How I plan on reading 1000 books before I die 📚
30 minutes a day, everyday ⚡️ lifetothemax no.15 ⚡️
I’m writing this newsletter from Terminal C of the Charlotte, NC airport. I’m waiting for my second flight which has now been delayed 5 hours due to thunderstorms in the area. This sucks. (Sorry in advance if this comes out late.)
But enough about the negatives, because for once, I want this newsletter to be nothing but positive.
Last week, I announced that I had just finished my tenth book of 2021. Thanks to this newsletter, I have successfully made a positive change in my life. A few years back, it would have been impossible for me to fathom ever reading more than a handfull of books in a year.
I first noticed this change sometime last week. Growing up, because finishing a book was so rare, I would always end it by theatrically slamming the book shut, and pausing to reminisce about the journey I had just undergone by completing that book. Last week, however, when I finished “The Great Gatsby”, I just put it down on the coffee table and immediately stood up to go do something else. Later I realized, “Wow, I just finished that book without even batting an eye.” Reading has become so automatic that it feels easy. It was such a tiny moment, but it blew my mind.
I am now a reader.
So how did I do it? Easy: I turned reading into a habit.
From book #7 of 2021, “The Power of Habit”, we know that habits are made up of three elements: a cue, a routine, a reward.
By building reading into a habit loop like this, I’ve easily made it a part of my daily life. For me, the cue is: roll out of bed. The routine is reading itself. And for the reward, well this one was easy: because I enjoy reading, reading itself is the reward. Since I associated the routine of reading with a cue that happens every day (at least it will until the day that I die) and having it end with a consistent (albeit easy) reward, well reading every day is now easy. Of course, I miss a day here and there, but then reading an hour when I can on the weekends easily makes up for that. So that’s how I did it, a pretty simple formula for a very powerful result.
I am now confident that I can complete my goal of reading 30 minutes a day this year. Even during my month-long break from writing this newsletter, I mostly stayed on top of my reading. I’m also currently halfway done with 4 separate books, which in itself has been a real game-changer. Not putting any pressure on myself to finish books, but instead just picking up whatever I feel like reading each day makes reading so so so much easier. For anyone who wants to read more, I truly recommend juggling multiple books, and not feeling the pressure to finish any one book before picking up the next. Fixating on finishing one book rather than moving on to a more exciting one will only make you slow down and enjoy the process of reading less.
The other thing that this achievement has done for me is that I now have a pretty accurate benchmark for my reading speed — and the math is quite easy! It took me 20 weeks to read 10 books. Reading 30 minutes a day, I’m therefore able to read the average book in about 7 hours. That’s pretty amazing. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a world-record-breaking speed, far from it. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it is slower than average. But it is amazing in that I can now lay out how much I can realistically read if I keep this pace up.
So let’s do the math. At the current pace, I can read 26 books per year. If we round that down to 25 (to make the math even easier), then reading 1000 books will “only” take me 40 years. Now, yes that’s still 40 years. But that means that by the time I’m 63, I’ll have read 1000 books. Then if I keep up the same pace, or even increase it, I’ll be one of those old people who have truly read “everything”. That would be really amazing.
Anyway, let’s keep it at that. I’ll end it on a real positive, and don’t forget to check out this week’s meme palette cleanser. Anyway, I’ve now boarded my flight and I think I’ll read a chapter or two of “The Hobbit” before catching some z’s. 😴
📚 Reading
Currently reading:
“The Compound Effect”, Darren Hardy.
“The Little Book of Common Sense Investing”, by John C. Bogle.
“The Hobbit”, J. R. R. Tolkien.
Please leave any book recommendations in the comments and add me on Goodreads.
📊 Statistics
Year progress: 39%
Newsletters posted: 15 (+1)
Newsletter subscribers: 24 (thank you ❤️)
Hours read this year: 72 (+2) - on schedule
Workouts this year: 28 (+1) - 7 ahead of target
TikToks posted in 2021: 9 (+0) - 11 behind target
TikTok followers: 122 (+1)
🤡 “Meme Palette Cleanser” of the Week
Last week, I started the “meme palette-cleanser of the week”, as suggested by an avid reader of the newsletter. He was unfortunately very disappointed with my first choice of meme. I realize now that I really dropped the ball, and I apologize for my mistake.
To make up for it, this reader, who I will henceforth be referring to as “Frank Pepitone, the meme selector”, suggested some quality memes to pick from for this week. I hope the following meme will be a much-needed improvement on last week’s failure.
Without further ado, the meme palette-cleanser of the week:
That’s the meme. Consider your palette cleansed.
Frank Pepitone, the meme selector astutely pointed out that this meme perfectly ties in with my cultural heritage as well as my culinary interests.
On the note, thank you again for reading my newsletter. It really means a lot. If you haven’t subscribed yet, and you want to help out with keeping me accountable for my goals, or you just want to see what meme Frank Pepitone, the meme selector will conjure up for next week, then please subscribe:
Thanks again for reading. See you next Sunday ❤️