Seven Steps to Read 100 Pages Everyday

A practical guide on how to make reading effortless.

What Not to Do

Before two years ago, I read about one book every six months. This is an overzealous estimate. It was probably less. I never considered myself a reader.

I used to play a lot of video games. I used to watch a lot of Netflix and movies. I would binge watch shows or play games, get done, and think to myself: What did I just do with my day? I learned nothing. I gained no new skills. If time is money, all my time was disposable income. I was reinvesting none of my time into myself.

I always wanted to read more. I knew that the smartest people read a lot. I knew they learned a lot from what they read and enjoyed the process of doing it. I wanted to be one of them (I still do). When attempting my journey to read more, I did what everyone does. I picked up the most difficult and information dense books I could find and started reading. Because that’s what smart people do, right?

It got me nowhere. I forced myself through these books. With each arduous turn of page, my inability to read only grew. I could never finish a book. And if I were able to struggle through to the end, I wouldn’t pick up a new one. I figured there was something wrong with me. I was inferior to my idols who read all the time. I would never be them.

In school, we were forced to read ‘The Classics’ with a capital ‘C’. Shelley, Fitzgerald, Dickens, Steinbeck. We were made to read Shakespeare in the eighth grade and appreciate the old English. We are told these are the best and there is nothing better.

Then our teachers and our parents wonder why we all hate to read and spend all our time on Instagram. They wonder why reading the one or two books on our summer reading list seems like an impossible task.

When I was in eighth grade, I read The Hunger Games series in four days. I was bored on family vacation and my mom told me to read it. I barely slept. It was 3 books and 1,144 pages. I never read books. But this series encapsulated my existence for the days I was reading it. I thought about it for weeks afterwards.

I didn’t pick up another book on my own until college.

What’s the issue? What’s the difference between The Hunger Games and ‘The Classics’? What’s the difference between wordy literature or information dense books and a fictional young adults series about a dystopian future? It’s the difficulty level. And those of ‘The Classics’ is too high for us who are just starting to appreciate reading to handle. This is the factor our teachers and parents didn’t understand when they prescribed their idea of a reading list to us.

When I graduated college, I was still hardly reading. I was desperately trying. I wanted to sound smart to the girls I went on dates with. Occasionally I would pick up something just to make it seem like I was intelligent.

That was until I listened to a podcast with Naval Ravikant. He was on the Joe Rogan podcast and discussed his strange reading habits. He said he had 70 books open on his Kindle at any given moment. He didn’t read to completion. It wasn’t a status game for him. It was entertainment and learning.

On his own podcast, he discussed reading again. He said that you must “read what you love until you love to read.” He said that when he was a kid, his mom used the library as a daycare. He got so bored he just read everything he could get his hands on. He probably read more pages by the time he was 7 than I did in my entire life up to that point.

That meant I had to rethink my strategy if I was going to read all the time. I had to put down the hard stuff and grab the easy stuff. I needed to recreate the experience I had with The Hunger Games. I needed to find what I loved to read.

Read What You Love

Now, I average about 50-100 pages of reading a day. I might read slower if the book is dense. I might read faster if the book is light. I’m averaging a book a week and have been for 3 years. If you calculate in a few larger books that took longer, and some weeks where I finished 2 or 3, it probably averages out to about 150 books in that time. You also must consider all the books I left half unfinished because I found myself dragging my way through them. I also don’t care about the number. It was just a catchy title for SEO. Reading isn’t about status. It is about growth.

I’ve learned a lot about reading in these 3 years. I also learned what it takes to learn to love to read. I’ve learned more and gained more skills in the past 3 years than I did in 4 at college. I attribute almost all of that to my reading habits.

The Seven Steps You Need to Love to Read

1. “Read what you love until you love to read.” – Naval Ravikant

We already discussed this. However, it is worth mentioning again. Even after I heard this the first time, it didn’t hit me right away. I still tried to read the heavy stuff. I believe the first book I picked up after that podcast was ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. A beautiful book, but not one that is going to get a new reader into reading. I had to start somewhere else.

That brings me to my next point:

2. To start, don’t read to learn.

If you want to read and read all the time, you must forgo the idea that it’s about learning and growing. Put down the self-help books. Put down the physics book. Put down ‘Meditations’ by Marcus Aurelius. These are great when you’re ready for them. But if you’ve made it this far in the blog then you’re probably not there. Understand that at this stage, any form of reading will move you forward.

