Okay, I understand. But hear me out. Reading is still a good
thing even if you don’t do it very often. Books put you in touch with other
worlds, new ideas, stretch your imagination, and help you live more
effectively.*
Even as a person who likes to read, I’ve been a little
frustrated that I never seemed to have time to read the books I wanted to read
or knew I should read. (I always make time for fiction. I’m not counting
mysteries or thrillers…)
So at the beginning of this year I set a goal to read just
10 pages every day. It dawned on me that if I read 10 pages most days, I would
be reading 3000 or more pages in the year. And that could be 10-20 new books.
10 pages isn’t much. And setting it as a goal means you’re
more likely to find time. At night before bed, during a lunch break, in the
bathroom (I’m serious), or even on a walk. (It’s easier than you think…)
What happens if you miss a day? I didn’t try to catch up – I
just started again the next day. If I missed a couple days in a row, as I did
more than once, I just picked up where I left off. I folded over a post-it note
to mark the end of 10 pages for that day. Eventually I found that I could do 20
pages a day, but some days I just made it 10.
It was pretty cool. I read books I might not have tackled
otherwise. Hugh Hewitt kept referring to Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower. It helped me understand the long,
torturous rise of Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
I read Pilgrim’s
Progress, such a small, beautiful book. I read a book on beekeeping and
one on fasting. One of the best books I read all year was Steven Pressfield’s The Lion’s Gate, about the Six Day
War. Thrilling, and made me admire the nation of Israel in an all new
way. John MacArthur’s Safe in the
Arms of God was a wonderful comfort as our church was walking through the
grief of a little one’s death.
All told I read 34 books, both Christian
and non-Christian, and I never felt pressured to read like you sometimes do in
college.
I’m psyched to start with 10 pages a day again in 2016. How
about you?
My only advice is to pick a subject you’re interested in –
whether it’s cooking or politics or marriage or time management or auto repair
or prayer or travel – and just start. Read just 10
pages!
Oh, and feel free to read on your Kindle or phone or
whatever. I use the app Overdrive on my phone to check books out from my local library.
*Big disclaimer: reading the Bible is far more important
than reading anything else. So, theoretically, if you had only 15 minutes to read 10 pages, invest them in God’s word first.
