You Love Books. You Don’t Read them. Here’s Why.

- Thank you to Rocket Money for sponsoring this video. "Oh, I wish I read more books," everyone says. We love books.

We buy more books than we read according to these numbers. Book sales are apparently up, but surveys about how much we read, it's pretty low, apparently. And here's the thing, we are probably reading way more than we ever have historically.

It's just we're not, we're not reading books. This is one of the most obvious problems. Even though this is also access to every single book.

I can pull up any available book in a library app, in a bookstore app. I can carry every single book in my pocket everywhere I go. I'm not reading books.

So making this video to figure out why book reading is so difficult. But first I wanna figure out why even read books? What's so great about books versus everything else?

And here's the list I came up with. One, to me, nothing beats a good book. A book that I'm super into that I can't put down is the best form of entertainment.

I get so into it. I love TV. I love movies.

I love video games. And there's great ones of those that I get really into, but when I'm into a good book, there's nothing better. I'm not sure why.

Maybe it's because I'm looking at words and then putting the story in my brain with my own voice in my head. It's solitary. You can't read a book with someone else.

So it's like your own little, your own little secret. A good book is just a really good book. Okay, two, it's relaxing.

It's a slower form of entertainment, depending on how fast you read. It requires focus, which naturally shuts out all the noise. You can't scroll on your phone while reading a book at the same time.

So you're not multitasking. You're, what is it? Singletasking?

Just tasking. Three, it busts your cycle. It gets you out of whatever bad habits you're doing that is, are killing your mental health.

Maybe you don't have those bad habits. But I certainly fall into social media rabbit holes all the time and give myself the impression of a very chaotic world, which may or may not be true, but it's not something I should be living in all the time. But repeatedly sitting down and reading a book means I'm having a much calmer life and it will strengthen my ability and make me more resilient against the need for little dopamine hits all the time.

Four, you will likely acquire deeper knowledge that will stick with you for decades. That happens to me. I still think about books that I've read decades ago, but I can't remember any tweet that I read this morning.

And some might say, if you wanna know something, you could just go right to a summary or a list or an article. You don't have to read a whole book to learn something. I say that's an entirely different experience for your brain and for just taking in information.

You are following the thought patterns of the author. They're taking you on a journey which just helps you retain the information. Here, I'm gonna let a great YouTuber, Jared Henderson, describe the value of reading books versus just random crap on the internet.

- So as you read an author's thoughts in a book, you are actually thinking with him. You're actually training yourself to think. You're training yourself to focus.

You get like a mental workout when you read and you're not getting that elsewhere. - And five, the most important one, read books to look and sound smart and stuff. You can be like, oh yeah, I read that.

Technically you just lie and say you read something. Number five is actually stupid, but I'm gonna put it on there anyway. So those are some reasons why I think it's good to read more books and we should do it.

Side note, four years ago I made a video about how to read more books. And after that, I did actually read more books successfully for a while, but lately it's just not happening. So I'm making this video to think more about why I don't read and as a reset so I can get back to it.

So here's the reasons why I think we don't read as much as we'd like to. And I don't think it's just about the phones because this has been a problem for me like, my whole life. First one on the list I think is my biggest reason.

I think it really goes to the heart of why I just don't read as much. And it is, reading is completely personal, internal, and intentional. That makes it more difficult to do it.

You just have to feel like reading a book randomly for no reason. It has to be an internal motivation. No one's telling you to do it.

There isn't a group of people going, "Hey guys, come on over here. Let's all read this book. " It doesn't make any sense.

You could be sitting here thinking, I should read "Moby Dick. " But there's no imperative. There's no schedule, there's no deadline.

So why are you gonna do it? Meanwhile, you're being marketed to to watch a new TV show, to watch a movie, to play a video game, to continue to stay on TikTok. There's no autoplay ad for a book.

You're not scrolling to the next screen to see the next book. And there's so much more marketing for all those other things. So if you wanna find a good book, you gotta put more effort in, even to just learn what's out there.

It's not that hard, but it is a little bit harder. And we all generally default to the easiest thing. And then reading itself.

And as I said, it's internal. You have to read by moving your eyes and getting the words into your brain. That's propelling the story forward.

It's your own eyes. TV's just gonna play. Movie just gonna movie.

It's gonna constantly be pushing you forward. Video games have expertly laid out reward systems to keep you trying. With books, there's no guarantee there's gonna be a reward, or if it is, it may take a lot longer to get to it.

True, there are audio books, so you don't need to use your eyes. And those will just continue to move forward. But I feel like they still require more concentration than visual medium.

In short, it just requires more willpower to find a book, start reading the book, continue reading the book and finish the book. Second reason it's hard. You're probably reading words all day so you wanna do something else for an escape.

You don't wanna sit down and read more words. Maybe you wanna do exercise, which is a good thing. Maybe you want to go eat food, which you need to do to live.

Hang out with friends, play video games, watch TV. Those things might just feel more like you're doing something different than you've been doing all day. Three, it's more isolating than other media.

I said it's a good thing that it's relaxing and you're focused and you're by yourself. But often you want connection. You want to know what's happening in the world.

I have severe FOMO. That's what keeps me online. A book is something that was written a while ago that you're sitting there, you're reading this ancient text.

It's not happening now. And as I said, you can't read it in a group. You can sit down and watch a movie or TV with friends or just hang out in a chat on a live stream and all share in a communal experience.

