Reading – Day One Update

I’m just beginning the fifth month of my year-long Foundations project.¹ The focus for this month is reading. In case you’re interested, here are the previous months’ content:

1. Fitness: Start, End, Books.
2. Productivity: Start, End, Books.
3. Money: Start, End, Books.
4. Food: Start, End, Books.

I picked this focus as one of the twelve because I believe a regular habit of reading, particularly from books, is one of the best foundational habits you can have in life. It’s also one that people do less frequently than they used to: most adults read fewer books than they did in decades past, no doubt a trend caused by the rise of smartphones.

However, reading books is something I’m fairly good at. I’ve regularly read at least 10 books for each month of this project so far, typically including at least two college-level textbooks for each topic. While my reading volume tends to go up and down depending on my projects, I can easily read a hundred books in a year when such reading is central to my work.

Therefore, my personal goals for the month will be a little different than the habit I’m encouraging other people to build this month, which is to always have a book. I’ll touch on this general recommendation more at the end of this post, but otherwise I’m focusing here on what I’m doing in the month ahead.

Two Goals: Bedtime Reading and Increased Breadth

I have two goals for this month. The first is to get into a regular habit of reading before going to sleep. I do this sometimes, but not consistently. My hope here isn’t to increase my reading volume, rather I want to use the habit to encourage better (and earlier) sleep.

I’m not setting a minimum threshold for bedtime reading, since that would quickly become a burden if I stay up later than usual owing to social events. But I think having the habit of reading before sleep, even if only for a minute, will encourage me to wind down faster than looking at a screen.

My second goal for the month is to spend more time reading books outside of my usual non-fiction focus. While I enjoy literature and off-topic non-fiction books, they definitely take a back seat when I’m working on a research project. I probably won’t be able to sustain this breadth as I shift to future months, but I will use this month to plan some longer-term reading lists in areas I read less than I’d like.

Here are some of the categories of books I’d like to read more of:

1. Classic literature. Ever since reading Hirsch’s book arguing for cultural literacy, I’ve been encouraged to expand my reading with more classic works of fiction.
2. Religious works. I’m not religious, but I think religion is a topic worth reading more of both for its cultural significance and its lessons for everyday life.
3. History. I’ve read quite a few biographies, often while researching for my books, but I’m less well-informed about a lot of history on its own. Given that history knowledge tends to be voluminous, I’d like to make some efforts to expand here.
4. Books in other languages. I don’t do nearly as much conversation practice in other languages as I used to; it was one of the necessary sacrifices I made to save time when I became a parent. But reading more in the languages I want to maintain is easier to fit in and something I’d like to cultivate.

I already have some books in each of these topics, probably more than enough for the month ahead, but I’ll use this month to prepare some longer-term lists, so I’ll have more books to choose from when those initial ideas run out.

AHAB: Always Have A Book

The keystone habit I’m encouraging people in my Foundations course to cultivate for this month is simpler than my personal goals. It comes from the observation that a major obstacle to reading more is simply not having anything you’re excited to read right now.

The practice to solve this can be summarized in a simple acronym AHAB, or “Always Have A Book.”

The goal is to have a book you’re interested in reading with you at all times. This doesn’t mean you need to lug around large paperbacks with you everywhere you go. With Kindle and Audible apps, you can now keep an entire library on your smartphone.

Setting this up means getting quite a few books—either buying them or borrowing them from a local library.

It also means prioritizing books you’re keenly interested in reading. A common mistake people trying to read more make is trying to finish whatever boring book they’ve already started. Then, because they don’t actually want to read it, they spend more time on social media.

If you’re already a voluminous reader, you can challenge yourself with harder books. But if you don’t regularly read at least one book per month, I encourage you to build a habit of picking books you enjoy and not feeling even a twinge of guilt about failing to finish any book that no longer interests you.

I’ve long practiced the AHAB habit, but even I slip occasionally. I’ll have periods where I have a few paper books, but no Kindle books—which means I check the news on my phone rather than read. Or I don’t have an audiobook I’m listening to—which means I can’t listen to anything other than music or podcasts even if I want to listen to a book.

Therefore, as part of my own challenge, I’m aggressively stocking all of my go-to book places, so I have plenty of books ready at my office, nightstand, Kindle app and Audible.

As an aside, I’m also hoping to use this month to relax a little bit in the project. The start of the Foundations course, plus the research-heavy food and money months, made my workload a little high over the previous two months. Since I’ve spent the last several years of my life reading books about learning, my reading-about-reading book list will probably be a little lighter this month, and I’ll use that downtime to read or listen to more off-topic books.

As always, I’ll share how this focus went for me at the end of the month, as well as some of the books I enjoyed.

1. I write these three months in advance, so while you’re reading this in February, I’m writing it in November.