We read for a living. Somewhere along the way, some of us stopped reading for ourselves. We read motions, contracts, emails, and whatever someone sends us five minutes before a call. We spend hours reading because someone needs an answer. Then we get home, look at the book we bought three months ago, and decide we’re too tired. We’ll get to it over the weekend. The weekend comes, and there are other things to do. Eventually, we stop thinking about the book altogether.
I think that’s a loss. There was probably a time when you read because you wanted to know what happened next. You had a favorite author. You looked forward to visiting the library or walking through a bookstore. Nobody had to explain the benefits of reading to you. You enjoyed it. And if you want to develop a habit that lasts, I would start there. Find something you enjoy enough to pick up again tomorrow. You can figure out the rest as you go.
Read What Interests You
We have a way of making things harder than they need to be. We decide we’re going to read more, and then we choose a book because someone says we should read it. It’s an important book. Successful people read it. We think it will make us better lawyers or better leaders. That may all be true. But if you have to talk yourself into opening it every night, it’s probably not the book that’s going to get you reading again. Start with something you’re curious about. If you like mysteries, read mysteries. If you love baseball, read about baseball. There’s no reason to apologize for enjoying what you enjoy.
You can try something different once you’ve gotten started. Follow whatever catches your attention. A novel takes place in a city you want to visit, so you pick up a book about that city. You read about someone in a history book and decide to learn more about that person’s life. One book leads to another. That’s a good way to keep going because the next book answers a question you already have. Keep a list if it helps, but leave room to walk into a library and come home with something you didn’t know existed.
Start With the Time You Have
If you’re waiting until you have more time, you may be waiting a while. There will always be another deadline. There will always be something around the house that needs attention. Even when work slows down, we tend to find something else to fill the time. I would suggest starting with 10 minutes. Read with your morning coffee. Read after lunch. Read before bed if you can stay awake. Choose a time that makes sense for you and give it a try. If it doesn’t work, choose another time. This doesn’t have to become a complicated project.
Ten minutes may not sound like much. But think about how often we spend 10 minutes doing something we don’t even remember afterward. We pick up our phones to check one thing and keep scrolling. We finish and couldn’t tell you what we were looking for in the first place. Some of that time could belong to a book. You don’t have to rearrange your entire evening. Put the book where you sit down. Open it before you open an app. Read a few pages. If you have time for more, keep going. If you don’t, you can pick up where you left off tomorrow.
Make It Easy to Keep Going
Keep a book with you. It can be a paperback in your bag or an e-book on your phone. There are little stretches of waiting throughout the day when you might read a few pages if you had something available. And when you finish a book, have some idea of what you want to read next. Otherwise, a few days can pass while you decide, and those days can turn into weeks. Ask a friend what they’re reading. Browse the shelves. Read the opening pages before committing. Give yourself a reason to look forward to the next book.
Use whatever format works. If you enjoy audiobooks, listen to them. If larger type makes reading easier, use an e-book and enlarge the type. If you like holding a book and turning the pages, do that. I don’t see the point of making someone feel that their way of enjoying a book doesn’t count. What matters is spending time with it. Pay attention. Go back if you missed something. You may prefer different formats at different times. Let your reading fit your life, including the parts of your life that change.
When you sit down to read, give yourself a chance to pay attention. Put the phone across the room. If you’re reading on it, silence the notifications. It can take a little time to settle into a book when you’re used to checking messages every few minutes. You may find yourself reading the same paragraph twice. That’s okay. Slow down and stay with it. You don’t have to finish a chapter every time you sit down. Spend a few minutes actually following the story each day.
You Can Put a Book Down
Lawyers finish things. We finish the brief even when we’re tired. We finish reviewing the records even when they’re repetitive. Someone is relying on us, and the work needs to get done. It’s easy to bring that same approach to a book we chose for ourselves. We started it, so we’re going to finish it. Meanwhile, we avoid reading because we don’t want to spend another evening with that particular book. I would put it down. Give it a fair chance, but if it isn’t holding your interest, read something else. You can come back to it later. You can also decide you’re done with it.
The same goes for setting a number of books to finish each year. If a goal helps, use it. If it turns reading into another thing you’re behind on, let it go. Nobody is asking you to submit a reading report. Some books take longer. Some deserve another pass. You may want to read a favorite again even though you already know how it ends. Enjoy that. There’s no need to rush through a book you like so you can add another title to a list.
