Thursday, December 31, 2015

Just 10 Pages a Day - a Modest Proposal for 2016

I like to read. I say that upfront, and I know that automatically makes some of you say, Not me!

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.