 It is so hot today. I feel like my whole body's about to melt off. Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel. I hope you're all good. Today I'm giving you all my tips on how to read more. The elusive question, how do I read more? I'm gonna try and answer it for you. So these are the tips that helped me go from not really reading for a couple years to reading 15 books in 2018 to reading 130 books in 2020. So I've massively increased how much I read and I thought I would just share some tips for you and it's hot. So my first tip is to set clear goals every single day on how much you want to read. This may sound simple but like this has been one of the biggest differences for me. So every day when I wake up in the morning I can never spend the morning thinking about so many things. Every day when I wake up I write my to-do list for the day and on that I include how much I want to read and I'll see like how busy my day is. Maybe I'm not really doing anything, maybe I've got a really busy day and I'll set how many pages I want to read. So I might say I want to read half the book or like 50 pages or 100 pages and firstly it gives me an objective. I'm a very, if you're like me, I'm very like goal-orientated. Like I love to do this. I love the satisfaction of ticking something up a to-do list. Sometimes if I've already done something in the day but I didn't write my to-do list yet, like I've missed writing my to-do list, I will write it and I'll tick it off. Like today I haven't written my to-do list yet. You can bet I'm gonna write, film this video and tick it off just for the satisfaction. You guys go drag me for this, huh? Okay. Do I have a problem? Perhaps. Maybe. Debatable. Yes. So it gives me like a clear objective to aim for in my reading and it also just like makes me more motivated to read and makes me want to be able to tick that off. Now some people may say, to that I say no I'm not. I disagree with that. I just like lists. I like to do this and I think the satisfaction of ticking it off is something great but also I think it's good to like look at your day every single day because all of our days are different and see like how much can I actually read today because sometimes if you set a goal I think of reading like read 50 pages every day or read 100 pages every day. That doesn't account for like you being really busy some days and really not busy some days. So every day looking at your day and seeing how busy it is and setting like an achievable goal for how much you want to read in that day for me really really helps. So that'd be like my number one tip. So my next tip is to schedule reading sessions. Schedule times where you're going to sit down and read and read for a certain amount of time. So I really like to set timers. I always set timers when I'm reading so I either do like 50 minutes or 40 minutes or I use the Pomodoro method. I really like that which is 25 minutes on five minutes off. I'll usually like set that 50 minute 40 minute reading goal and then maybe I'll let myself like watch a bit of YouTube for a break and then I'll go back to reading. That way I find I can keep reading for amount of time longer because I'm letting myself have breaks. Again I've got like a time to aim towards as well. And actually the perfect place to do this is the sponsor for today's video, the app Basmo. So Basmo has so many cool sections of it and like tools and aspects of it but the part I want to really focus on today is the reading sessions. You can start a reading session for the book that you're reading at the moment, time how long you're reading and you can take notes whilst you're reading which I think is a really great feature. So as you have thoughts you can take notes in the section they're always stored on the app. I think this really helps me to engage more with what I'm reading. If I have the Basmo app open and I see that I can take notes it makes me think more about what I'm reading rather than maybe reading it mindlessly and that makes me look forward more to what I'm reading. I love using this feature with things like thrillers and mysteries to like theorize about what's going on and then when I finish the book I can look back and see how bad I was and I'm never right. I've connected the two dots. You didn't connect shit but I've connected them. You can also scan pages with the app with your camera to save quotes and you can design like quote boards with them as well. So I'd really recommend you check out Basmo. I think it's a great app for so many different reasons. You know they're reading statistics on there as well and stuff like that. So I think it's a great app if you want to read more. I think it has like so many tools in one place that can help you read more so I'll leave a link down below. I'd really recommend you check it out. I feel like I've been reading a lot more in the past couple weeks since I've been using Basmo. Okay my next tip may be a little bit weird but like trust me on this. Trust me on this because I'm right. Listen to what I have to say because I'm right. Listen to ASMR rooms whilst you're reading. Listen to them whilst you're reading. If you don't know what this is it's like ambient sounds of like I listen to usually like libraries or whatever so there'll be like a fire crackling, a page tanning. Stick with me here. Like this is this is one of my best tips. These help me stay focused like it builds the atmosphere. It gets like the vibe gets going. The vibe gets going like the fireplace crackling in the back. Like it just makes you want to read. It just makes me want to read. Having that kind of cozy atmosphere. I feel like as readers a lot of us like to like cultivate the coziest atmosphere possible and ASMR rooms are just the best. Just search ASMR rooms on YouTube when you'll find loads. I really like ones with music so like with the ambient sounds of the room and with maybe some piano music over