We live in a world of hurry, and that can sense of hurry can flow into every aspect of our lives. It’s easy to see many areas of life we wish to improve, and then set about to do so only to find ourselves frustrated and discouraged that we don’t seem to be making progress. Trying to read more is certainly no exception.

If you’re trying to read more, give yourself time. 

1. Give yourself time to get into a book.

Did you pick up a book you thought would be fascinating, but it’s not quite what you hoped for? Give yourself time to get into the book. You don’t have to finish every book you start, but it may turn out that it takes a little longer to become fully engaged with the book. Read a little more, skim over the table of contents and chapter highlights, and consider that it might be worth your time after all.

This happens to me on occasion. Sometimes I start a book without really knowing much about it, and it may take me a couple of chapters to really catch what is going on. Sometimes it happens even with books that I think I know what the entirety of it will be about, but I struggle to maintain interest. I’ve found that if I stick with it a little longer, I usually have a clearer sense as to whether or not I should drop the book altogether, or I find myself wishing the book would never end.

2. Give yourself time to see your reading increase.

You might be tempted to ditch life and try to read as many books as possible all at once. This will likely backfire, and you’ll be quickly overwhelmed — sort of like if you try to sprint the first part of a marathon. Increasing your reading may be a more gradual process than you expected. And that’s okay.

The healthiest way to lose weight/live a healthy lifestyle is to focus on both eating well and exercising properly. But it can be discouraging when you aren’t dropping 5 or 6 pounds per week. But at the end of the month, after working day after day, you’ll probably see progress. What’s most important, of course, is creating a healthy lifestyle, rather than losing as much weight as quickly as possible. Likewise with reading, what is more important than reading as many books as fast as you can to check them off of a list…is that you cultivate a healthy intake of reading and knowledge.

Look at the big picture you’re after, and keep on pressing on a little bit longer.

3. Give yourself time to see the connections.

Cross-pollination with reading will happen once you begin to read broadly, read across genres, and read within a variety of fields. But it might not happen after reading just two more books. Wait for it. Make the connections where you can, and eventually they will start to jump out of books left and right as you read (which will make you want to read more).

4. Give yourself time to reflect on what you’ve read.

While I’ve recommended having another book to begin once finishing another, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take time to reflect and record thoughts upon finishing a book. Depending on what you’ve just read, it may be as simple as writing down a few sentences to summarize the book, or it may be good to not read anything for several days and just let the thoughts sink in.

Take breaks; your brain needs them, too.

What hangups do you find yourself having with reading? Where do you have to remind yourself to “take time?”

Using my Audible app on my phone is probably my favorite way to listen to Audiobooks, mostly because the app is so user friendly and has several features that are currently unique among audiobook apps. But Audible is by no means the only way. Here are some great resources for finding audiobooks. Each of the following having opportunity for downloading at least one free audiobook, and several of them are resources for entirely free audiobooks.

1. Audible

(Free trial, paid membership or purchase books individually)

Right now, you can sign up with Audible (you can use my link here, and I’ll get a small affiliate fee) and get two free audiobooks.

My husband and I both have a membership with Audible. (We figure we’d put our money here instead of a cable subscription or similar. )

The current memberships available are:

Platinum Level – $22.95 per month, and receive 2 credits per month. (This may also be payed for with a one-time payment, at $229.50 for the entire year.)

Gold Level – $14.95 per month, and receive 1 credit per month. (This may also be payed for with a one-time payment of $149.50 for the entire year.)

Memberships allow you to purchase additional books at a discounted rate.

 2. Librivox

(All free)

Librivox is a library of literally thousands of free audiobook files (5,257 to be precise, though some of those contain overlapping title files). The recording on this site is done by volunteers, so the quality of the reading may vary from book to book. Some may have multiple readers for one book. Many are actually quite well done. The works here are primarily public domain books, so this is an excellent resource for working through classics.

More information here on how to listen to Librivox files.

