When Life gives you all lemons and no reading time.

How do I make sure to make time for reading in my day to day life?

The answer is that I don’t. I’m the kind of person who does things in sprints. When I read, I read A LOT and ALL AT ONCE. When Sarah and I first started planning this blog out back in April, I was still in exams and so I couldn’t really read. As soon as they were over, I launched myself into reading and knocked off quite a few books in a very short period. I was also between school and my summer job, so I had nothing but time on my hands. Lately. It hasn’t been like that. Lately, it’s been more like Olaf here:

This is fine right? Tooooootally fine.

My work place has me working ~12 hour days (Yesterday for instance. I got to work at 8am morning, worked until 6pm, got home, made dinner, started working again around 8 and did not finish until midnight.) and so I have very little time to indulge in me things. I have been living for the weekend and am very lucky that I have a couple really great people to support me at work. Without them, I’d have fallen on my ass a long time ago.

However, I am getting off topic. You didn’t come here to read about my pathetic employment life. You came here to talk about work/school/booknerd balance.

I don’t claim to know the miracle cure to the situation, but I have found a couple tricks that have helped me whenever life starts cutting into my reading time.

Read while on transit.

Obviously don’t do this if you drive to and from your destination, but if you are taking public transit, take advantage of it to read a book or an ebook! I find that travel time often ends up being unproductive, wasted time, so I started forcing myself to start a new chapter of a book right before leaving the house. That way, I want to continue it and actually open my book up once on the subway.

And if you do drive

I’ve heard good things about Audible. A lot of YouTube people I follow are sponsored by them, which is how I heard about them in the first place, but I genuinely think audio books could be a really useful tool to help better understand stories (think Levi in Fangirl) but also to be able to continue a story hands free, so to speak. My one concern is that when I am reading, I am 100% invested in that story (normally) and so I feel as though I might be a distracted driver if I were to listen to an ebook. Something to consider before you opt for this option.

Set aside a block of reading time every day.

This doesn’t have to be huge, even 15 minutes is better than nothing. Scheduling in the time yourself ensures that you make the time for it. If reading is important to you, then it needs to be made a priority. I know that isn’t always easy, especially because often, we have to juggle multiple “optional” activities. Currently, because my work situation is less than ideal, I have had to stop going to the gym. Any true devotee would say that if I really wanted to, I would find the time. I find that advice extremely annoying and as such, am about to be a huuuuge hypocrite. If reading is important to you, do it!

Also important to note that studies have shown that using electronic devices before bed are not good for your brain too close to bed time. A book is a much better substitute. Instead of getting those last minute likes on insta (though you should definitely check out our Instagram account ;D), grab a book and read a couple pages. (Just make sure you set a limit or you’ll find yourself in one of those 5 hour later type situations).

Make yourself accountable

You need to be careful with this one, because it could make you resent the books you are reading. If you really want to read though, you need to find a community of readers. Join a book club, online or offline, and set yourself a goal. GoodReads is great for that in the sense that you can set book goals. There are great communities on Twitter as well with live chats dedicated to different books weekly, monthly, or more. Dedicate yourself to what you can dedicate yourself to.

Only read what you love to read

The time that things are hectic and crazy is not the time to pick up that Bronte sister novel if you know that you are not one for long, drawn out prose or old school storylines. On the other hand, if that’s your cup of tea, read it! I find that the time to explore is not when I am super busy. I stick to what I know I like (typically fantasy YA) because I know that I am more likely to get return on my time. Also, when I am busy, I am more likely to abandon a book if it does something to annoy me (i.e. a book 2 situation where the couple breaks up to give the story plot. I’ll have a post on that sometime soon, because that YA archetype needs to be discussed some more. Much infuriating.)

But in the end…

Sometimes you just need to take a break.

I know that when I come back to reading after being away from it for awhile, I enjoy it all that much more. I like to think it’s all those hours I missed, compacted into a shorter time. You’d think that, as much as I like it, I would be swearing never to give it up again and I have indeed done that. But I’ve also realized in the past few years that sometimes it’s okay to let things slide. Beating yourself up because you didn’t hit your book count for the month is going to do nothing but make you resentful and not want to read. If you feel like you just don’t have room on your plate, then wait awhile before picking up your next book. When you do finally get there, the wait will have been worth it.