Read About Something Other Than Work
We spend enough time thinking about our practices. Read something that takes you somewhere else. A novel about a family. A biography of an artist. A book about how a neighborhood changed over time. You don’t have to explain how any of it will help you bring in clients or try your next case. You can learn about something simply because it interests you. I think we sometimes forget that. We get so used to accounting for our time that even our interests start needing a business purpose.
And some of what you read may help your work anyway. Lawyers deal with people. We ask why someone made a decision, why someone stayed quiet, or why two people remember the same conversation differently. Books give us other lives to think about. They can make us reconsider an assumption or notice something we might have missed. Read people you disagree with, too. Take the time to understand what they’re saying before deciding where they’re wrong. We spend enough of our days preparing a response. Sometimes it’s useful to keep listening.
Talk About What You Read
Ask someone about a book they enjoyed. Tell a friend about one you think they would like. If a passage stays with you, write down a few words about why. Keep this simple. You don’t need to outline every chapter or remember every detail. You may finish a book and remember one conversation between two characters months later. That conversation may be what mattered to you. Let yourself think about it without turning the experience into an assignment.
Sharing a book also gives you something to discuss beyond work. You find out what another person noticed, what bothered them, or why a character reminded them of someone they knew. A book you thought was about one thing meant something different to them. That can be a good conversation. And it gives both of you another reason to keep reading.
Keep Coming Back
You’ll miss days. You may miss weeks. A trial takes over, a family member needs you, or you’re simply worn out. That happens. When you have the time and energy, pick up a book again. You don’t have to start over with a new plan or make up for the books you haven’t read. Just read the next page.
Developing a lifelong habit means finding something you can return to as your life changes. The books you enjoy at 50 may be different from the ones you enjoyed at 20. Your pace may change, too. That’s fine. What I would hate to see is someone who once loved reading spend years saying they want to get back to it. Take the book off the nightstand. Give it 10 minutes tonight. See if you still want to know what happens next.
Frank Ramos is a partner at Goldberg Segalla in Miami, where he practices commercial litigation, products, and catastrophic personal injury. You can follow him on LinkedIn, where he has about 80,000 followers.
The post Make Reading Part Of Your Life Again appeared first on Above the Law.
We read for a living. Somewhere along the way, some of us stopped reading for ourselves. We read motions, contracts, emails, and whatever someone sends us five minutes before a call. We spend hours reading because someone needs an answer. Then we get home, look at the book we bought three months ago, and decide we’re too tired. We’ll get to it over the weekend. The weekend comes, and there are other things to do. Eventually, we stop thinking about the book altogether.
I think that’s a loss. There was probably a time when you read because you wanted to know what happened next. You had a favorite author. You looked forward to visiting the library or walking through a bookstore. Nobody had to explain the benefits of reading to you. You enjoyed it. And if you want to develop a habit that lasts, I would start there. Find something you enjoy enough to pick up again tomorrow. You can figure out the rest as you go.
Read What Interests You
We have a way of making things harder than they need to be. We decide we’re going to read more, and then we choose a book because someone says we should read it. It’s an important book. Successful people read it. We think it will make us better lawyers or better leaders. That may all be true. But if you have to talk yourself into opening it every night, it’s probably not the book that’s going to get you reading again. Start with something you’re curious about. If you like mysteries, read mysteries. If you love baseball, read about baseball. There’s no reason to apologize for enjoying what you enjoy.
You can try something different once you’ve gotten started. Follow whatever catches your attention. A novel takes place in a city you want to visit, so you pick up a book about that city. You read about someone in a history book and decide to learn more about that person’s life. One book leads to another. That’s a good way to keep going because the next book answers a question you already have. Keep a list if it helps, but leave room to walk into a library and come home with something you didn’t know existed.
Start With the Time You Have
If you’re waiting until you have more time, you may be waiting a while. There will always be another deadline. There will always be something around the house that needs attention. Even when work slows down, we tend to find something else to fill the time. I would suggest starting with 10 minutes. Read with your morning coffee. Read after lunch. Read before bed if you can stay awake. Choose a time that makes sense for you and give it a try. If it doesn’t work, choose another time. This doesn’t have to become a complicated project.
