Hello! People liked my previous post on reading slumps and how to get out of them so I thought I’d share more tips on other important reading-related topics. I do have a few topics that I’ve already got tips for. I am planning on making this a weekly thing where I post tips every Thursday. I shall call it Thursday Tip Day! (Wow, look at me. I’m hilarious!)
This week’s topic is how to maximize reading time. A lot of us are students who are trying to juggle school work while reading. For me, as a student, the biggest challenge is balancing required reading and leisure reading. I found this challenging at the beginning of my last two years of high school, where for each aspect of my English literature class, we had to read 3-4 books and I was struggling to balance required reading and personal reading. In most cases, required reading would cut into my personal reading and I was struggling to finish my own books.
Eventually, I came out on top of the problem by coming up with some quick solutions that would allow me to do required reading and do personal reading without cutting into either of them. These tips may or may not work for you, but they did for me and I really wanted to share them with you in the hopes that you try these out or even use these as inspiration for your own tips!
- My first tip is to schedule your time. This is one of the first things I started doing; I’d schedule the time I’d have after the school day was over and I’d schedule my weekends so that I was maximizing the amount of time I had. This way, I was able to properly and effectively allocate time to both personal and required reading while making time for other tasks and while making sure one wasn’t sacrificed for the other.
- My second tip is to follow a strict routine. What I mean with this is that ensure personal reading and required reading happen at the same time every day. For me, required reading would happen with the time allotted for homework while personal reading would happen for half an hour before bedtime on school days and over the weekends for an hour after I woke up and for an hour before I went to bed. This helped me maximize reading time because reading times weren’t cutting into each other and because it was at a set time every day, I was able to prepare myself so that I wasn’t preoccupied with other things.
- My third tip is don’t stress-read. If you’ve got a lot of homework and assignments or are stressed about exams, do not stress read. When you’re reading, your brain won’t be processing what you’re reading but will be worrying about your Math test tomorrow, instead. This wastes time because you’ll end up re-reading that part rather than moving ahead with the book.
- My last tip is set reading goals (daily, monthly, yearly etc.). Another key aspect of maximizing reading time is to get in as much reading as possible within a set period of time; this is why I love doing the Goodreads Reading Challenge. A lot of people don’t like reading challenges because it puts too much pressure on them to finish certain books or a certain amount, but in my case, it allows me to maximize my reading time. But don’t just set yearly goals; set daily goals where you promise yourself to read 3 chapters in one day or 50 pages. Set weekly goals where you promise yourself to read at least one book in a week. Set monthly goals and use TBRs and Wrap-Ups to help you keep track. This maximizes reading time because you’re able to read a certain amount in a certain period of time rather than reading haphazardly where you read one page one day and then 300 pages the next.
These are my tips for maximizing reading time while trying to balance everything else in your life. Do try these tips out and if they work, let me know! If you’ve got tips of your own, let me know, I’d love to hear and try out your tips!
Brown Eyed Musings 