Personal Development: How to Read a Book in a Week Consistently
As we slowly cruise into the last quarter of 2016, I did a review of my new year’s resolution! One of them is:
Read a book once a week consistently
The keyword here is “consistently“. This means I should have read 32 books in 2016 so far! So how did I do? Well, not too bad, I read 30 books, because I had some technical problems (I lost my phone). Want to know how you can do the same too? Read on!
I use a phone app called “Audible“. It is a subsidiary of Amazon and it sells audiobooks. (Yes, I technically didn’t “read” the books, I listen to them) With the help of Audible, I was able to read 1 book per week on average.
Most people spend about 1 hour or more on their daily commute. This amount of time is often left to idle. Most people just listen to their favourite radio station, music or simply day-dream. What a waste of precious time!! If you can use that 1 hour to read daily, it will be wonderful! However, if you take the public transport, you would know how hard it is to read on a bus or train. It is quite an acrobatic act to balance yourself, carry your bag and hold a book at the same time, provided you haven’t succumbed to motion sickness already. For those who drive, you can hardly take your eyes off the road, let alone reading.
This is where Audible come in handy! You don’t need to hold a book while juggling with other things. You can listen to audiobooks safely and comfortably no matter standing up or sitting down.
An audiobook is roughly 8-10 hours long on average. So how did I finish each book in a week with only 5 hours of commute each week?
The main reason is because of the audiobook narration speed (see the picture below).
Source: audible.custhelp.com
While the default speed is normal of 1 x, you can set it to higher speed such as 1.3x or 1.5x. I found it incredible at first, but trust me, your ears are able to comprehend much faster than your eyes! Try starting with 1.1x and slowly increase to 1.5x or even 2x! You will be amazed too.
Another cool feature is that you can pause the audiobook and repeat any chapters anytime. This allows you to revisit chapters of the book over and over again until you get it right. Since you can finish most books in 5 hours, that gives you another 2 hours to revisit some chapters too!
Other strong feature of Audible is the affordability. When you first try out Audible, it will give you a free audiobook and if you like it, the monthly subscription is S$14.95 for another book credit. To make sure that you only keep the books you like, Audible also provides full refund on the audiobook that you didn’t like after reading it. So technically, you can read more than 1 book with 1 book credit!
After discovering Audible, I am beginning to enjoy my daily commute too! I actually look forward to taking the bus or driving longer journeys because it means I will have more time to read! Hope that Audible will be able to accelerate your reading prowess too =)
See you soon!
Investing Always,
Pete