Ten minutes may not sound like much. But think about how often we spend 10 minutes doing something we don’t even remember afterward. We pick up our phones to check one thing and keep scrolling. We finish and couldn’t tell you what we were looking for in the first place. Some of that time could belong to a book. You don’t have to rearrange your entire evening. Put the book where you sit down. Open it before you open an app. Read a few pages. If you have time for more, keep going. If you don’t, you can pick up where you left off tomorrow.
Make It Easy to Keep Going
Keep a book with you. It can be a paperback in your bag or an e-book on your phone. There are little stretches of waiting throughout the day when you might read a few pages if you had something available. And when you finish a book, have some idea of what you want to read next. Otherwise, a few days can pass while you decide, and those days can turn into weeks. Ask a friend what they’re reading. Browse the shelves. Read the opening pages before committing. Give yourself a reason to look forward to the next book.
Use whatever format works. If you enjoy audiobooks, listen to them. If larger type makes reading easier, use an e-book and enlarge the type. If you like holding a book and turning the pages, do that. I don’t see the point of making someone feel that their way of enjoying a book doesn’t count. What matters is spending time with it. Pay attention. Go back if you missed something. You may prefer different formats at different times. Let your reading fit your life, including the parts of your life that change.
When you sit down to read, give yourself a chance to pay attention. Put the phone across the room. If you’re reading on it, silence the notifications. It can take a little time to settle into a book when you’re used to checking messages every few minutes. You may find yourself reading the same paragraph twice. That’s okay. Slow down and stay with it. You don’t have to finish a chapter every time you sit down. Spend a few minutes actually following the story each day.
You Can Put a Book Down
Lawyers finish things. We finish the brief even when we’re tired. We finish reviewing the records even when they’re repetitive. Someone is relying on us, and the work needs to get done. It’s easy to bring that same approach to a book we chose for ourselves. We started it, so we’re going to finish it. Meanwhile, we avoid reading because we don’t want to spend another evening with that particular book. I would put it down. Give it a fair chance, but if it isn’t holding your interest, read something else. You can come back to it later. You can also decide you’re done with it.
The same goes for setting a number of books to finish each year. If a goal helps, use it. If it turns reading into another thing you’re behind on, let it go. Nobody is asking you to submit a reading report. Some books take longer. Some deserve another pass. You may want to read a favorite again even though you already know how it ends. Enjoy that. There’s no need to rush through a book you like so you can add another title to a list.
Read About Something Other Than Work
We spend enough time thinking about our practices. Read something that takes you somewhere else. A novel about a family. A biography of an artist. A book about how a neighborhood changed over time. You don’t have to explain how any of it will help you bring in clients or try your next case. You can learn about something simply because it interests you. I think we sometimes forget that. We get so used to accounting for our time that even our interests start needing a business purpose.
And some of what you read may help your work anyway. Lawyers deal with people. We ask why someone made a decision, why someone stayed quiet, or why two people remember the same conversation differently. Books give us other lives to think about. They can make us reconsider an assumption or notice something we might have missed. Read people you disagree with, too. Take the time to understand what they’re saying before deciding where they’re wrong. We spend enough of our days preparing a response. Sometimes it’s useful to keep listening.
Talk About What You Read
Ask someone about a book they enjoyed. Tell a friend about one you think they would like. If a passage stays with you, write down a few words about why. Keep this simple. You don’t need to outline every chapter or remember every detail. You may finish a book and remember one conversation between two characters months later. That conversation may be what mattered to you. Let yourself think about it without turning the experience into an assignment.
Sharing a book also gives you something to discuss beyond work. You find out what another person noticed, what bothered them, or why a character reminded them of someone they knew. A book you thought was about one thing meant something different to them. That can be a good conversation. And it gives both of you another reason to keep reading.
Keep Coming Back
You’ll miss days. You may miss weeks. A trial takes over, a family member needs you, or you’re simply worn out. That happens. When you have the time and energy, pick up a book again. You don’t have to start over with a new plan or make up for the books you haven’t read. Just read the next page.
Developing a lifelong habit means finding something you can return to as your life changes. The books you enjoy at 50 may be different from the ones you enjoyed at 20. Your pace may change, too. That’s fine. What I would hate to see is someone who once loved reading spend years saying they want to get back to it. Take the book off the nightstand. Give it 10 minutes tonight. See if you still want to know what happens next.
Frank Ramos is a partner at Goldberg Segalla in Miami, where he practices commercial litigation, products, and catastrophic personal injury. You can follow him on LinkedIn, where he has about 80,000 followers.
