 guys it's Leigh Ann and I'm here today to talk about how I read over a hundred books in a year. I'm sure my thumbnail was quite clickbaity. Basically I'm just gonna walk through how I go about squeezing in as much reading as I do. There are of course people that read far more than I do and there are of course people that read far less than I do and there is no like intrinsic value to reading a greater number of books. One of the reasons being that like for example I know people that on Goodreads their you know reading goal or their reading challenge or whatever their total will show like 500 books but like if you know 400 of them are comic books that's not to say there's anything bad about comic books but it is faster to read a comic book than to read war and peace. Just going off of the number of books that somebody has read is kind of meaningless. Likewise it doesn't really matter how many you have read if you didn't retain anything or didn't understand anything. So again like we have people like members and stats and we're trained from our days in school to score ourselves based on arbitrary numerical values. All of that aside just generally speaking I do think most readers would like to read more than they do just simply because well speaking for myself anyway like it keeps me up at night thinking that before I die I will not have read every book that I want to read. I gotta read more because there's so many I haven't read yet slash I own a lot of unread books and I know some some people are like seriously stressed out by owning books they haven't read that doesn't really bother me but I do think about it I'm just like man like I own them because I would like to read them so like man there's only so many hours in a day I want to read more of them. Anyway those are all my disclaimers. Wait no I have one more disclaimer. What works for me may not work for you so similarly to anytime someone gives you tips and tricks for like health stuff like everybody is different likewise every reader is different so this works for me so it may be helpful to you not necessarily or maybe part of what I do might be helpful to you but not all of it. So this again is based on where I am in life what my like situation is like what my budget is like the types of books that I like to read the type of reader that I am these are things that work for me so if it's helpful to you then I'm glad and if it's not helpful to you sorry. Seriously without any further ado here are some of the ways that I get more reading in. Now I've said many many times that I am an auditory learner so this is like a big one that like if you're not an auditory learner this will not work for you but for that reason like audiobooks are like a huge way that I get in a lot more reading than I normally would because there's so many times during the day when you're doing something fairly mindless and it's a waste of time you can have a whole other video about the fact that like people need to learn to just have like empty space in their schedule whether or not doing anything where your thoughts can just wander or whatever throughout the day whether it's washing dishes folding laundry just tidying up vacuuming a variety of like everyday things that eat up a lot of time cumulatively if that time can be spent also reading then that's cumulatively a lot of time so throughout the month there are like I'll go through multiple audiobooks basically just by doing that by listening to audiobooks while I do stuff like get breakfast ready in the morning or wash dishes from the night before or fold my laundry or walk to the post office things like that incrementally add up and I being an auditory learner then I don't need to see the physical book like I actually absorb it better via audiobook so oftentimes if I'm reading something really complicated or if I'm interested in picking up something really complicated I will choose to read it via audio instead of via like the physical book because for me personally I will absorb it better so that's just how I work so I can listen to it on a pretty fast speed like some people are speed readers like I'm a speed listener if that's a thing I'm a relatively fast reading speed when I read a physical book like I'm not the slowest reader but I'm not the fastest reader but I am a really fast listener I can absorb a very fast audiobook pretty well so I can get through an audiobook on like a much higher speed throughout the day throughout the week throughout the month. Now a big thing for me and I think for a lot of people is motivation to read which gets in the way of reading if you are not feeling motivated and for me having read books is motivating so like knowing that you finished x amount you feel like a sense of accomplishment and you feel like wow I've read actually a lot so like I can keep going rather than a feeling of like I haven't read anything like I need to start and like I'll never get through this because I read audiobooks like on the reg and routinely finish them then I'm like frequently updating Goodreads and adding another book read and every time I do that it makes me my sense of motivation and accomplishment goes up so my motivation to pick up another book goes up and so it's like this perpetuating self-fulfilling motivation boost like the more I read the more I feel motivated to read which means I read more which means I feel motivated more and that works for me. Now that said if I am not in the middle of an audiobook and I'm not uh I haven't finished anything in a little while sometimes even though it is more pages so in theory it is added to your to-do list rather than taking away from your to-do list um if everything that's like on my tbr or everything that's like on deck to be read soon is like really long and I'm feeling unmotivated or I'm feeling like oh I haven't read anything like I that sense of achievement isn't there because I haven't marked anything