Reading Motivation – tips to keep going!

Hello everyone and happy Wednesday! Today is a little chaotic and I won’t be around the comments section much, but it’s the chaos that inspired todays post.

In February you may have heard me complain a few (million) times about how crazy things were. My life was a steaming pile of hot garbage. But as ridiculous as things were, I still managed to read almost every day. Even if I worked for 18 hours that day I still forced myself to read for my own sanity. I needed that little bit of down time to focus on me and to take my head out of the game and into something I enjoyed. Point is – our lives sometimes get in the way and we may need a little bit of help getting motivated and back into the reading game. Here are a few things I’ve learned over the years that have helped me through some tough times:

READING CHALLENGES AND READATHON’S

This is the number one motivator for a lot of people. There’s such a wide variety of themes and lengths of the challenges so it’s really easy to find something that will suit you. Short term challenges are particularly helpful as they are quick, intense, and the allows for a smaller window of failure due to the short time line. There are also other people participating in these challenges so there’s an instant support group and people who can motivate you to keep going!

SETTING PERSONAL CHALLENGES

If you’re like me, then your typical reading challenge never works. My life is too busy to commit to a specific time, and my mood reading conflicts with themes a lot of the time. SO, what I do (being a MASSIVE goal oriented person) is I set my own goals! For example, I am currently using a chart where I mark down the amount of pages I read on a daily basis. Because I have this visual representation, it’s pushing me to read just a few more pages so that I can have a little bit more on that bar graph. This is working out WAY WAY WAY! better than ever expected! I’m pushing myself to reach a number and it’s stopping me from going on my phone or wasting time in general. I will be doing a specific post on this challenge very soon including pictures.

SLOW AND STEADY WINS THE RACE

For quite a few people, staying consistent and reading every day no matter what is all the motivation they need. So many people will take a day off and then realize that maybe just one more day off couldn’t hurt. Before they know it, they’ve spent the last 2 weeks watching netflix and haven’t read a single page. If reading on page/chapter every day is all you need, then I say go for it! Usually that one chapter turns into 3 or 4 so….. the books will suck you in eventually!

ALREADY READ IT? READ IT AGAIN!

Rereading is one of the best ways to keep yourself motivated or rekindle your love of reading. I’m in the middle of an Illuminae Files series reread right now and it’s been FANTASTIC!!! I’ve had the chance to revisit this world, the characters, and the insanity that is this plot. Revisiting your favourite book bring you back to what you love most about reading and will hopefully refuel your reading fires!

TRY SOMETHING NEW!

Trying something new can go one of two ways. One, it will flop and not interest you at all. Two, your adventures out of your comfort zone could excite you and open a world of new possibilities! You could switch to a different genre – say you’ve been reading a lot of contemporary lately so switch to a science fiction! Stuck in a TBR rut? Pick 5 books that you’re somewhat interested in and read the first chapter. Or if you plain and simple step outside of your comfort zone and love it, then maybe you’ll want to  devour all the books within that genre, essentially opening an entire new world of books for yourself.

This isn’t the longest list ever, but just a few points that if you find yourself in a rut, these things might help to motivate you into wanting to read “all the books”. My reading motivations are all over the place all of the time, and these are the things that I do (sometimes on a weekly basis) to get back into the reading game. I hope these tips help you find your motivation! And if any of you are interested in the bullet journal page where I use my competitive nature to push myself to read more (LOL) then I might think of doing that post at some point. How do you keep yourself motivated?

Until next time, happy reading!