Reading is one of best habits that pays off in the long term. It enriches your life in many ways you cannot imagine unless you try. People attribute success and greatness to reading, but I look at it in a different way, “There is absolutely no one, who regrets reading!” That’s good enough motivation. Why wouldn’t we do something that only has a potential upside to offer ? 🤷🏻♂️
If you are just starting, read anything that you find interesting. It doesn’t need to be something intellectual or world-changing stuff that everyone brags about. The goal is to simply enjoy and get attached to the habit of picking up a book and getting lost in it. It may seem difficult, but it is not, because you are reading what YOU like. Just give it time and continue. We even watch first few boring episodes on Netflix before getting gripped by the thriller. Books deserve that initial patience too !
Once you get used to the habit, develop enough interest and attention span. You would automatically pick up books that matter. Something that will help you learn and grow. It wouldn’t feel like work at all. You would find diverse topics and subjects and start enjoying them. Each book fiction or non fiction would leave a dot in your mind and as your make the journey, dots will connect effortlessly. Your knowledge and understanding would improve without being conscious or studious about it.
This habit would then take a turn where you would have the appetite to read many books. Even follow yearly reading challenges ! But don’t fall for it. As you read, you may find most books have one good message to deliver and a thousand anecdotes to convey the same thing. Such books would seem repetitive and waste of time. Feel free to stop reading the moment you lose interest. Sometimes you may only want to read specific portions of interest. Feel free to start anywhere in between. This is not a competition, you don’t need to finish everything.
Eventually you would find gems. The books that are so valuable, so great that they deserve repeat reading and note taking. The books that guide you and provide new perspective and clarity whenever you pick them up. Cherish them. It is much better to read 10 fundamental books a 100 times than reading 1000 books with little or no significance at all.
I call my list of such books “The 100x List” I want to read them repeatedly till every valuable learning is effortlessly internalised into my thinking, habits and actions. The @bookstopshere page on Instagram is just an effort in that direction where I post the summaries & interesting information that I anyway prepare for myself in Notion.
So without any further delay, pick up a book 📖 and start your reading journey 🖖🏼
⁃ Devendra
Devendra.blog 