3. BooksShouldBeFree

(all free)

This site is similar to Librivox and offers mostly classic works, and apparently offers some of the books read on Librivox. Books are also available in other languages.

4. Christianaudio.com

(free download offered monthly, purchase books individually)

Christianaudio also features thousands of books put out by a number of Christian publishers. (Some of these books are also sold on Audible.) They also offer sermons, lectures, interviews, and podcasts.

CA offers a free download monthly, and if you are an avid reader and reviewer, you can also apply to review books through their site.

Although the site and its staff seem to lean more toward American conservative evangelicalism, the books cater to a broad spectrum of evangelicalism, and include books that range from deep  theology to pure fluff, and works from both liberal and conservative authors.

5. The Library. 

(free, unless you have to pay fines!)

Most libraries offer CD audio of popular and recent books. Some libraries are now offering digital downloads of audiobooks straight from their websites, as well. (Mine does this, but the titles aren’t so great.)

My library also has a really neat option for those who may not own an MP3 player (headphones needed). Called a Playaway, it’s a pre-loaded, self-contained digital audio book (pictured above).

The great thing about reading via audiobooks is that it helps you discover time to read that you didn’t have before.

Here are some ways to do that:

1. Gain dead time.

Start small: determine to listen to audiobooks while you’re in the car, rather than listen to the radio for example. What are moments you find yourself wishing you had something to distract you mentally? Or feel like you are just “wasting time?”

2. Collect and aggregate miscellaneous time.

Collect tasks that are non-auditory/verbal, and do them all together while you listen to audiobooks. Although most jobs don’t allow hours upon hours of audiobook listening time, you can probably find some tasks that allow you to listen to audiobooks and work at the same time. What are those tasks? Line them up, and perform several of them consecutively them while listening to audiobooks.

Perhaps you’re going to 1) put mail in people’s credenzas, 2) clean up your desk, 3) water the office plants, and 4) get a drink at the water fountain. Presto. You’ve just found seven minutes in the day to listen to audiobooks. Sweet. It sounds a bit obsessive to find this kind of time in your day just to listen to audiobooks, but it becomes second-nature after a while. You’ve got your MP3 player and headphones. You’ve got a few seconds. Why not listen to your audiobook?

Or perhaps it’s time to 1)do a final pick-up before bed, 2)brush your teeth, and 3)go around and lock up the house before going to bed. It may be only 15 minutes, but it adds up over time. Do this for 2 weeks (14 days x 15 minutes=210 minutes), and you’ve listened to over 3 hours of audiobooks. That’s enough time to listen to at least on short audio book. If you’re following the math, that’s two more books per month, just utilizing that extra time!

3. Create habit times.

Make the conscious decision to listen to audiobooks at certain times. We’re creatures of habit. Many people are in the habit of flipping on the radio when they hop in the car to go to work. After all, it’s a great way to catch up on the news or listen to some great music. Why not use this time to listen to audiobooks (this could included Scripture in audio format, too)?

Rather than inducing panic attacks by listening to a political talk show, turn on your audiobook and engage your mind in a different way. Perhaps you prefer to listen to music while you wash dishes or fold laundry. Instead, make a conscious decision to use some of that time to listen to audiobooks.

Here’s the audiobook lifestyle challenge. Choose at least one time when you can adopt the habit of listening to audiobooks. A change in llifestyle requires that you change habits and details. Most people find that the daily commute to and from work provides the best and most convenient time to listen to audiobooks. Try it.

4. Find more time.

Troubleshoot to create your own times to listen to audiobooks. Listening to audiobooks can be such an amazing experience that you’ll find yourself wanting to do more of it. Perfect! But, now you’re faced with a reverse problem. What can you do while you listen to audiobooks. Clean the closet? Organize the garage? Dust the baseboards? Rake the leaves? After a while, you’re going to start listening to a lot more books, and probably get healthier or get a cleaner house in the process.

