If you’ve been following my blog posts for a while, it is probably not a big shock to you if I tell you that I am subscribed to several productivity blogs.

One of them, Zen Habits, recently put up a post about deliberately scheduling reading time into your day.

If you’ve never deliberately schedule something that is voluntary or outside office hours, this may strike you is rather silly. However, formally scheduling in time for things you really want to get done is one of the best ways of making sure that you actually do it.

When you have a formalized time to complete a task, or work upon a hobby, like reading, then you will experience none of the guilt that usually rises when you’re just grabbing a spare moment or two. In fact, it will genuinely feel like you are indulging yourself. Considering that you’re probably spending more time than your usual snatched moment or two, this can become a reward in itself.

Instead of leaving your reading for just when you’re in bed at night, why not set a schedule of reading time for yourself?

At the very least, you will get a lot of books read! You can start digging through all those books at the bottom of your reader, that you feel vague stirrings of regret for not being able to get to every time you scroll past them.

You can even slow down, and enjoy the read, instead of scanning through quickly just to get the gist of the story.

I plan to schedule formal reading time for myself, as soon as I can figure out where to squeeze it in.

😊

Here’s something to think about. I write a lot of books. The only reason I get to write a lot of books, is because I have formalized hours in the day when I do nothing but write books. It sounds very simple, but there are lots and lots of writers out there who cannot seem to get themselves to sit at the desk and finish books. I can, and I suspect it is because I have these formalized hours put aside, when nothing else gets done.

Why don’t you try to schedule just a week of reading time, as an experiment?

Let me know how it goes!