One of the books I read as I started this new journey was ‘The Selfish Gene’ by Richard Dawkins. Absolutely fabulous book. But I probably read it a hair too early to be engaged. I consider it one of the most important books I’ve ever read. I’ll have to read it again to deeply appreciate it.

Instead of picking up an information dense book…

3. Read the fun stuff.

It might take you a few tries to figure out what that means to you. You’ll have to explore genres, authors, types, and categories to figure out what exactly you like to read. These should be books you are being forced to put down because you need to go to sleep, get back to work, or go to that dinner event. Picking up a book should be the exact same urge as turning on that Netflix series you’ve been binging.

That means you….

4. Don’t read to completion (if you don’t want to).

You don’t have to complete every book you start. It might seem important that you finish everything, but it shouldn’t. I just recently bought ‘Infinite Jest’ by David Foster Wallace. I spent $13.99 on it because it was supposed to be one of the new age ‘Classics’. I was going to read it with a friend. I got 10 pages in and put it down and moved on.

Speaking of money, you shouldn’t be buying every book. That makes it hard to get yourself to put it down. You’re financially tied. If you put it down, you’d be wasting money. You’re not wrong. That’s why you need to…

5. Get a Kindle Unlimited Subscription.

Kindle Unlimited is the best $9.99 you can spend right now. It’s like Netflix for books. Also, buying a Kindle is the best purchase you’ll ever make. You get access to millions of titles, including the ones I discuss below. If I read a Kindle Unlimited book, I never feel bad about putting it down. It wasn’t an extra cost. Having a Kindle makes reading anywhere easy. You can read while you eat and not have to mess with pages that won’t seem to stay down.

It always allows you to find your next page turner with minimal friction. You can find a new book immediately, decide if you like it, and put it away if you don’t. No trips to Barnes and Noble. No waiting for the mail to come.

Speaking of page turners, that’s what you should be reading first. Fast paced books that are easy to read. That means…

6. Don’t read the classics.

The classics are what made us all hate reading. We were told in eighth grade that Shakespeare was the greatest writer that ever lived. We were forced to read Greek mythology because so many stories emanated from them. We read Dickens because, well, I don’t really know why.

If you like ‘The Classics’, that’s great, read them. But that’s not most of us. If you don’t know what you like, what you need to do is…

7. Explore.

Try. Reading. Everything. And if you don’t like it in the first ten pages, put it down! It’s not for you. At least, not for you right now.

I’ve read quite a bit in the past three years. In that time, I have read some books that were a blast and I think almost anyone would like. Here are my top five books and series if you want to learn to love to read:

1. The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling

2. The Naturalist Series by Andrew Mayne

3. The Hunger Games Series by Suzanne Collins

4. Origin and The Davinci Cody by Dan Brown (I haven’t read Angels & Demons, but I’m sure that’s good too!)

5. The Red Rising Series by Pierce Brown (You WILL NOT be able to put down the first 3 books)

All these books are fiction. However, they are all unique. Some are sci-fi. Some are fantasy. Some are murder mysteries. If you don’t like reading any of them, that’s okay! They are just suggestions. Don’t think that because you don’t like one book you aren’t a reader. If you didn’t like one Netflix show that all your friends raved about, did that ever stop you from picking up the remote again?

The goal of reading ultimately is to learn. Entertainment is a byproduct. We want to get the most out of this life and reading is a hack to doing so. Unfortunately, to read to learn means to read at all. Realize that if you’re reading this blog, you’re probably not at the point to be picking up dense physics or philosophy books for fun.

However, that’s the goal. We want to get to the point where we have read so much that the act of reading is what we love.

Get reading, my friends!

Bonus Step: Books are Free

I told you to get Kindle Unlimited, and that is a fine suggestion. I still have it after 3 years. The ultimate rule to book acquisition is that ‘Books are Free’.

I did not misspeak and you read that correctly. Books are an investment in you. They are an investment in your ability to learn. If the price tag of any book keeps you away from buying it, you’re looking at books the wrong way. I buy almost every book recommended to me without flinching. And I own a gym and make very little money (thank you very much). If I can buy books without a consideration for the price, so can you.