Don’t Just Set Reading Goals, Develop a Reading Practice

At the start of 2020, I set a goal to read 25 books. Reading a book about every 2 weeks felt doable to me.

Fast forward to August. I’d only read 8 books. I wasn’t on pace and knew I wouldn’t make it unless something changed. But what credibility did I have with myself? So far, my actions have demonstrated that I was only capable of reading 1 book per month.  

While I set a goal, I didn’t do anything to change my behavior. I had a target, but no system to help me actually hit it. 

Fast forward to the end of 2020. 

In August I was on pace to read 12 books for the year, but by year-end, I completed 37. Instead of 1 book a month, my pace jumped to ~7 books a month. 

So what changed?

It started with investing in a course called Read to Lead from Ryan Holiday and The Daily Stoic to become a better reader. I was initially hesitant about signing up because it felt silly to take a course on how to read. But, I thought it probably couldn’t hurt, and I might actually learn something. 

The course became a catalyst that transformed how I approached reading. 

I didn’t change my 25-book reading goal. Instead, I developed a reading practice, a system, that enabled me to hit and exceed my goal.

Developing a Reading Practice

Developing a reading practice is about changing your perspective and habits. You can set a goal to read ‘X’ number of books, but that is only one part of the equation. 

In Atomic Habits, author James Clear writes:

“Goals are good for planning your progress and systems are good for actually making progress.”

Rather than worry about the outcome, focus on building a reading system. Your system is your approach to reading. With the right system in place, your reading goal becomes an inevitable byproduct of your actions. 

Prioritization

The first step to develop a reading practice is to make it a priority. There are two aspects to this. You have to make time for reading and you have to value reading.

Time – You can come up with countless excuses for why you don’t have time to read. “I’m too busy. Work is crazy right now. I’ll get around to it after I finish some chores.” The list goes on. 

Reading doesn’t have to be something you do only when you have large blocks of uninterrupted time. You can read while you sit and wait at the doctor instead of play on your phone. You can listen to audiobooks while you drive instead of the radio. Finding small 5 to 10 minute chunks of time can drastically increase the amount of reading you do. When you have time to kill and feel yourself reaching out for distraction, reach for your book instead.

Values – When you say you don’t have time for something, it really means that it’s not a priority. The truth is that prioritization requires trade-offs. If you give time to reading, you have to take it from somewhere else. 

You can make sacrifices in the short term and find time to read. But to turn this behavior into a habit, you have to value reading. Your values determine your priorities and your priorities determine your decisions. 

Reading is a decision. When you choose to read your behavior demonstrates that reading is a priority. However, if your book and phone are sitting next to each other and you choose to pick up the phone, you are making a valued-based decision that says your phone is more of a priority than the book.²

“Our values are constantly reflected in the way we choose to behave.” – Mark Manson, Author

Think of your values as rungs on a ladder. The higher up something is on the ladder, the more you’ll prioritize that over something lower on the ladder. If reading is low in your value hierarchy you need to reprioritize it to align with your goal. Since values are a reflection of behavior, the more you read the more you’ll come to value it. To get a sense of how your value hierarchy is currently structured you just have to observe your actions.³

Reading was something I did in my spare time, but Max Joseph’s film How to Read More Books in the Golden Age of Content, gave me a new perspective and influenced my priorities.   

Max is on a mission to read more books and seeks out the help of blogger Tim Urban. Together they calculate how many books Max has left to read in his life based on his current reading pace. The result was 55 books. But with small tweaks, he could change that number. For instance, if he increased his reading to 30 minutes a day, the total would change to 1000 books. 

This is how you can calculate the number of books you have left to read in your lifetime.

• (Average lifespan – Current age) = Years left of reading
• (Average books you read per month x 12) = Books you read per year
• (Years left of reading x Books you read per year) = Books left to read 

The exercise gives you a powerful perspective on your reading habits.

Identity

There’s a small, but important difference between saying, “I’m trying to read more books” and “I’m a reader.” That difference is identity.

Your identity is a reflection of your top values. It’s who you are. Forming an identity is about choosing what type of person you want to be and then consistently acting in accordance with that choice.

“Every habit and capability is confirmed and grows in its corresponding actions, walking by walking, and running by running … therefore, if you want to do something make a habit of it, if you don’t want to do that, don’t, but make a habit of something else instead.” – Epictetus, Discourses, 2.18.1–5

If you want to be a better reader, read. If you want to be a better writer, write. If you want to be a better dancer, dance. The more you do something the more it becomes part of who you are. 

When reading becomes second nature it’s also easier to stay disciplined and choose reading over other distractions. Instead of being something you do when it is convenient, reading becomes something you ‘just do.’ 

Learning

Developing a reading practice isn’t about simply reading more, it’s about learning to read better.

If you just want to say you read a certain number of books you could speed read or skim them. But what’s the point in doing that? Don’t mistake the illusion of progress for real progress.

You can measure progress simply as the number of books you read, but think about what that result gets you. You can say you read more books. That’s it. Instead, think about what would happen if you measure progress as the number of books you read and acquired knowledge.  

I’d argue that real progress is what you learn from reading. When it comes to progress, what you measure matters.

Measuring progress as acquired knowledge is a good goal, but if you don’t retain or learn anything, you’re still not making progress. 

You must be an active reader and engage with the material if you want to learn. You can’t read mindlessly and expect learning to happen by osmosis. 

One way to stay engaged with your reading is to keep a commonplace book. A commonplace book is a repository for ideas, stories, quotes, examples, and insights you come across while reading. The purpose is to create a useful collection of information that you can use and reference throughout your life. 

A commonplace book doesn’t have to be a book per se. You could also use Google Docs, Evernote, Word, notes on your phone, or in my case, notecards. I read with a pen and mark passages and ideas that I want to revisit. Once I finish reading, I go back a few days later and flip through the book looking for notes. Then I transfer ideas that still seem insightful onto notecards. (You can see these in the picture with the books I read.) 

Keeping a commonplace book helps me to slow down and read intentionally as I keep an eye out for useful information. However, not every book will yield the same amount of insights, so I like to use the quote from Francis Bacon as a guide:

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few are to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”

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It doesn’t matter if you set a goal to read 10, 25, 50, or 100 books a year. A goal without a system is like a car without an engine. You won’t get where you want to go. 

These concepts of prioritization, identity, and learning are all applicable beyond reading. Just replace ‘reading’ with the goal of your choosing. 

Lastly, you only have so many books left to read, so don’t waste your time on things that aren’t important.

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Footnotes

1. I have no affiliation with the Daily Stoic or the Read to Lead course. I enjoy reading and found it valuable. If you like challenges and are interested in becoming a better reader I’d recommend taking a look at the course. 
2. This isn’t a moral comparison of your book vs your phone. Your book isn’t inherently ‘good’ and your phone isn’t inherently ‘bad.’ There is nothing wrong with choosing to pick up your phone, it is a simple reflection of your priorities.
3. When you reprioritize your value hierarchy, lower alternatives will feel less appealing. Why? Because they interfere with your higher priority value. I discovered the concept of value hierarchies and the ability to reprioritize them in Mark Manson’s book Everything Is F*cked: A Book about Hope, chapter 3.