A Page A Day?

Two years ago I had a large pile of books stacking up which I wanted to read. I had no time, no motivation nor a realistic place to start making a dent in this pile. Two years and 160+ books later I tell a different story as I now have a reading proven approach using various set of tools and techniques (e.g. speed reading, calendar blocking, daily books, audiobooks etc.). After talking with my colleagues the message was clear that it isn’t always easy to take time out to read given work and family commitments (see the statistics on amounts people read). Yet I believe that chipping away at something is better than nothing at all.

The concept of a daily book or reading one to two pages a day isn’t all that new. For example, many religious people allocate time every day to read out a section of the bible as part of their spiritual practice. Within a year they typically consume the entire bible. The only issue here is that not all of us want to read the bible on a daily basis!

The good news is that there are many “Daily Books” available that cover a plethora of topics. From management, stoicism, routine or cooking there is a topic for everyone. I read two such books (i.e. The Daily Drucker and The Daily Stoic) every day and restart them again at the beginning of every year. I  take out 3 minutes of my morning, every day for the year and consume two to three pages of a summarised topic or opinion. This includes quotes, ideas and takeaway actions. For example, The Daily Drucker contains an expert for every day of the year from many of Peter Ducker’s famous books. Moreover, The Daily Stoic  is another “Daily Book” which contains well known quotes and digests from great stoics of our time (e.g. Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus etc.).

All that is required is purchasing a couple of books and dedicating a few minutes every day. That doesn’t seem too hard nor time consuming now does it?