I’d submit you are too busy NOT to read. A thousand other things, seemingly more pressing call for your attention, but the harder you work and the faster you run, the more you need to be reading. Otherwise, you’re like the carpenter cutting lumber with an increasingly duller saw that needs to be sharpened. One of the best ways I know to keep that saw sharp, is by reading.

A few nights ago I ran into my friend David Turner having dinner at a restaurant. He said “How do you find time to read so much?” (At that point the new year was ten days old and I’d already posted the third book I’d read for the year to Facebook; a little self-accountability exercise that helps me to keep reading and I hope encourages you to as well.) As I struggled to answer David’s question about “how” I found time to read, I’ve captured some ideas about how I manage to find time to read, and how you can read more to.

Some of us are faster readers with better retention than others. I’m one of those people. I read well. I can’t do math. I can’t run marathons (I jog like a Clydesdale). But I am a good reader.

You shouldn’t compare yourself to me, or to anyone else. You may not read as much as I do, or as rapidly. The question is: Are you reading? Charlie “Tremendous” Jones says “You are the same person today as you’ll be one year from now except for the books you read and the people you meet.” So what are you reading?

Ten Ways to Find More Time To Read

1. Keep books handy. I typically have a book beside my easy chair, a book on my night stand, and a book beside the toilet.
2. Read in the bathroom. You’re going to be spending some time there anyway, you’d might as well multi-task.
3. Read on your kindle (or other e-reader). I like the kindle reader on my iPad because I can take it with me when I travel and its not as bulky as carrying books.
4. Read while you exercise. I exercise everyday for nearly an hour. During this winter, I’m walking on the treadmill and I get bored so I need to be distracted. Books don’t help because I find them hard to keep open; they keep wanting to shut and are difficult to keep open to the most recent page. But my iPad lays flat on the screen of my treadmill allowing me to read easily without fighting to keep the page open.
5. Read while you are on vacation. We typically vacation for 9 days. That’s a week, with a weekend on either end. During that nine days I’ll usually read five or six books. In fact, I have authors who release about one book per year, and I save those books to read while I’m on vacation.
6. Read while you are waiting on your family. I live with three women, so I wait alot. (You’ve heard that country song “Waitin’ on a woman” haven’t you?) Just this morning I had about 15 minutes to wait before all my girls were ready to leave for church. I sat down in my easy chair and read.
7. Read before you go to bed. I read most nights before I go to bed. Not always. Sometimes I watch TV. Sometimes I pray. Sometimes I read my Bible. Sometimes I get quiet and think. But I’ve always got a book at my bedside and more often than not I read before I go to sleep.
8. Read as part of your TAWG discipline. I have a daily Time Alone With God (TAWG) every morning. I typically read two to eight chapters of the Bible and pray during this time. But sometimes, if I’ve got a book going that supports my efforts to be spiritually centered I read a chapter in that book during my TAWG. Right now I am reading The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson. Its a fantastic book on prayer that is very helpful to my life. So its a good spiritual investment for me to be using a portion of my TAWG reading about how to be more effective in my praying.
9. Read instead of watching TV, web surfing, or playing computer games. Come on, is there really anything on the tube that you really benefit from watching? Oh, I like to watch TV. But often its just a dull, mindless waste of time. Shut the darned thing off an feed your mind.
10. Set aside work time to read. Reading is a legitimate work activity. It’s part of improving—continuing education that makes you better. Periodically we have sessions with our staff where we take time away from our daily work to discuss certain books we’ve been reading. If you’ve not read, had your staff team read, and discussed with them Linchpin by Seth Godin, that would be an excellent investment of your time.

Reading is like anything else. You’ll do it if its important to you. If you are going to be better this year, you don’t have a choice: you’ve got to start reading.

Everybody has the same 168 hours in their week. Its just a matter of what you do with yours.

Find the time. Read!