Nine Small Habits That Brought Me Back to Reading After Burnout
For almost a year I could not finish a book, which is awkward when you sell them for a living. These changes slowly fixed it.
There is a particular embarrassment in being a bookseller who cannot read. For most of one year, after a hard stretch of overwork and family illness, I would open a novel, read a page three times, and close it. I recommended books to customers that I had not managed to finish myself.
What brought me back was not willpower. It was a collection of small, almost silly habits. Here they are, in roughly the order I adopted them.
The habits
- I lowered the bar to ten pages. Not a chapter, not an hour. Ten pages, and I was allowed to stop. Most nights I read more, but the small target made starting feel possible.
- I put my phone in another room. This is obvious advice and I resisted it for months. The difference was immediate. My average reading session went from about six minutes to around twenty-five.
- I gave myself permission to quit books. If a book was not working by page fifty, it went back on the shelf with no guilt. That year I abandoned eleven books and finished twenty-three.
- I read shorter things. Novellas, essay collections, short story anthologies. Finishing something in two or three sittings rebuilt a sense of momentum I had lost.
- I re-read an old favourite. Familiar books ask less of a tired mind. A comfort read reminded me that reading could feel easy.
- I tried audiobooks on walks. I had been a little snobbish about audiobooks. I am not any more. They turned a daily forty-minute walk into reading time.
- I kept a book in every bag. Waiting rooms, bus stops, the ten minutes before a meeting. Small pockets of time added up to roughly two extra hours a week.
- I tracked books, not pages. A simple list in a notebook, with the date I finished each one. Seeing the list grow was more motivating than any reading app.
- I talked about what I read. Even a two-minute conversation with a customer or friend about a book made me want to pick up the next one.
What did not work
- Ambitious reading challenges. Setting a goal of fifty books made me anxious, not motivated.
- Starting with a dense classic I felt I should read. It sat on my nightstand for four months.
- Reading in bed when I was already exhausted. I fell asleep within two pages, every time.
Be patient with yourself
Burnout affects concentration in real ways, and reading needs concentration. If you are struggling, it is not a character flaw. It is a signal that you need rest, and perhaps a gentler kind of book for a while.
It took me about five months to feel like a reader again. Ten pages at a time turned out to be enough.
Cover: Photo by Sixteen Miles Out on Unsplash.
