Reading that book: you’ll get round to it soon, right?
There are too many distractions today keeping us from our desire to be better read. Tom Ough finds a 26-year-old who may be able to help out
Beside my bed is a shelf of books that I am either yet to finish or yet to start. There’s the hefty one about the threat of human extinction, which I aim to finish just before the meteorite hits; the enticingly slim but nevertheless untouched volume of short stories; and this one is the most embarrassing – the guide to shaking off distractions and getting down to meaningful work and hobbies.
I’ll come for them one day, but it might take a while. Although I knock one off every couple of weeks or so, it’s rarely with the book-guzzling greed I had as a kid. Most of my peers seem to have the same experience: wanting to spend more time reading, but never getting around to it.
The figures tell the same story. According to research published this month by the market research company Kantar, 53 per cent of adults in the UK say they’ve read a book in the past year. This is a slight increase, presumably thanks to lockdown, from the 51 per cent who gave the same answer in 2019, but it is down from 56 per cent in 2018. Last year, the National Literacy Trust’s survey of under-18s found that children are spending less time reading books than at any point since the first such survey in 2005. Reams of studies show that our attention spans are shortening.
The cause of this change is probably communications technology. We are rarely less than a metre or two from devices that connect us to the world and everyone in it. These are vectors for software that has been painstakingly devised by thousands of engineers to attract our emotional engagement for as long as possible. In the battle for our attention, books are bringing a rolledup paperback to a gunfight. Some of those who read less than they used to might simply prefer modern media, which, lest we forget, is far more sociable and interactive. This is not a Manichean divide. But others profess regret at not reading more, much as they might wish to do more exercise. When I asked people about their reading habits, many reported their attention spans had been fried, either over a long period or, more acutely, by the pandemic.
This is not true of all readers. Many, it seems, have been reading more than ever. But on behalf of people who just can’t get down to it – a category I often occupy – I spoke to Alex Wieckowski. To his 90,000 Instagram followers, he is better known as Alex & Books (@alexandbooks_). There and on Twitter he posts summaries of books, podcasts with writers, and advice for becoming a better reader. On his website, he quotes research suggesting that reading increases intelligence and empathy, helps you relax and sleep, and helps fight Alzheimer’s. Books, he writes, “are wonderful tools that can educate and inspire people. Reading gives individuals new perspectives on life and allows them to travel time and space.”
Wieckowski, a deep-voiced 26-yearold from Brooklyn, was a bookish child. Years later, as a postgraduate student, he wrote summaries of books he was reading for his business course and began posting them online. His blog and social media accounts arose from there. Wieckowski shared what he’d learnt about lengthening his attention span. “Reading,” he tells me, “just like anything else, is a skill. The more you practise it, the better you’ll get at it. When I first started reading, 15-20 minutes was a long time.”
Would-be readers, he says, find success
‘Reading, just like anything else, is a skill. The more you practise it, the better you’ll get at it’
in “just building that small, consistent habit, whether you start with 10 minutes or 15 minutes or 25 minutes a day. Once you turn it into a habit, you’ll notice that your concentration increases.”
The hardest part, as with exercise, is starting. “Once you have the book open and you’re reading, you lose track of time.”
To stay the course you must rid your environment of distraction. Wieckowski credits Nir Eyal, author of Indistractable and a guest on the Alex & Books podcast, with teaching him about this principle. “I put my phone on airplane mode or silent, and I’ll put it in a different room. I notice that the further I put it away from myself, the more reading I get done, because you’re much less motivated to check your phone when it’s two rooms down.”
And these appointments with books should be just that. Wieckowski’s next tip is what he calls “book o’clock”.
He explains: “Just like when you have a meeting with a co-worker or when you meet up with your friends to get drinks, you set up a time and location, and you stick to it.” It’s a technique independently recommended by behavioural psychologists for all manner of virtuous activities, and it works much better than simply planning to read more without identifying when and where you’ll do it.
Reading before bed, which is regarded by sleep scientists as being a soothing activity, must be one of the most common examples. Wieckowski, like many, does it every night. “At 11pm I’ll turn my phone off, turn off my computer, turn off the wi-fi. And then I have two options: I read or I go to sleep. And I have too much energy to go to sleep right away, so often I’ll spend half an hour reading, or sometimes even more.”
The more I learn about 21st-century habit formation, the more it seems that to get anything done requires a Heath Robinson-style system. Something is wrong here: either our painful inability to let go of an outmoded habit, or the overwhelming strength of distraction.
Either way, what I find as I address that shelf by my bed is that slowly diminishing the pile of books is a much more meaningful pastime than whatever I’d be doing without them. And the more I think about building these habits, the better able I am to see them through. Our ability to read is a muscle that we still have the chance to regrow.