Making Reading a Habit

As 2017 was about to end I wanted to make a habit of reading; my goal was to reach a rate of reading 10 pages every day and with that rate, I would read a book or two every month.

So, I decided to start a personal challenge to encourage myself to read those 10 pages, and it went like this: every day I'd read 10 pages out of which I'll choose a quote, take a photo of the page containing this quote or a screenshot- if I'm e-reading- and post it to Facebook. The idea was when I open Facebook the second day I'll see a notification that someone reacted to my photo or that someone sent me a message asking about the book's name and I'll remember that I have 10 pages to read this day. The second merit of this was it worked multiple times during the day so if I saw a reminder in the morning and read 2 pages I'll be reminded in the noon when I check my Facebook again and so on.

choosing Facebook as a reminding tool wasn't the best option out there especially when I was reading in philosophy no one reacted on my photos but choosing Facebook was better when it came to navigating behavior; opening Facebook meant that I was going to waste some valuable time doing nothing and I'd better spend it reading. so it was more of a reminder to better spend my time.

Before I knew it my reading rate reached 20 pages/day after the second month but what is more interesting is that Facebook itself became a reminder to read; the moment I open it the more I remember to read and close it and open my book reader. So, no longer than I needed to post on it again but I kept doing so every now and then just in case I was back to my old habit.

My goal for 2018 was 24 books and one of the things that helped me achieve this goal was starting small; I started with books that were less than 100 pages. it kept motivating me as I progressed through Goodreads reading challenge and before I knew it pages count kept growing from 20 pages to 100 pages followed by 300 then 600 and now 1700 pages.

I'm very proud of myself for progressing in reading, I learned so much from this journey. and as much as it sounds cliche, it's true that "the best investment of your time is reading"