Learn How to Read a Book a Week and Why You Should

With our daily lives becoming more hectic one day after another, even the most avid and passionate readers are starting to struggle with maintaining their healthy reading habits. And while that is perfectly understandable considering how busy, tired, and stressed we are on a daily basis, that still leaves us craving for a little bit more free time and more motivation to read more. 

Getting more reading done is one of the most commonly used New Year’s resolutions and considering the huge number of benefits reading has for our mental and physical health, it’s perfectly normal to constantly want more and more. So, since the Basmo mission has always been clearly focused on getting people to love reading and figuring out ways to read more, here’s a thought: why don’t you find out how to read a book a week from now on?

Is it possible to read a book each week?

Considering the reading habits revealed by statistics in the past years, it’s not uncommon for people to wonder if it’s even possible to read one book per week. While the size of the book and its level of difficulty do play a role in determining whether you could have it finished within a week, the only thing that matters at the moment is that yes, reading a book per week is absolutely possible.

There are a couple of things to consider though. How busy your schedule is, how you choose the book you want to read within each particular week, how motivated you are to go through with your plan, and many other factors. 

To prove it to you, let’s take an average person with a reading speed of 250 words per minute. With that speed, the average person will get through 60 x 250 = 15,000 words in a single hour of reading. 

Novels average around 70,000 – 120,000 words if you read them from cover to cover. Since most books are going to stay pretty far from the 120,000 words high limit of the average, let’s see how long it would take the average reader to finish a 100,000 words book. 100,000 words / 15,000 words per hour = 6.6 hours. So, even with as little as one hour of reading per day, you would still be able to finish reading a 100,000 words book in a week and still have some time to spare. 

And if the math doesn’t convince you, maybe you should have a look at the reading habits some of our biggest heroes have. Bill Gates reads 50 or more books per year, which comes down to about one book per week, for example. And if there is one thing most billionaires have in common, it is their love for books and reading. While reading isn’t guaranteed to make you a billionaire, there must be some connection there, so why wouldn’t you spare one hour per day to meet your reading goals and enjoy the benefits of reading every day?

How to finish a book in a week?

While reading a book a week may sound like a walk in the park on paper and according to the simple math I did above, the reality is that our daily lives work tirelessly to keep us away from our favorite activity. Finding one hour per day to read may seem easy at first, but unexpected things happen all the time and there’s a lot that can set us back. 

One thing I need to clarify right off the bat is that even though all the steps below may seem like pretty generic ones, the best way to put them all into practice is by using a reading tracking app like Basmo. 

Here’s what you should do in order to be able to read one book per week.

Set goals

Without clearly set goals, you are unlikely to succeed at anything in life and reading is no different. You need to set clear daily goals for your reading so you can get through the entire book within a week. Ideally, you would check out the number of pages the book has, try to figure out your reading speed, and split the reading you need to do in 7 increments, one for each day of the week.

Set a reading schedule

Without adding some structure to your reading habits, getting enough reading done to finish a book every week is going to be tough, to say the least. That is why we strongly recommend you to set a clear reading schedule that works for your daily routine and which allows you to get enough reading done.

Depending on the size of the book you decide to read each week and according to the daily goals you set in order to manage to read it completely within a week, you will need to also adjust your reading schedule.

Plan ahead

As you can tell by the steps above already, reading a book a week will require some planning. You will need to choose your books wisely and adjust your goals and reading schedule accordingly. 

Stay on track at all times

Keeping your performance under review is essential if you want to maintain a certain pace or if you want to improve it. That means that you are constantly going to need to track your reading speed, the time you spend reading, and the number of pages you are able to go through in each reading session.

What happens when you read a book a week?

Well, learning how to read a book a week is definitely going to change you. The most notable thing to mention is that if you will be looking at the bigger picture, reading a book a week is going to result in you reading 52 books in a year. That is an astonishing number, and an achievement only very few of us can take pride in. 

The more you read, the more in touch you are going to be with yourself, as reading is a highly introspective activity. Reading makes us more empathetic by forcing us to imagine scenarios that are only available in books. We tend to put ourselves in the shoes of the heroes we read about and try and figure out what we would do in their situation.

Reading makes you smarter as well. There is a lot you can learn from books, and you do it while enjoying a very pleasant, relaxing, and rewarding activity. People who read more tend to be wiser, calmer, and better prepared for anything life throws at them. And if we were to look at the reading habits of the most successful people on the planet, we would be amazed by how much reading they are doing. That can’t be a coincidence.

Another argument to be made here is that reading tends to make us healthier, both mentally and physically. Reading is a great way to relax, it helps us lower our blood pressure, our heart rate, and decreases our health risks considerably. Not only that but it is also known for its healing powers when it comes to certain mental afflictions. Reading is therapeutic and has a beneficial role in the lives of people affected by depression and anxiety.

Reading also helps us live longer. While only 20 minutes of reading per day would be enough for prolonging our life, reading for one hour or more is even more beneficial. That’s because reading has a very strong effect on maintaining our brain healthy and agile. Reading decreases our chances of being affected by age-related mental decline and even delays the onset of certain cognitive disorders associated with old age like Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. 

So, to cut it short, what happens when you read a book per week? You are going to live a longer, healthier, more relaxed life. You will become wiser and more empathetic, your chances of heart disease will decline, and you will be less likely to become affected by age-related cognitive disorders. On top of that, you will give yourself a real chance at being more successful, regardless of your area of expertise or the field you are working in.

Final thoughts

Learning how to read a book a week may seem challenging at first. There is some planning involved, you do need a good mindset and a clear set of rules you need to follow. The math is really simple though. One hour of reading every day should be enough to allow you to finish most books within a week. And with the right tools (clear goals, a schedule, and a real will to get this thing done) and Basmo on your side, it is going to be a lot easier.

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