Everyone complains about being too busy, but the lament that there is never any time to read is particularly poignant. A friend who works as a book editor—a man literally paid to read novels—told me the best thing about a recent gap between jobs was the chance, finally, to read some novels. Something is amiss here; you do not hear crane operators rave about spending their downtime operating cranes.
The novelist and critic Tim Parks wrote in a New York Review of Books essay: “The conditions in which we read today are not those of 50 or even 30 years ago. Every moment of serious reading has to be fought for, planned for.” Parks wrote that in June; last month, I finally found time to read it.
The usual time-management tips—such as giving up television or carrying a book at all times—often fail. Sitting down to read, the flywheel of work-related thoughts keeps spinning, or you are too exhausted for a challenging book. Parks notes that the modern mind “is overwhelmingly inclined toward communication… It is not simply that one is interrupted; it is that one is actually inclined to interruption.” Deep reading requires not just time, but a special kind of time that cannot be obtained merely by becoming more efficient.
In fact, “becoming more efficient” is part of the problem. Thinking of time as a resource to be maximised leads to an instrumental approach, judging moments as well spent only if they advance progress toward some goal. Immersive reading depends on being willing to risk inefficiency, goallessness, even time-wasting. Gary Eberle writes in his book Sacred Time: “The future comes at us like empty bottles along an unstoppable and nearly infinite conveyor belt… we feel a pressure to fill these different-sized bottles (days, hours, minutes) as they pass, for if they get by without being filled, we will have wasted them.” No mindset could be worse for losing yourself in a book.
What does work? Surprisingly, scheduling regular times for reading. Eberle notes that such ritualistic behaviour helps us “step outside time’s flow” into “soul time”. You can also use space ritualistically—read in the same chair or park bench. Limiting distractions by reading physical books or single-purpose e-readers helps. Carrying a book at all times can work if you dip in often enough, so that reading becomes the default state from which you temporarily surface to take care of business. On a good day, it no longer feels as if you are “making time to read”, but just reading, and making time for everything else.
