Building a consistent reading habit

One common problem faced by students in the journey to achieving academic excellence is consistency. Let me share with you one scenario; One day you feel extremely energized and determined, so you set a goal for yourself to study for two extra hours into the late night every day; let’s say you want to do some physics. So you get ready that day, night time comes, and you absolutely turn on god-mode for the night; everything is great, you finish those two assignments that you’ve been staring at for two whole weeks, and you read up a whole topic and feel like you’ve got it completely crushed. All well and good, right?

But then the next day comes around, and all of a sudden you feel an utter lack of energy, and you just decide to go to sleep… and this continues over the course of the week, till at the end of the week you realize you have had four intense hours of studying... but they were only distributed between two nights. The following week comes around… and you realize that even what you had read the previous week has already skipped your mind. Sound familiar?

This pit of inconsistency is one which many students can easily find themselves falling into, but do not fear, you now have the key to escape it.

This is one of the reasons why it is so crucial to have a definite reading routine. Start by designing some sort of template to plan your reading. It could be an elaborate reading timetable, or you could just decide to read for an extra two hours before going to sleep. (It doesn’t even have to be two hours; it could be just an hour or even half an hour. Whatever works best for you. The key is choosing something you are sure you can stick to.) It takes a conscious decision to determine that no matter what situation you may find yourself in, you will use that time profitably and add something to what you already know. Daily increments are key. Once you make such a decision for yourself, you’re going to keep adding onto what you’ve learnt the previous day, and it will keep growing bit by bit and this compounds over time.

This sort of routine will also help to prevent your mind from going dormant, and will make it easier to keep the rest of what you read on your fingertips (so to speak). At the end of the day, you’ll see yourself progressing step by step as you grow your knowledge base and understanding of the subject you have committed yourself to.

Key points to keep in mind as you read:

Make sure you aim at understanding what you read: This is because it is useless to read a whole chapter of a textbook, only to forget all that you read the next day. The key point here is to prioritize quality over quantity.
Building a consistency habit does not only mean that you’ll limit your reading time to only the scheduled time. By all means, if you by any chance get any extra free time you can invest into your studies, feel free to add that too, and make more progress with your personal timetable. Just remember not to skip the scheduled reading times, okay?
Building a consistency habit does not only mean that you’ll limit your reading time to only the scheduled time. By all means, if you by any chance get any extra free time you can invest into your studies, feel free to add that too, and make more progress with your personal timetable. Just remember not to skip the scheduled reading times, okay?

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Mirembe Angella

Was a Regional Debate Champ n High School