We All Have 15 Minutes To Read
Here’s how to carve yours out each day
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We’re all guilty of saying it:
“I’m just so busy, I don’t have time to read!” — literally everyone ever
but just because everybody says it, doesn’t mean it’s true. Oftentimes, the busiest people are the most productive, because they’ve found a format and rhythm to their business that works for them.
In 2021, against the backdrop of a global lockdown order, the one thing we’ve all got is time, so why is it still so hard to MAKE time?
There are a couple of reasons it’s hard, and today we aim to make it a little easier for you.
The benefits of reading daily:
The benefits of burying your nose in a book are so numerous they’d need their own post just to espouse, but they include:
- Mental benefits such as enhanced focus, memory, vocabulary and reduced anxiety
- Physical benefits such as a lower heart rate and a longer, better-quality sleep at night
How long you need to read:
The great news is that you don’t have to be like a young Elon Musk, reading for 10 hours every day: you can receive all of the above benefits and many more from reading for as little as ten or fifteen minutes a day.
Even better, you don’t have to do this all at once! You could easily do three 5 minute sessions and still prevent your brain from aging.
How to find the time:
The one thing that the great humbling event of 2020 and 2021’s global lockdowns, furloughs and more have meant is that we’ve been given more time than usual due to less commutes, less traveling and less time with family and friends.
This affords us a period of quiet, inward reflection that is the perfect time to reach for a book!
Here are a couple of ideas in you can use to help you find time for reading every day:
- Put it on your to-do list, and look at your list each day
- Read as soon as you wake up
- Read before you go to sleep
- If you’re working from home, take a fifteen minute break once you’ve fully woken up to have a cup of tea and read a book right when your mind is the most focussed
- Tell whoever you’re living with that you want to start reading for a bit every day and ask them to encourage you. In this way, you can be held accountable for doing what you said you would do, and therefore are much more likely to do it!
There are numerous ways in which you can find the time to read, but making it a daily habit and establishing it as part of your routine is easy once you’ve gotten started, so the most important thing is that you start.
