How I developed a reading habit: tracking with a simple bookmark and setting low daily targets (Make it easy)

 

Alhamdulillah, just finished reading the book "This is Love" by Dr. Ali Albarghouthi 😍📖👍🏼. 

One of the key strategies in building a habit to read every day - the one I used to complete reading this 500-page book from cover-to-cover in 2 months - is by daily tracking.

I would use the most basic method of bookmarking: the twist is to use an unglamorous blank A4 sheet of paper, fold it up, and write my daily progress on that paper. 

Tracking grants us a visibility of progress over the course of any project/task, immediately informing us of our consistency & how much we have been slacking off, and works a a self-regulating self-reminder to help us get back on track. 

Plus, as the weeks pass by, it's very satisfying to look back at our daily progress, helping provide a minor motivational "boost" to keep moving forward every day! 

What I learnt also, was the point of function over form. This A4 method isn't the most elegant or aesthetically sexy approach, but it's an effective, practical one. 

Sure, I love fancy bookmarks as much as the other guy, but it doesn't serve any other functional purpose beyond  a glorified checkpoint. In the past, I would place pretty bookmarks barely 1/3rd into the book, and when I get "busy", the book will be abandoned. And because there was no mental picture of my progress, instead a vague memory of when I last picked up the book "a few months ago", there was very little motivation to pick up the book to get back on track (knowing that I probably forgot much of the stuff already) 

Another strategy to make this work is to set low daily targets. My daily minimum target was 4 pages a day (about 8 minutes). It was low enough that even during vacations, or in my laziest, most unproductive days, I could muster up *just enough* willpower to achieve in a last ditch effort to meet the daily KPI. 

While 4 pages doesn't seem like much, if the book you're reading is any good (in this case, it's awesome 😍), then chances are, you would be so engaged by page 4, that you'd want to keep reading anyway: you'll finish 10 pages in no time!