Resolve to Read More in 2021
Welcome to 2021 where it feels like we are all holding our collective breath hoping things are different from last year. While I'm not a huge advocate of setting resolutions that are sure to fail by the second day (I'm never eating chocolate again starting now! Ok, starting next week! Well, a little bit won't hurt! Forget it, I want all the chocolate right now!), how about setting an intention to take care of yourself this year? I'm talking about proactively building a small positive action into your week that restores your spirit and builds you back up. My good friend Lisa Cummings from Lead Through Strengths and I were talking about this very thing on a recent podcast. One of the things that I mentioned was reading and how restorative it is for me. And, one early indicator that I'm getting burned out is if I find myself not reading.
I've just joined a virtual book club in my neighborhood. I was the book leader for January and selected "The Giver of Stars" by Jojo Moyes. We just had the first session last week where I led the conversation. I selected that book because it was uplifting and involved a few of my favorite subjects: strong women, books and horses. It is historical fiction based on the packhorse library, part of the Depression-era works progress administration program to bring books to rural people. When you realize the lengths that the government, and the pack-horse librarians by extension, went to in order to bring books to Americans during the Depression you can see the power of the written word to connect and lift people beyond their current situation into hope and into a better tomorrow.
As a coach, I always recommend books to my clients. Sometimes this is well received but oftentimes my coachees groan or tell me that they are too busy to read or kind of roll their eyes and tell me that they will try, which is code for "I'll put it on my desk and will never get to it." I get it. I'm busy too with a work-life that is very blurred and lots of demands on my attention. It was only this past year that it finally occurred to me that a lot of people don't know how to read correctly. This seems kind of funny to write but stay with me as I explain. Almost 100% of my clients read exclusively at night. It is something people do at the end of the day. If they have time. After everything else is done. Is this you? This seems really common. I wonder why this is? Where did we get the message that this is when reading happens? Is it because we associate reading with bedtime stories as children?
I want to give you a new reading paradigm. First, think about reading in 2 buckets: non-fiction and fiction. Non-fiction encompasses reading for work. These are all of the recommended work books that you see and that I tell you about. Some of my favorites include "Essentialism" by Greg McKeown, "Finish" by Jon Acuff, "American Icon" by BryceHoffman, and "Go Put Your Strengths To Work" by Marcus Buckingham. This kind of reading might spur you to take notes and be engaged in the reading. The second bucket is anything fiction. Fiction is like candy for your brain. It feels good. It is creative. You are along for the ride. Now here comes the big paradigm shift... read non-fiction during the day and fiction at night or on breaks. Non-fiction reading is work. It counts. It is engaged reading. You will need to pay attention and take notes or highlight passages. It is active reading. It is not "curl up on the sofa with a blanket" reading. You should schedule it into your calendar for at least 30 minutes at a time. Seriously - make a calendar entry called "Professional development: Essentialism" and block it as unavailable.
By just scheduling in 30 minutes a day for reading, you can make serious headway. Using Essentialism as an example, at a very average reading speed of 250 words per minute, you could finish that in two weeks. At that pace, you could read 26 business books PER YEAR! Boom! How's that for professional development?
Let me know what your 2021 intention action is going to be, and if you are going to try this reading paradigm shift.