How to get out of a reading slump
Jumpstart your reading with something you're sure to finish
Many people would like to read more. But sometimes we’re feeling tired, or busy, or we’ve got other negative emotions like anxiety or stress going on in our lives. When a spot of leisure time appears, it’s much easier to watch short videos on social media.
When I’ve been in phases like that, people have sometimes suggested I read easy fiction as a way to ease back into a reading habit. That tends to mean things like a light mystery, or a romance novel.
But I’ve found that even those choices sometimes feel like a bit much, because I’m going to have to get involved in a plot for many hours. Even if the plot isn’t going to require any deep thinking, it still requires significant energy to get to done.
But a really short book changes things. Even if you do have to follow a plot, it’s only going to be for an hour and change. You might even be able to finish in a single sitting. This feels like a lot less of an ask, and so it’s easier to get started. Even if you’re getting bogged down in the middle, the finish line is probably less than 50 pages away.
So if you’ve been in a reading slump, why not look for a short book to get you out? If you’d like to go literary, The Great Gatsby is 180 pages (in the version I own, at least) and moves along swiftly. You could go for something that’s non-fiction and motivational, like The War of Art. Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings clocks in at just over 100 wonderful pages. Or you can go a little meta on your reading slump and try the 145 pages of Anne Bogel’s I’d Rather Be Reading.
Progress creates its own momentum. You could finish a short book in two hours spread over today and tomorrow. Then you could spend the next two weeks reading five or six very short books, and all of a sudden you’re the kind of person who’s read five or six books in the last two weeks. You can casually mention a book you read, and then mention another and, wow, you start to feel like the kind of person who reads a lot.
And you are! Because short books are still books. Not everything needs to be long. Things need to be the length they’re meant to be to say what they need to say. That’s why this newsletter is just a few hundred words. So find the equivalent in book form and maybe that can take your day from great to awesome too.