thing about Audible is you can change the reading speed to suit your needs. You could breeze through some books in a few hours with this feature.
2) Read while waiting:
Studies show humans spend about 6 months of their life waiting. The minutes we spend waiting i.e., driving to places, working out, waiting in the grocery line, doing laundry, surfing social media etc. are optimal times to read. I carry a set of fully charged earphones in my purse at all times. When the need to scroll through social media hits me, that’s my cue to listen to an audio book, if even for a few minutes. Like the effect small amounts of walking daily accumulated over time does to build good health, every little bit of reading you do accumulates. And the knowledge acquired compounds over time.
3) Give it 2 chapters:
I typically give a book the first 2 chapters to decide if it is worth my time. The truth is there are more books than you have time to read. Be selective. Stop reading it, return it and get something else if it does not move you in the first few pages. No matter how many review stars it has. Life is short. Your time is your most valuable asset. It is irreplaceable. Guard it selfishly. What you were made for requires it. You owe it to no one to spend your valuable time on a book that does not move you. And when you find one that moves you, cherish it by reading it at least twice.
Triple C Pearls
1) Get Audible
2) Read while waiting
3) Give it two chapters
Share on Social media: “Your time is your most valuable resource. It is irreplaceable. Guard it selfishly. What you were made for requires it. #CalmCuriousCourageousLeadership”
Share on Social media: “A dedication to lifelong learning is the best way to sharpen your purpose and live your best life. #CalmCuriousCourageousLeadership #FACHELifelongLearner”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hi, I’m Nwando Eze a board-certified physician and Certified Physician Executive with a Masters in Public Health and Business Administration. An accomplished author and speaker, I’m passionate about nurturing early careerist into young leaders, coaching leaders into becoming the best, well-rounded versions of themselves, improving justice, equity, diversity and inclusion in leadership and helping leaders live a well- rounded life.