The concept behind gaining more time by listening to audiobooks is simple. You can listen to audiobooks when you’re not doing something that requires literary thought processes. You’ll probably find a lot of new time to listen to a lot more books.

Of course, with any of these areas, you can go overboard. Everyday life should still hold quiet moments, and should not be lived from one book-listening moment to another. But taken in the context of helping you find more time to listen to audiobooks than you already do, hopefully these suggestions will be empowering, rather than burdening.

(This is an overflow from some of the ideas presented in Finding Time You Already Have:: Audiobooks: Part 1, and some of the ideas do overlap; but here they’re reframed in a different light.)

What times do you see in your schedule that might work for more listening? If you’re already an audiobook aficionado, what tips have helped you create more listening time? Have you found it a helpful stimulus to do more work and listen to more books?

One of the best ways to read more without “living less” is to make use of the seemingly “dead time” you already have. The availablity of audiobooks provides an easy means to do this, although different people process visual and audio information at different rates and in different ways. (But if you think that you’re a visual-only learner, don’t give up on audiobooks quite yet!)

Collect the tools.

First, the audiobook lifestyle requires some basic equipment. You will need a device that plays digital audio like an iPod or other MP3 player, and likely a pair of headphones. This is the basic building block for the audiobook lifestyle.

It’s also possible to do this without a portable MP3 player or headphones. Simply play the audio from your computer, but this will limit you in how, when, and where you can listen.

Find your the time.

Next, you’ll need some time to listen to your audiobooks. Don’t stress out over trying to find more time in your busy schedule. You already have it.

I feel strongly about moving toward a more simple lifestyle, particularly in comparison with the culture in which I find myself placed. I try to live counter-culturally to the message that sees busyness is a status symbol or sign of worth. But I don’t just avoid busyness so that I can sit around twiddling my thumbs or spend my time floating around a pool. Simplicity and minimalism of time has the aim of making room for what is most important.

As Laura Vanderkam states in 168 Hours, “You have time for what you make time for.” The key is to make time work for you, rather than being a slave to it.

You may have to do some rearranging, configuring, and looking at your lifestyle, but if you’re like most people, you probably have time in there that you didn’t realize you had.

Multitasking can be good and bad. 

Beware of multitasking that overloads the brain. There are numerous studies that show that multitasking actually slows you down at all your tasks, impairs judgment, and confuses the brain. (In fact, you can take a quick 3-question test here to see how well you multitask. The studies also show that as we get older, we grow worse at multitasking, so if you’re “older” and listen to audiobooks, I’d love to hear your opinion on this. )

You might be trying to watch TV, chat online with a friend, and sort through your tax files. This is bad multitasking, because each of these requires active brain activity to accomplish these tasks. (This may be arguable in regards to watching TV, but if it is a show with a verbal storyline you are trying to follow, you’ll need to pay attention to some degree.) On the other hand, if you’ve been knitting for years, knitting and watching a TV show are a bit more feasible.

There are simply some things that cannot be done while listening to audiobooks.

Don’t try to multitask tasks that require intense concentration or tasks or that are new.

For instance, if you are breastfeeding a baby for the first time, you will likely get distracted from what you are listening to; once you have it down, though, you will probably usually be able to listen to an audiobook.

Or, if you are putting together a brand new piece of furniture from Ikea and trying to follow the instructions, that’s not a good time to try to concentrate on listening to an audiobook. Putting it together for the 500th time, and you do this as almost as an assembly line job? You might be able to do both quite well. (Lose a screw, though, and your concentration on the one will probably be lost momentarily.)

Don’t try to listen to audiobooks while composing e-mails, purchasing stocks, or performing surgery.

I also try not to listen to audiobooks while I am with my children and it is a time when my attention should be devoted to them. I don’t want them to grow up remembering that Mommy was always distracted, checking texts at the dinner table, or usually didn’t hear them until the 5th time because I was in the middle of a really good book. I rarely take or make phone calls during my time with them, so it is no different with audiobooks. But there are plenty of times to squeeze both in during the daytimes (and audiobooks are much easier to push “pause” on than is an important phone call): naptimes, free-play times (I’m a strong believer in this), while children are otherwise preoccupied.

