As we close in on the final quarter of the year, this week I counted all the books I’ve read so far. Turns out, I’m well on my way to reaching my goal.
But more importantly, I realized that I put down half of the books I picked up without finishing them.
My younger self would have been so disappointed by this.
But the more I read, the clearer it becomes to me that, in order to read more, you should be brave enough to put down the books you don’t like.
Quite counterintuitive, this. So, this week’s newsletter is an attempt to unpack this paradox.
Read More by Quitting Deliberately
There are two types of readers when it comes to deciding whether to quit a book before the end.
There’s the completionist reader who says, “We must finish what we started.” And then there’s the selective reader who says, “Life is too short to finish a bad book.”
I’ve been both of these types in the past.
If the first part of a book was interesting but the second half felt flat, I’d push myself to the end.
I was stuck in the sunk cost fallacy.
But I’ve been on the opposite end, too. When I couldn’t connect with a book, I’d quit instantly, without even questioning why, just because I “didn’t feel like it.”
It took me a while to realize that neither of these approaches solved the real problem: how to read more books.
Because quitting a book doesn’t guarantee the next one will magically be better.
Jumping from book to book can waste time you could’ve spent reading a better one.
This led me to read less. The number of books I read per year kept dropping.
And this isn’t just me. Gallup’s 2021 survey found that Americans reported reading fewer books, on average, than in any of its previous surveys dating back to 1990.
After some time, I realized what the missing piece of this puzzle was: I’d never asked why I didn’t like the book in the first place.
Once I started doing this, everything made sense.
Picking up a book you won’t like is inevitable. It happens more often than we’d like it to happen. So quitting isn’t a failure; it’s just a part of the process.
But understanding why I had to quit a certain book reduces the odds that I’ll quit the next one.
Eventually, I can choose books I’m more likely to finish.
This is how you read more books by quitting more: by quitting deliberately.
Read the full post here.