Be sure to read a lot and develop reading habits through 4 stages

Recently, many friends have added me on WeChat to ask me the question \”How to develop a reading habit?\” In fact, the problem of developing reading habits cannot be explained clearly in one or two sentences. Habit development is a systemic problem, and we need to approach it from multiple aspects. Once a habit is formed, it becomes automatic and does not require the use of willpower. Just like I developed the habit of reading on the subway, reading will be automatically triggered as soon as I get on the subway, and there is no need to force myself to read. Although habits are completed unconsciously, if we show the process of habit formation in slow motion, we can see that the process of habit formation can also be divided into several stages. In the book \”Mastering Habits\”, the author divides the process of forming a habit into four stages: getting the cue, generating the craving, responding, and getting the reward. Similarly, we can also start from these four stages to develop reading habits. 1. Get tips: To make reading obvious, we can imagine a life scenario in which a person rarely eats melon seeds. Now make some adjustments to his environment and place some melon seeds in places where he can often see them, such as a frequently used table. When he saw melon seeds on the table, he couldn\’t help but eat them. In other words, he originally had no need to eat melon seeds, but now the melon seeds everywhere reminded him to start eating them. This is the role of the reminder. Therefore, in the process of developing reading habits, we can make some adjustments to our environment so that books can be seen everywhere. For example, put books that you are more interested in on the sofa, table, bedside, etc. in more conspicuous places. You may not have thought about reading before, but now these books everywhere are reminding you to read. Try to create an environment at home that is conducive to reading. The more clues in your home that prompt you to read, the more likely it is that you will pick up a book and start reading. What other tips can you give? For example, you can display some sentences on the screen of your mobile phone to remind you to read, follow more reading-related official accounts on the official account, or even set an alarm on your mobile phone to remind you to read, etc. 2. Generate desire: Make reading attractive. The reason why we spend a lot of our spare time on entertainment activities such as watching short videos, watching dramas, and playing games is because these activities are full of attraction. Similarly, if we want to develop the habit of reading, we can also find ways to make reading more attractive. You can start reading from books that are closely related to you, for example, books that interest you, books that can solve current problems, etc. When the books you read can bring you positive feedback, you will be motivated to continue reading, and it will be easier to develop a reading habit. If the book you are reading is difficult, try another one that is less difficult. You can also combine difficult books with easy ones. This is what I did. When I read a difficult psychology book, it still takes a lot of effort. At this time, I will switch to some less difficult and more interesting books to read. Books are the crystallization of human wisdom. We can find answers to the problems we encounter in life from books. For example, meeting parents and childrenWhen it comes to education issues, just find a few parent-child education books to read. When you are anxious, read some anxiety-related books. When your sales ability needs to be improved, find some classic books on sales and negotiation to read. When we solve problems in life through reading, we will have a great sense of accomplishment. The next time we encounter a difficult problem, we will think of looking for the answer in a book. Teacher Li Xiaomo once proposed a small method to keep our thirst for food, which is to stop when it is good. When your interest in reading is good and you still want to read on, stop at the right time. This will ensure that you are still interested in reading next time. But many people do the opposite and stop reading every time they are too tired to read. This will associate reading with pain, making it difficult to develop a reading habit. 3. React: Make reading simple and easy. As we all know, our brains adhere to the principle of energy conservation, and it is human nature to seek easy refuge. From this perspective, if you want to develop a habit, you must make it easy to do it. If you want to quit a bad habit, you must make it difficult to perform it. For example, if you want to get rid of the habit of checking your phone before going to bed at night, you can force the phone to be placed in the living room. If you want to quit the habit of watching TV, just add resistance to it. For example, take out the battery from the remote control and unplug the TV from the power cord. When you think about how troublesome it is to watch TV, you may stop watching it. Therefore, if you want to develop the habit of reading, you need to make reading simple and easy. For example, I mainly read e-books on the WeChat Reading APP. I will put the WeChat Reading APP on the first screen of my phone and in the upper left corner. You can see it when you open the phone. Try to put some learning APPs around the WeChat Reading APP. If the WeChat Reading APP is surrounded by some entertainment APPs such as Douyin and Youku. So when learning APPs and entertainment APPs appear in front of us at the same time, we usually choose to click on the entertainment APP. Therefore, we must try to make reading as simple and easy as possible, and do not allow entertainment to compete with learning. In the words of teacher Li Xiaomo, in order to develop the habit of reading, we must try to avoid environments with high resistance and temptation. 4. Obtain rewards: Create satisfaction. If the result of an action has reward value, we will repeat the action. So, we need to find ways to reward reading. For example, when you read 5 books (or 6, 8, etc.) in a month, reward yourself by going out for a big meal. When you read 100 books, reward yourself with a trip abroad, etc. Of course, in addition to material rewards, there are also some intrinsic rewards that can give you a sense of accomplishment. For example, I read e-books on the WeChat Reading APP, and the platform records my reading data, such as how many books I read in a week, how many hours I read, etc. When I see these reading data, I feel very accomplished and feel that my spare time is not wasted on some entertainment activities such as watching short videos and playing games. The platform will also have some medal rewards. For example, if you read for 25 hours a week, you will get a \”Breaking Reading Week\” medal.When you read for 10 hours a week, you can get the \”Perfect Reading Week\” medal, etc. The platform also sets reading time rewards, etc. When you increase the company\’s sales performance by 20% through reading and learning, you will also receive corresponding rewards from the company. These are the rewards of reading and they inspire us to keep reading. If we want to develop reading habits, we might as well work hard from the above four stages.