as read in a while then I may pick up a book that's not on my tbr that's not like an upcoming read that either you know I started a long time ago and just never got around finishing it or it's a short book and I'll just finish that because then I can mark it as read on goodreads and be like oh I read a book okay like we're not in the hole that we thought we were now we can pick up that tome and we can like have time to read it because like I know again because of our culture if I'm stuck in the middle of a tome like even though I've read just as many pages as I normally would I haven't been able to mark it as read because it's a long book and so like I'm reading and reading and reading and I haven't been able to mark anything as read which can be frustrating which is why stopping to read a quick thing and be able to mark it as read makes you feel like you're not like peddling and going nowhere if that makes sense now um this is a thing that um I think some friends of mine do more than I do but there are times when I employ this tactic because I tend to be quite happy sticking with my preferred genres and not really varying it too much but once in a while and I know this is again a bigger deal for people who are more omnivorous readers where like constantly switching out genres keeps things kind of keeps it spicy so you don't feel like burned out on a genre again I very rarely feel burned out on a genre if I do though then I do pick up something outside of what I normally read and so that can be helpful it's not something I regularly do I'm very happy just reading fantasy and grim dark fantasy and that kind of thing all the time for my entire tbr but again like once in a while I'll be like you know what I'm just gonna read this contemporary romance because like I'm just fantasied out and I keep trying to pick up fantasies and none of them are doing it for me and I think it's me I don't think it's the books and I'll just like pick up something that's like way different from that to kind of just like reshuffle and then I'll go back to fantasy and be like oh fantasy how your fantasy again you're great again so that can be helpful again if you're feeling kind of slumpy either because you haven't read anything in a while so read something short so you can market read or read something that's like way off from what you've been trying and not feeling like you're able to get into and another thing that's helpful about that for me anyway because I'm not that omnivorous a reader so I don't really have preset expectations for a lot of genres my expectations going into fantasy and grim dark fantasy I have a lot of built up expectations based on my favorite books in the genre and I'll immediately start feeling frustrated when it's not delivering on these pre-built expectations that I have like there's a certain feeling I expect to get out of fantasy there's a certain enjoyment level I expect to get out of fantasy but when I go in blind into a book that's outside of my normal genre I don't really have that many expectations so I'm just kind of like going along for the ride I'm much more likely to get out of a slump and be less dissatisfied because I'm not like oh like this isn't just this isn't delivering my expectation this isn't delivering the feeling that I went into expecting because I didn't have any expectations I guess this is doing a thing that it's doing I don't know like I don't know what I expected I didn't expect anything so it's fine like let's just see where this goes in particular if I feel if I pick up like a thriller or something more sci-fi even because I actually don't read that much sci-fi or like a contemporary something or other something a bit tricky then I'm like I don't really know how this is generally supposed to go I don't have pre-built expectations so I'll just just go for the ride and that will refresh me. Now another way to motivate yourself or that works for me is actually watching booktube type content there's very specific channels that work for me in terms of like feeling motivated and it's often it's not booktube as like people doing tbr's wrap-ups and like discussing books specific books or anything but there's a lot of kind of more like lifestyley type of channels where it's just kind of like general motivation it just like the mindset of like watching more like vlog style videos where it's just the mindset of your day being spent reading and studying and making tea to read some more so actually a lot of I guess it's called study tube is that what it's called whatever but it's like a subset of booktube that's like more about academics than about reading for fun and there's a lot of like people within that space that post a lot of what I'm talking about sort of more aesthetic vloggy type content just watching that will kind of make me feel like yeah I want to be reading stuff I want to be doing literary things yeah yeah and it'll like especially if I've just been watching like random youtube videos and like scrolling through memes on instagram I'll be like okay like right now I'm obviously too distracted to pick up a book straight away but let me watch some content that's kind of bookish that's kind of bookish vibes bookish aesthetic bookish mindset and then watching that will be like infectious and will motivate me to like kind of emulate that you're like yeah like let me make some tea let me get a book let me like change out of this grubby sweatsuit that I've been in all day and like put on like a nice sweater and like sit down and like read that sounds nice so that will that also helps to motivate me you can also always reread something like if everything you're picking up is just like not working for you um well one I mean picking up something to reread will help for two reasons one if you're picking a bunch of stuff up and none of it's working for you and if you can't tell if it's you or the book if you pick up a book that