50 books in a year? Here are 3 reasons why and 6 ways to increase your reading

I read 15 books in 2019. I read 36 books in 2020. I read 44 books in 2021. I read 63 in 2022. It appears I'll read more than that in 2023. 

I am not bragging; in fact just the opposite. I am not a speed reader. I do not have an enormous IQ. The world is full of people way more intellectual than me. That’s why I wanted to share this post. I’m just a 'rando' guy that accepted some common wisdom and put some simple things in place that led to a lot of books being read. I didn’t know it would lead to reading this many books, but it wasn’t difficult, either. It was just life. I think you can make it part of your life and make your life better because of it too. 

John Stonestreet says, 'Before you how you ask how you can do something, you should consider why you should do it.' 

Here’s why you should consider reading more. 

Growth is has a correlation to the quantity and quality of information that you consume. Tweet threads are ok. Video series are ok. Blogs are good. Books are best. Jay Strack, founder of Student Leadership University, claims reading books is the number one step in any growth plan. President Truman famously quipped that, 'not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.' Best-selling author, Josh Medcalf, tells this crazy story of how he felt lost in his life so he quit law school at Duke, locked himself up in a friends apartment and read non-stop for 60 days. When he re-emerged, he was different. He could feel it. He started sharing what he had learned and his life took off in an unexpected direction. As a leader, I feel responsible to positively influence the people around me, so I just accepted the fact to do it effectively, I needed to have a reading habit. You do too. 

24 hours in a day is a lot of time. You might be thinking I am crazy, and I must not have the demands on my time that you do. So as a point of reference, I was an athletic director of a large department while enacting these reading habits. I worked 60-70 hour weeks. I work the portion of many Saturdays and Sundays. I worked most Sunday nights. I had three teenagers participating in a wide range of activities. I had a house to maintain, bills to pay, and trips to take. You know what’s special about all of that? Nothing. We ALL have insanely busy lives. It’s part of living life in modern times. Your life rips along at warp speed just like mine does. What I did was accept the fact that 24 hours is a lot of time and it starts to feel like a lot more time if I cut out some of the dumb little things that waste it. Did you know that one hour is 4% of a day, 30 minutes is 2%, and 15 minutes is 1%. I just could not accept the fact that I couldn't give 1-2% of my day to reading. Do I still waste time? Yes. I just stopped wasting as much as I used to. You should too. 

The Information Age is wonderfully suited to read a ton of books, but few will, and they will miss out on the incredible opportunities that are part of this age. The Information Age is powered by the knowledge economy and that means what you do with information and knowledge is exponentially powerful. The starting point is the systemic and meaningful accumulation of information and knowledge. Nelson Mandela advocates for education as the most powerful weapon to change the world. Reading is how a person continues to educate themselves. Reading books is the keystone habit of this age. I decided I was not going to miss out on all of these opportunities and influence. You should too. 

Here’s how I’ve read an increasing number of books over the past several years. Here’s how you can do the same.

Increase your screen time the right way - Screen time has gotten a bad wrap for justifiable reasons. But, screen time has been a huge part of my enhanced reading habit. I read the e-version of books almost exclusively now. Why? Because it's always with me and I can read it hands free if I need to. My preference is iBooks so I have the iBooks app with me at all times. iBooks also has the cool feature called, 'want to read' and you can tag other books to it that you want to read. With almost no thinking or organizing whatsoever, a vast book list develops right inside of this app. My phone, my iPads, and my laptop are always with me so my books are always with me. 

Track it - Peter Drucker famously said 'what gets measured, gets managed.' To his point, I started tracking what I was reading through a simple Google sheet. It has five columns with the following headers: Title, author, topic, key quote, and the month that I read it. It is amazing how encouraged I am to keep reading when I open that sheet to add a new book and see all that has been accomplished. 

Fill the in between moments with it - Let's go back to the convenience of e-books. We have so many 'in-between' moments every day. These moments are things like sitting in parking lots waiting for someone, waiting in drive thru lines, lunch breaks, and even sitting on the toilet (cringy, but true). We fill almost all of these moments with scrolling our social media feeds. Fill those moments with reading a book on your phone. I still scroll my phone during some of those in between moments, but I scroll less than I used to. I use those moments to read a section of a book. You should too. 

Start the day with it - This is the most important change I made. I read every morning. Sometimes I read for five minutes and sometimes I read much longer. The compound effect of that habit is a lot reading and it takes place at a time when your mind is fresh and ready to take in what you read leading to better learning. 

End the day with it - I keep an iPad on my nightstand. It has one thing on it; iBooks. I read most nights before I turn out the light. Sometimes I read for what feels like :30 before I nod off. Other times, I read for a while longer. Just kidding. I'm exhausted. I always fall asleep fast, but not before reading a little bit. 

Share it - Stephen M. Covey in his book, The Speed of TRUST, encourages leaders to embrace sharing what they are learning to enhance their own learning. How can you share what you are learning? What I have found amazing, is the more I read the harder is to NOT find ways to share it. It's called the Recency Bias and it just happens. You just start coming across conversations, emails, and social media posts that have layers to them that never even knew existed until you started reading about, well, everything. 

Reading has always been important, but it is extra potent in today's information age. Business leader consultant, Dave Maister, warns knowledge and skills in today's age depreciate in value fast if not attended to. I would encourage you to adapt one small suggestion I've made so you can increase your learning and your ability to positive influence those around you. 

Keep on, keeping on, friends! 

‘Bite Down and Don’t Let Go’ is a collection of writings on being intentional about life in a way that produces great persistence. Read about it more here.

Dr. Chris Hobbs is an educational leader with more than two decades of experience. He’s earned a few degrees and won some awards. He’s happily married to his high school sweetheart and they have three teen age children. Life is messy and complicated most of the time. You can follow him on Twitter for all sorts of inspirational thoughts and good laughs.