Why you can't commit to reading (how to read for 1 hour every day)

There are many ways to expand your consciousness and learn about the world. Reading is one of them—and arguably the best one.

• Reading is faster than listening or watching.

• Authors put insane amounts of effort into the creation of their books.

• Books aren't digital, so you don't consume even more blue light and don't fuel your addiction to digital stuff even more.

• And books contain knowledge usually not found in the typical podcast episode or article since the author can go much deeper, and add a lot of context.

When an author writes a book, he adds layers upon layers of complexity, and he only publishes it once it is as close to perfect as possible. Books are, therefore, still the foundation of a proper education.

So, to read means to learn. It means to increase one's consciousness and understanding of the world.

But many people struggle with reading, even though they know how important it is for their personal development.

I know how frustrating it is to know that something is needed and that it’s calling you to it, but you still can't manage to do that thing. Maybe you've been reading the same book for 3 months now, and you can't seem to focus on that book for longer than 10 minutes at a time.

Well if you can't solve this problem your life will reflect that. You will have a boring, small, incompetent, and inefficient mind. Things that you would notice in the world will pass your perception. You will miss out on a lot of joy, understanding, and success.

Why you can't commit to reading

You can't commit to reading for two different reasons. The first reason is a simple one: your mind is distracted and unfocused. The second reason is a bit more complex. You basically don't realize how important reading actually is. You don't perceive the lack of knowledge as a painful problem. So let me give you some pain.

FOCUS

The focus problem is simple.

You can't read if you're intoxicated, fatigued from garbage food, and sleep-deprived. I'm not exaggerating. If you're stoned all the time, eat too much carbs and processed foods, and have extremely bad sleep hygiene, how on earth can you expect your brain to be on your side?

You are literally the enemy of your brain if you aren't treating it properly, so it won't let you focus. Reading only benefits you if you CAN read. If the information can enter your mind and can be processed.

So the first step to reading for 1 hour every day, is to set aside a time in the day during which you aren't intoxicated, haven't eaten massive amounts of carbs or processed garbage, and are well-rested or at least caffeinated.

Identify the time of the day when your body and mind are in that kind of state, and dedicate one hour of reading to that time. Perhaps it could be waking up an hour earlier, drinking a coffee, and reading for an hour. You figure that out for yourself.

REALIZATION

The second root cause for your inability to read is that you haven't truly realized how important reading actually is. If you think you already know that reading is important, then why aren't you reading?—despite your inability to focus. It's clearly a problem of awareness.

Outside of the fact that education is essential for the achievement of any goal, I will explain a different thing to you, and show you clearly why reading is so important.

You know about the concept of entropy right? All objects in the universe are constantly exposed to the forces of entropy. It states that particles will arrange themselves in the most efficient way in a given space. If you spray perfume at a particular point on the wall, those perfume particles will spread out into all directions of the universe until they’re so thinly spread that they’re not perceivable anymore.

Objects naturally decay, and fall into chaos. They flow into all directions of the universe. That this principle applies to everything is easy to observe if you look at the fact that even your house is exposed to entropy. If you don't clean and order your house (or room, or whatever) for one month, you know how bad it will look, and smell.

And so that same principle applies to your consciousness.

If you don't fuel your consciousness with information, mass, energy, and order it decays and falls into chaos.

Now you additionally might have the weird notion that understanding can happen to you via present moment awareness. That you can understand things (get enlightened) without necessarily having to consume information.

This psychedelic thought is a bit hypocritical, however. If all you need to do to understand how the universe works, is to drop your ego and be as conscious as possible in the present moment, why do you associate that event as a singular event? Why do you put a time frame on it?

Couldn't it be that the ego you need to drop is the one that’s preventing you from being humble enough to make the effort and read? Couldn't it be that the moment of enlightenment is something that isn't attached to a singular moment in your historical life?

If present-moment awareness is all you need, why do you consume Instagram, YouTube, Netflix, and so on? If you believe that enlightenment is possible despite the consumption of these things, you might as well include books as "stuff that you consume outside of being enlightened" haha.

Your mind decays and ceases to exist if you don't put information into it. You need to apply the opposite of entropy. Only by doing that can you get to understanding, and see the connections in the world that would contribute to a potentially enlightening psychedelic experience.

CURIOSITY

This leads me to curiosity. Whatever you currently think is interesting is what you should buy books about. The people who have written books on the topics you find interesting probably have more understanding about those topics than you, so it makes a lot of sense to read their thoughts instead of believing that you can do it all by yourself.

Lead yourself through a thread of curiosity exploration. Find a book that looks very promising, and don't care about the potential utility of the book for your career or something like that. If you are curious about something that relates to your career that’s obviously a different thing.

But that’s the whole point. Your curiosity is your grand navigation. It will lead you to exactly the right books at the right time, and if you read for 1 hour every day, you have a great chance at keeping that thread alive and working yourself through an extremely adventurous journey of exploration.

I recommend only reading one book at a time, and only buying the next book when you are almost finished with your current one. Avoid buying 10 books at a time, because you might lose interest in them, and therefore lose your curiosity while reading. They might also distract your curiosity about the current book that you're reading.

Read for 1 hour every day dude. Just do it. It will change your life, I promise.

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