you know you love and you find that that is also not working for you well then you know that this is a slump this is not the book's fault this is a slump versus if you pick up something that you know you love and you pick up and you're like yeah into this I'm super into this well one well great you're reading again so keep going finish it market is right on good but also then you know that it was probably the books you were picking up and not you like you just had a run of bad books that none of them were working for you and it wasn't really like your fault it wasn't a slump it was just that like none of these books were really your jam and so that's a good like litmus test to see if it's the books or if it's you this next one is kind of a funky one and it doesn't work all the time it works in particular circumstances if and when this is the the problem and that this solution is available so sometimes uh if I'm struggling to get into a book because like I keep reading like the first few pages and like my brain keeps wandering off and I keep really like losing my sense of what this is or what's going on or who I'm meant to be following I just like I can't get a picture of this in my head because I'm like I don't I keep trying to read the first few pages and like it's not hooking me and then I don't realize what's happening and now I'm confused in such circumstances where it's really it's like you're not able to just like latch on if there's a Wikipedia summary or a cliff note summary that can like give you if you just like read the first little bit it doesn't have to be the whole thing is that'll be spoilery but just the first little bit that kind of tells you where this kind of starts off and then like gets you to go oh and then you reread those first few pages and you're like oh okay I know what's going on okay okay so now you're like in it now you know what's happening you're not like what's even happening you know what's happening so now you can like recognize stuff and pay attention and like kind of go from there it's kind of like a jump start like for your car like you just like weren't able to get it started but then that can give you that start and then you can then off you go and then another great resource is ReadingLength.com I'll often check ReadingLength.com and I'm trying to figure out what I want to pick up or like what is reasonable what is a reasonable book to pick up with the intention of finishing because well it's not 100 accurate because it's kind of based on a variety of factors it can give you a pretty solid ballpark especially if you use it on the regular and then you can get a sense of like what it like what its estimate how that translates into what your reading speed usually is for me like it's usually like it's a reasonable enough ballpark where like I have a good sense of how long this is gonna take so basically ReadingLength.com it based on the word count which I think it generally derives from either the ebook or the audiobook um based on that and then what is like an average words per minute reading speed it tells you how long that average words per minute reading speed will take to get through this book and again like sometimes it has like slightly faulty word counts and obviously your reading speed not only may be different but may fluctuate because like I know my word my my reading speed can like be up to like 400 and then down to 150 like depending on my like how tired I am my emotional state the the complexity of the material so like it it's you know it varies but it's a helpful guide and like there's a lot of times when like I'll pick up a book and you just look at it it looks like a tome but then I'll check and like it's actually not that long versus I'll pick up a book that it looks really thin and small and I'm like oh I should be able to pick this up and just like read it all in one sitting and I check ReadingLength.com and like it's actually like kind of longer because like there's a lot of words on each page and it's like really densely like formatted or whatever so I just find it helpful to know what I'm getting myself into because then I don't feel again that motivation thing like if I've been reading a book and I feel like I've been reading and reading and reading it and like I had an expectation going into it that I could read it quickly then I'll be frustrated and I'll be like am I a slow reader is this boring why am I not done with this yet versus if I go into it and like ReadingLength.com it's told me that like it expects that it's going to take like 20 hours for me to read this book and I'm like okay well like I need to set some time aside to like really like pile through this one because I can't expect to read it all in one day so I find that helpful again to just set my expectations more reasonably and then also to like sort of plan my reading schedule if I'm like okay what can I reasonably read this weekend and like from my tbr and I'll check the reading lengths of all the books on my tbr that I haven't read yet and be like okay I could either read this one and maybe start another or I could probably read all three of these because they're kind of shorter and each one is supposed to take like five hours so then I can my plans for the weekend again I won't feel unmotivated if I made plans that I couldn't reasonably achieve because I thought I could reasonably achieve it but I was wrong so like be more realistic about your plans as Logan would advise so yeah those are the main things that I do to stay motivated and how I can squeeze in more reading time so yeah let me know in the comments down below if any of this was helpful to you if it wasn't helpful to you you can let me know that too whatever you want to let me know I post videos on Saturdays other random times as well but definitely Saturdays so like and subscribe join my patreon if you feel so 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