The purpose of this blog post is to motivate you to make a habit of reading daily.
In this blog post:
• I will prove it you why it is possible to read a book in a week and you can do it every week.
When I was in 9th grade, I changed my school. Few weeks after joining the school, I went to a library for the first time. It was around that age, I realised that I liked reading books mainly about self-improvement and business development. I started borrowing books from the library and started reading them. I was reading books at regular intervals and I started developing the habit of reading daily. It is amazing how you don’t notice small things when they happen and are amazed after it has turned into something big.
Something similar happened to me as well. I was in that school for 2 years. At the end of the term, I went to the library to borrow a new book to read that week. I started looking in the sections and noticed that I have finished reading all the books in the library (self-improvement and business related books).
I finished reading 100s of books in 2 years. That is the power of taking small action steps daily. If you had asked me then, if I could finish 100s of books in 2 years I would have replied “NO”. I proved myself wrong.
Can you read a book a week?
Let’s do some math. (If you are afraid of math, don’t worry, I will do everything for you. You just have to keep your mind open.)
An average book has around 50,000 words. An average person reads at 250 words per minute (wpm)
At this speed, it will take him approximately 200 minutes to finish the book. That’s 3 hours and 20 minutes.
So, theoretically, you can finish an entire book in around 3 hours.
I know now you are thinking that is too good to be true.
I know it is.
This calculation assumes, you read at same speed throughout and with 100% focus. Both of which are practically not possible.
So, let’s take a worst case scenario. Your reading speed is less than average person and your ability to focus is not great.
So, lets double the time it will take to finish the book. It will come to around 6 hours.
You can still finish an entire book in a week, if you read an hour a day and even take Sunday off.
If you read an hour a day, you can finish a book of 100,000 pages, reading it in 7 days (at 250 WPM) or in less than 14 days, if you read slowly.
Let’s look at this other way, instead of reading for an hour, you decide to read 50 pages a day.
That’s it, 50 pages. It will take 60 to 75 minutes to reach this target.
Now, let’s do some more math.
Let’s assume you read 50 pages a day for 5 days a week.
That’s 250 pages in a week. That’s the average size of a non-fiction book.
If you do the same thing for a year, you would have read 13000 pages in an year.
Imagine how many books you could finish by reading 13000 words in an year. How much wiser you would be after reading those books?
Do you think you can’t read 50 pages a day?
No problem.
Why don’t you start with 25 pages a day or even 10 pages a day? That’s achievable right?
The point is not the number of pages you read. What’s important is the habit of reading daily.
Calculate yourself how many books would you have read in last 10 years, if you have read 25 pages or 50 pages a day? Do you want upcoming 10 years to be same as last 10 years?
You have 2 options now:
Either feel guilty that you are not reading any books to enhance your knowledge or learn better strategies to improve your life;
or
Start reading for an hour or set target of number of pages you want to read in a day.
Be a person who reads the book instead of talking about it.
In long run, the results you get are simply outstanding.
All the best,
Srinivas Vakati
P.S.
FAQs
On the below-mentioned page, I have listed down all the FAQs I am asked about Speed reading, learning fast etc and my responses to the same.
Click here to see all the FAQs
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