Do use your time well. Listen to audiobooks while performing tasks that require low mental concentration.

Good opportunities to listen to audiobooks:

• Chores and manual labor. While doing chores sans children’s involvement (cleaning floors, dusting, folding laundry are all examples of tasks that would otherwise seem mindless)
• Waiting for an appointment or meeting
• Walking
• Getting dressed, putting on make-up (or shaving if you’re not a make-up wearing male), etc…

• Driving. (Just be careful that it is not a time that requires intense concentration, such as in a new city or trying to navigate a tricky section of town.)
• Exercising. In Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, the authors share evidence that the optimal time for learning and taking in new information is immediately following the period of sustained peak heart-rate activity. However, during the time of high-heart-rate activity, the brain does not do as well
• Anytime you happen to be in an unproductive or mundane moment (and are not otherwise purposefully resting or refreshing from the silence). Maybe you’re having trouble sleeping, but want to lay in bed in the dark still (the Audible app has a sleep mode that you can set to automatically shut off), or maybe you showed up for a friend’s bridal shower too early and are waiting in the driveway, and need some time to kill.

When I first got my smart phone (an iPhone 4), I was coming from a simple flip phone with no bells or whistles — not even a texting plan. It was a bit of a jump, but a smooth transition, nonetheless.  So if you are reading this and don’t have a smartphone, I understand where you’re at, and hope this post doesn’t discourage you or make you feel like you can’t read as much.

That being said, using my smartphone has helped me in my reading, and helped me squeeze in a bit more than I would have otherwise (thanks to the small size and portability, specifically). For one, it combines two formats together in one very portable device. I’ll explain what apps and features I use, making my smartphone one of my most-used reading tools. Continue Reading…

See Part 1 here, and the rest of the series here.

4. Discuss the book with others and read reviews. 

Discussing books with others can help you read more, and can also help you remember more. Being part of a book club or reading group, whether online or in real life, is a great way to do this. But you don’t even need an official group or a club.

“Discuss the book with others” can sound like a cheesy group learning method that you’d read in a college textbook. However, it’s really a great way to reinforce what you’re reading.

If you can’t find anyone to talk with about the book, just look on Amazon. Chances are, people are already arguing about it. You can chime in with your own review. It will help you to interact with others and share your viewpoint. As people read your review, they can vote on whether or not it was helpful to them, or they can leave kind (or not-so-kind) feedback. Amazon is not the only place to do this. Barnes and Noble, Christian bookstores, Audible, and other book retailers all offer a place to post your review, and some allow for further interaction like with Amazon (Did I mention Goodreads? ).

5. Highlight and take notes.

As long as you own the book, any white space in the book is yours to write on. Talk back to the author, or start an argument with her in the white space at the end if the chapter. This is fun, plus it helps you remember the material.

Electronic reading tools like Kindle allow you to add notes, and even the Audible app (for listening to audiobooks) allows you to insert typed notes at certain points in the recording.

I also like to skim through my notes and highlights upon finishing a book.

6. Plan a set time to briefly look over some of the books you’ve read for the year. 

You could do this at the end of each week, every time you finish a book, or at the start or beginning of each month. It could as brief as just looking at your list or books you’ve read so far, or it could be as complex as looking at the table of contents for each book. Either way should help you recall elements and themes of your reading, and doing this frequently over the course of the year will help lodge them in your mind.

Do you have trouble recalling what you’ve read weeks and months (and years) later? What tips can you share that have helped you better remember what you’ve read?

What good is reading a lot if you can’t remember what you read? As Mortimer Adler once said , “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” (His book, How to Read a Book, is a helpful resource in improving reading.)

