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What gets in the way of your reading?
message 51:
by
Dana
(new)
Jul 14, 2023 07:48PM

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I had no idea how many people commented! Thank you all :)
Since posting, we've been working on an app to help cultivate lasting reading habits. The idea is to help you build a personalised plan based on the behavioural science and implement via the app.
We're testing it atm, if you want to try it out (free) then can sign up here: https://forms.gle/Bz4mgEDA3WEZ87UB9
We've coded it ourselves (and taught ourselves how to a few months ago) so its not a professional app yet!

I am interested to hear more in terms of no motivation despite wanting to. Do you find when you get to reading it feels boring?
One of the things we've tested out that worked really well for people is starting tiny. So instead of trying to read for 30mins, just open your book.
It is building the habit of showing up. What really matters is also getting the right cue to remind you to read at the appropriate time.
I find that environmental cues are best, like putting something in the environment that reminds me to read. Generally, the more out of place the object, the better it works. For example, to build a habit of doing cold showers, I left a wine bottle in my shower. Because it is so out of place, I saw it each morning, and it reminded me.

It is worth trying starting a lot smaller and getting consistent on a small reading habit that builds.
Choosing the right book that you enjoy reading of course is helpful too! But we've found what mattered most was starting really small but regularly, then building.
So for example, we had 3 groups of 30 people who didn't read at all but wanted to. The habit they did was opening their book, after 3 weeks 90% of them were reading on average 30 minutes a day. The habit just snowballed...to our surprise as well!
6 months on, we checked in, they are all still reading their desired amount but stick to the habit of simply opening their book on their low motivation days so that the habit of showing up doesn't disappear

Have you tried putting it on black & white mode. You can schedule it so each day it goes into a black & white colour, which makes every app feel a lot more boring and so reduces the stimulation of being on the phone.
Equally putting on auto focus mode or do not disturb to remove notifications and noises helps a lot :)