it. They're my personal favorite and I what can I say I'm a connoisseur of ASMR rooms. Delusion. Convince yourself. A tiny this wasn't actually one of my original tips but let's just like chuck it in there. Audio books if you're not already into audio books you are missing out. You're missing out. Like audio books are the best. I not only listen to audio books like on their own anymore but I also find them really helpful to listen along to the book I'm reading physically with. So I love to like have the audiobook and the physical book and obviously with some other like audio services you have to pay for each audiobook and that can get expensive if you're buying like physical book and audiobook but I've always been a massive proponent of script. I've always got a link in my bio for I think it's two months free. I do get a month free when you use it but I'm not like particularly vested anymore because you guys have amazingly used that like code so many times. I've got it free to like 2032 or something and script is so good because I think it's like $7.99 a month and you pay that and you get access to like pretty much any book you want. They do I think if you listen to like three new releases in the month they do start to like limit your selection but for the most part I very rarely get my library limited or like I'm stopped from listening to a book I want to listen to. You get access to the whole library and audiobooks will just help me so much. Like you can read them whilst you're doing your laundry whilst you're cooking like whilst you're playing Sims I don't know. So I think they can just help you read at times you wouldn't have otherwise read. So I've fallen in love with audiobooks in that time period from when I started reading like 15 books to 130 audiobooks were probably like a pretty big chunk of that and they just help you get through so many more books. Okay this might be another strange one but bear with me because it's true. This doesn't matter if you have five physical owned books you haven't read or whether you have 140 like me. Y'all should be so ashamed of yourself. It was bad. My tip would be to go through and look at physically like look at the covers go through look at the front page all of your physically owned books. I have them all in like book cart and I can't always see all of them and I find like going through and looking at all the covers and even now I can only see the spines but going through and looking all the covers and like thinking about why I wanted to read that book and it just makes me more excited to read that book again. I think you need to like look at the books to get excited. You appreciate I think more it always just makes me more excited and it helps me figure out like what kind of books I want to prioritise reading next. So I would really recommend it. They make that may sound like a strange one but I have never felt more motivated and excited to read and read more than after I've done something like that like looking at all my TBR books getting super excited for all of them again like treating it like I'm looking at them in a bookshop because I'm always most excited to read a book when I get in a bookshop and then I don't read it for like months. So I think like recreate that feeling even if you only have like two physical owned books or you have 200 I think you can get the same kind of feeling from doing that. And my last tip is don't be afraid of small books. Back when I only read 15 books in a year I read like a lot of longer books and I was always a bit afraid or like I think I turned my nose up a bit to like 100 page 200 page books. Like I was reading like 800 page books and girl. Whoo! Me now struggling to read a book over 500 pages. I'm not getting involved. I'm here to enjoy myself JC style you know I want to make. I just want to be made. I have absolutely fallen in love with shorter books with novellas. For example right behind me two of my favourite novellas. The Empress of Sought and Fortune and When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nevo. These are like what 100-120 pages each and they're such like rich beautiful magnificent books. I feel like maybe when people don't read a lot they try to read longer books but there's something so gratifying about finishing a book quickly. I think that helps like the quickly finished books and more excited you are to read more. So I feel like reading novellas helps you have that momentum but also I just think there's something really special about reading a short book that I'd never really got into before. I'd never really been interested in in shorter books but my tip is don't be afraid of them. They can really A help you get your numbers up but not just in terms of numbers. I think it's a whole different type of storytelling that I had never really appreciated before so I'd really really recommend checking shorter books out. So there we have it that is all of my tips to read more. I hope some of these are helpful to you. These are literally they may sound a bit um like not great. I guess my tips aren't like actually how to speed up your reading. They're how to get more excited about reading, how to fit reading into your life more, how to be more motivated to read because that's what has helped me read more. I don't think my speed of reading has ever sped up even in these years of like reading more and more books. I don't think I can read faster unless I sacrifice like the experience of reading a bit but I think um my motivation and my excitement of reading is what has changed. So for me that's the key in reading more. So I hope some of these help you and help you get more excited. Let me know down below if you have any tips for reading more. I'd love to know some of them. If you've gotten to the end of this video comment a book sack emoji in the comments and don't forget to check out basmo down below and I'll see you very soon in another video. Bye!