Read More Changing your Priorities vs Multitasking with Audiobooks vs Other Ideas

3 Methods:

Changing your Priorities

Multitasking with Audiobooks

Other Ideas

Reading is a wonderful hobby to have as it can transport you to another world with only a few short sentences. Reading also helps to keep your brain young, helps you deal with stress, and boosts your vocabulary.

But the problem is, finishing a book takes a good amount of time. So, if you love reading and want to make more time for it, I've created this guide to help you increase the amount of books you read yearly.

The first, and possibly hardest, way to make more time for reading is to change your current priorities. Do you need to scroll through Instagram every morning for 30 minutes? Or can you spend that time reading a book on your phone or Kindle? Spending time every morning and night reading instead of browsing social media is a much more relaxing way to start the day and enter dreamland.

Are you watching ten TV shows a week? Are you in love with all of them? Cutting even one show a week can give you an extra hour of reading time.

While it can be annoying, working on your priorities is one of the most effective techniques to implement long term. Just like with your goals, making sure you reevaluate what you are doing and how you are spending your time is a valuable way to make sure you are spending time every day working on what is most important to you.

One of the easier ways to read more is to actually listen to your books instead! Overdrive lets you rent audiobooks for free and you can easily get new releases on Audible for only $14.95 a month. Overdrive has a lot of older books that you can rent from a digital library (assuming it isn't already checked out), while Audible has the newest books available as soon as they are released.

When I started using Audible and Overdrive together, I more than doubled the amount of books I read monthly. You can listen to audiobooks on your commute, while you are working, while you are cleaning, working out, at pretty much anytime! I particularly love listening to books while I'm driving because it makes the time pass much quicker, especially in traffic.

For example, instead of taking a month to read a book you only need 5-15 hours of listening time to finish an Audiobook. You can finish a book every week or so this way.

• Are you looking for different ways to save money? Consider public transportation! If you take the bus to school or work, you have instantly an extra hour a day to read.
• If you can't read more because of the costs of book buying, definitely take advantage of Overdrive's free services and BookBub, a site that has free ebooks available every week.
• Carry a book with you at all times! Then you can read in between doctor's visits, classes, when you were waiting in the shopping line, anywhere.
• Join Goodreads and create a reading goal, having a specific goal will encourage you to find more time to read. Plus, Goodreads is a fun website to connect with others over reading and find new and old releases for you to enjoy.
• Join a book club or create one with a friend. This way you can guarantee you read at least one book a month because you will be accountable to talk about the book with friends.
• Wake up 15 minutes earlier every morning to read.
• If you can't cut down your TV time, read during the commercial breaks.
• Make sure you aren't reading books just to read them. Are you really passionate about this plot? To be able to read more, you need to want to read more. Your book choice is a big part of that.

I hope these tips help you get more reading done. It's such a rewarding hobby to have.

Photo credits:

• White book and blanket image from Tumblr.
• First coffee and book image from We Heart It.
• iPhone image from Modern Parents Messy Kids.
• Books and socks image from PlayBuzz.

If you have problems with any of the steps in this article, please ask a question for more help, or post in the comments section below.