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Marc Jenkins

Upping my reading habit

I’ve been using Goodreads to track the books I’ve read since 2014. Since then, I’ve read on average 18.3 books per year.

I don’t have a reliable way to track how much time I spend reading, but anecdotally it’s around 20 minutes per day. I read in dribs and drabs. On one day I’ll read for hour and then I won’t read a thing for days on end.

Assuming I live to the age of 80 and that I’ll be reading until the day I die, that gives me 47 book-reading-years left.

At my current rate of reading, I have 860 books left to read in my life time.

If I was to increase my reading time to 30 minutes per day, that’ll mean I’ll be getting through 27.5 books per year. That now means I could get through an additional 432 books, a total of 1292 books in my remaining years.

Now, let’s push this further and say I read for an hour a day. It may sound like a lot, but most of us watch far more TV than that in any given day. A few small habit changes and it’s possible to read more.

Reading for an hour daily means I’ll be getting through 55 books in a year. At this rate I could get through 2858 books before the age of 80, 1725 more just from increasing the time I read from 20 to 60 minutes per day.

That’s why I’m going to push myself to read for at least an hour every day.