Along with probably about 7 billion other people on the planet I have been known to use the oldest excuse in the world when it comes to not being able to read. I am busy. I have a lot of tests in school or I have a lot of homework. I have to go to the gym or I have to go on a run. Regardless, whatever I end up doing is not sitting down and reading. Maybe others can relate to the fact that I kind of go through periods of making time for reading where I will read a book or two in a very short amount of time, then I will stop reading for weeks on end. Although I have talked in the past about how all reading should be considered such as reading for class, or reading your own writing, in this case I am considering reading in a more classical sense of sitting down with a book.
In my quest to find a better system to ensure more consistent reading I stumbled across a Youtuber. Enter John Fish:
Josh Fish has some really interesting videos and I suggest you check them out here. He is a Computer Science major at Harvard and it wicked smart. He makes videos going over how he studies, his mindset, and a bunch of other super helpful things for students. One of these videos is linked here. In this video he talks about a year long project for him where he read a book every single week for an entire year. In this video he talks about the struggle of finding time between running (he is a huge running guy), having a social life, and oh yea, being a student at one of the most difficult universities in the world.
This main strategy is to find the time throughout the day of the ‘in between’ time as he describes it. He does a lot of his reading on the bus, sure it is only about 15 minutes but he claims that this seems to add up. I hope to begin practicing this because reading does not have to be a super formal setting. I think that I have been guilty of wanting the moment to be ‘too perfect’ in order to start reading. I have a hunch that I might not be the only one. So toss your book in your bag and lets not make any excuses, lets get reading.