Ramping Up, Building Habit, and Dealing With Missteps

Two second recap... People are saying they are struggling to read the books they want to read. The source of this stems from a lack of reading experience with hard books, but it also stems from the general loss of attention span in the modern world. .

We are laying down habits for how to develop these reading skills, and give yourself the superpower of attention, data gathering, and the ability to explain things to others.

Lets build the habit...

To really get going however we need to build a habit. There are multiple books on the topic of habit building.

Atomic Habits by James Clear is arguably the most popular habit book of the last decade and the best place to start. Clear's central thesis is that massive change comes from tiny, incremental improvements—1% better every day. He breaks down habit formation into a four-step loop: Cue, Craving, Response, and Reward.

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, which I admit I haven’t read since about a decade ago, breaks down the "habit loop" into three components: Cue, Routine, and Reward.

We are working here on an example of a specific habit. Reading. If you made it this far and you are practicing, then you have already identified your craving to read harder books. You are starting to build your routine, and you are already going to start getting your reward within just a few days.

The hard part is what happens when we fail.

For that I want to stop in on my diet.

I am like many of us, in a lifelong battle with a healthy body weight. There are days when I eat great, with 60–70% vegetable matter and beans for days at a time, sprinkled in with some carbs and low meat. (My healthy may not be yours, this is just an example.) Then, I slip. I have an ice cream, my kryptonite. I will have the thought, every time, well, today is lost, so... and I think about having all the food for dinner. As my mother said, two wrongs don’t make a right. Being wrong once doesn’t mean we need to lose the fight.

That is the path to building habit. You have sat down to make a habit of reading, and start your journey to reading hard things again, but you make a mistake. You miss a day, or you sit to do the reading but you find you can’t focus. You sit for a half hour and read 3 paragraphs. It happens to everyone. Does that mean you lost? No. It means you made a mistake in your target versus your actions.

Everyone makes mistakes that way. Everyone fails. What we do when we fail dictates outcome. So, you missed a day. Read again tomorrow. So, you didn’t get as far as you wanted, or need to reread. There is no crime in that. Don’t think of yourself as losing the fight over it, think of yourself as having made a slip that needs correction.

Remember this is a journey. If you haven’t found someone to talk to yet, find someone to talk to about your reading, or read with. If they are honest with you, I bet that they miss days too!

Work to build your habits in these early days. Keep pushing the needle a little at a time. You have selected your spot on the reading map for where you are and where you want to be. But nobody is perfect and a stumble doesn’t mean a quit. Keep going for ten days and you will find your ability to read is already markedly improved. You will start to determine if the level you picked is right or you need to step it up, or step it down in difficulty or volume, both per day and the overall goal.

By day 11–12 it might be time for the next step... moving it up a notch, or determine you need a little more time right where you are.

Are you finding more peace in your life by adding the reading dimension? You are not crazy. Check out these links for evidence that reading is literally therapeutic.

Next: How to pick your increments and steps.