Here are a few ideas for improving reading retention:

1. Use Goodreads or a similar database method to keep track of what you read. 

Using this method, you can easily scan the list as a whole and look and see what you’ve read. Goodreads also lets you see brief summaries of each book, as well as read reviews that others have written. Reading these reviews and reflections can help jog your memory. Continue Reading…

Here are 9 tips for reading more, in no particular order:

1. Consider reading the same book with someone else (e.g., your friend, spouse, etc.).

It will help motivate you to read it, and provide for some great discussions.

My husband and I both read a good bit, and a good number of the books we read overlap. This has been a huge help in motivating both of us to read more. We don’t necessarily begin books at the same time, but we do generally read them within a very close window of time. There’s nothing like wanting to start an intense discussion on reading only to say or hear, “oh, I didn’t realize you hadn’t read that yet…I can’t wait till you do!” to motivate you to get moving. It’s also a good way to understand your spouse or friend’s views on things. Yes, I read books on pastoral ministry and he reads books on mothering.

I do this with friends, as well, and it’s really enjoyable to be able to discuss our reading! Continue Reading…

“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” -Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

When I first began the book, The Happiness Project, I was skeptical. It sounded flaky and a rather shallow name for a project. I was wrong. Rubin is a professional author, historian, and researcher, and she blends her skills in a blaze of intellectual brilliance — weaving together strands of history, neuroscience, positive psychology, and just plain good sense into an accessible and page-turning lifestyle manual. She is a master of cross-pollination. While it’s like all books in that there were elements I didn’t agree with and portions that weren’t applicable to me, it was definitely a book where I came away with important ideas, many of which I hadn’t previously realized I’d needed.

Gretchen Rubin borrows her truism from Voltaire’s quote, Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien (being interpreted, “The perfect is the enemy of the good”), and cross-pollinates that to each area for which she is trying to make resolutions for the year.

This truth of the perfect being the enemy of the good can apply to becoming a better reader:

• Other people’s goals might seem bigger, and you may have failed to reach goals in the past; don’t let that keep you from setting goals. What is your ultimate goal? To read the most books out of all your friends, or to become a better reader? Set and follow goals that are in line with what you want to and can actually achieve, while at the same time not being afraid to push yourself.
• Your idea of reading may be confused with retaining. Retaining the minutia of what you read, as Daniel observed here, is not the broader point of reading. Rather, the way we’re changed and the big pictures that we remember are more important. (Though there are certain books in which retaining dates, facts, and tiny details are important, but that’s aided by note-taking and highlighting. And studying–but that entails a different style of reading than most of what’s being discussed here.)
• Don’t think you have to have the perfect devices (e.g. Kindle Fire), or the latest NYT bestseller book in order to establish a reading lifestyle. You may not have the latest version of the Nook (neither do I), but you probably have a book or two that you haven’t read. Go ahead and start where you’re at — the good — rather than trying to clamber somewhere you aren’t yet — “the perfect.”
• The ideal of perfection as reading a ton isn’t the point. Reading for meaning, breadth, and depth, even if its just a few books in a year, is more important than blasting through tons of books for bragging rights.
• Rather than wait for the perfect time to read, do it whenever you find a good time. A quiet moment after the kids are in bed may not be your ideal perfect time to read, but surely you can read for at least five minutes. Hey, it’s five minutes further along in building your knowledge and changing your life.
• It’s very likely that not all the advice here will help you become a better reader and a reader of more. Don’t be discouraged. Instead, take the ideas that you can use, and run with them.

Two days ago, my friend Jonathan commented on my post, The Benefits of Reading More Than One Book at a Time. In his comment, he mentioned the term cross-pollination (referring to Imagine, a book we had both read) as the label for the phenomenon that I planned to further write about in this post.

In spite of the controversy now surrounding the author, I believe the book, Imagine: How Creativity Works (my review here), is still valuable and shares some good ideas (we just might not know who to attribute all the brilliancy to?). The book is no longer available (unless you’re willing to pay extra on Amazon or Ebay), but may be still on some public library shelves. Continue Reading…