A reading/writing ritual

I love to read books.  And yet I’m often distracted by the siren song of my iPad and its candy-coated delivery of snarky sports websites and boring email.

And I love to write.  And yet I’m often paralyzed by my ability to develop an idea fully or what others may think of it, so it just festers like a half-eaten croissant in a dumpster.

If I want to do these things more, I need to habituate myself.  I’ve been getting up early in the morning to exercise–when the house is quiet and distractions are few- so I’ve got a roadmap on how to successfully add another habit.  For me, the hardest part is not the habit itself–I’ve got plenty of willpower–it’s the decision to create the habit.

I had set aside some time in my morning routine for reading and writing before, but I was finding that the amorphous and large amount of time I set aside for it made it harder for me to stick to it. I’ve learned from my own experience and others that it makes sense to start with small goals.

So, my goal for January is simple:  write and read for just 9 minutes a day each.  I’ll add a minute a month so that by the end of the year, I’ll be up to 20 minutes a day of writing and 20 minutes of reading.  That doesn’t sound like much, but that’ll be over 85 hours each of reading and writing in a year.  That would be like taking a month off of work to just read and write.

You may wonder where this desire to devote this much time to reading and writing came from.  I’m a big consumer of other people’s talents (TV, sports, books, websites, good food).  High-speed internet access, digital cable, iPads, and Amazon have made it easier than ever to consume these items.  And this ease obscures the thousands of hours of hard work and practice that goes into making something of quality, whether that is a page-turner book, an exciting football game, or a grits souffle umami bomb (RIP, Magnolia Grill). It is only by consuming quality books mindfully and then finding my own voice by writing will I truly appreciate the work of those creators.

Follow along as I track my progress and let me know what you think.