With a book, you gotta just, you gotta be a little gremlin over in a dark corner. (Craig growls) And you can't interact with the book. You just, you just, the words just keep happening.

Four, it often requires a big commitment with no guarantee of a payoff. One reason is, lots of books suck. You could be reading a book and not getting into it, and there's no guarantee that it's gonna get better.

But they tend to be bigger and longer than movies or a TV episode. Lots of those suck too, but at least for me, they feel like they take less effort. I get sleepy when I read books, which is a good thing because I need to sleep better.

But that also makes me not wanna do it 'cause I wanna stay awake for the entertainments. And then if you read just a little bit of a book and then you leave and you come back in the middle, you might forget where you left, what happened? You see, it takes more effort to remember.

And you often won't feel the closure you'd get at the end of a movie in a short period of time, or an end of a TV episode. You just stop randomly. You could read just like a chapter and stop.

But often chapters don't end with the kind of closure that like an episode of TV does. And five, I said one was the most important, but I actually think five is. Chem trails.

Probably. Okay, now that we have the definitive list about why we should read more and the definitive list about why we don't read and why it's hard, here's the definitive list of how to do it. One, phone stuff.

Take care of your phone stuff. Delete social media apps. I've deleted 'em all.

I do this occasionally. I'll go in phases where I'll delete it and it works. And then I stop using social media on my phone and I'm free and I'll read books on my phone, or I'll read physical books.

It always somehow creeps its way back into my life though. But I'm in a phase now where I have deleted it. Also, you can put your phone on Do Not Disturb when you're reading, so you're not getting texts and crap.

Put your book app, prominently, right in thumb distance. So when you pull out your phone, you just pop open the book. You could use apps to get books from the library for free or Apple Books or something.

Or carry around an e-reader, which is just books. Two, learn how to find good books. That's one of my biggest challenges.

So many books just don't look intriguing to me. So how do you find good books? Well, unfortunately, one pretty good way is using the internet.

Reddit has threads full of good book recommendations. But you gotta be careful. Don't get drawn into the social media again.

I like to just go to a bookstore and they'll usually have little blurbs underneath their favorite books with little summaries. That's why I'm currently reading this book. I just saw a blurb in a bookstore.

I'd never heard of this book. I barely remember the title while I'm reading it, eh? But it's a swashbuckling tail and so far I'm liking it.

Sometimes there's an element of randomness to it. You have to go on faith that the thing is gonna be good because a lot of these books have been around a long time. There's no large marketing campaign telling you, "Everyone's reading this book!

" You have to throw yourself into the random. You could just talk to the employees at the bookstore. I know you have, then you have to talk to people.

In person. Ugh. But that can help.

People know what good books are for people because they're people. You could also call up your friend. You know that friend of yours that does all that reading?

Carl, ask Carl. Or again, randomly, just buy a bestseller. They're bestsellers for a reason.

Often I don't get into a lot of 'em. Sometimes they're just too generic. Often they're great.

So just pick one. Or pick one to hate read. Three, change your reading approach.

Quit books that you're not into. Just be quick to quit 'em. You don't even have to tell anybody.

Just do it. Quit. Quit it.

Maybe the book will get better later and you're gonna miss out. Oh, well. Or skip chapters.

Skip parts that seem boring. Skip ahead. It might ruin things for you later.

Maybe it was setting something up. Again, who cares? Or just read really fast.

Try to speed read parts that are boring. Or try reading short stories. There are books of short stories.

You can read 'em in one to two to three settings, sittings? What was that about? The most boring Freudian slip ever.

I was thinking about places instead of sitting in a chair. (Craig clears throat) Four, library! It's free.

Five, reduce friction. Carry books around with you. Have them with you all the time.

Put books next to your toilet and just grab one while you're doing your business. Have a book ready digitally on your phone or your e-reader, but also one in your bag. Read multiple books at the same time.

You can do that. I have multiple shows going on that I'm watching. I can do that with books.

Audio books, comic books, cookbooks. I don't think reading a cookbook would be that interesting unless you're actually cooking, but. Six, do what I do with everything.

Make it a challenge. Say you're gonna read a certain amount of books in a certain amount of time. Read the top five generally agreed upon best of any genre.

Top five sci-fi's. Sci-fi's? Sci-fi?

Sci-ficees? Sci-feces? No, no.

I should read more. Or pick a theme. Some aspect of life, like books about clowns.

No, that's more of a genre. I don't know. Jared Henderson had a good suggestorson.

Think of a question you want answered. Some big question about life or some small question, and just find the books that attempt to answer it, and just try to find the answer. Try scheduled interval reading.

10 minutes a day at this time every day. And then slowly increase the time. In fact, I think that's gonna be a challenge I do for a video.

Also, part of that challenge, I'm gonna try to read every book that I own that I haven't read 'cause there's a bunch of them. Here's some of them. Some, I don't even know why I have, or where I got them, but there's a bunch more.

I'm gonna read 'em and I'm gonna make it a video 'cause that's how I get anything done. I think the challenge helps because that gives me a schedule. That gives me a reason 'cause otherwise you just gotta rely on your own willpower.

And my willpower is just gonna go watch TV. And seven, try again. Maybe you tried, you failed.

Maybe you tried a book you didn't like, maybe pick it up again. You've changed. Maybe the book will be better.

I read "The Great Gatsby" in high school and I was like, eh, I don't know. I read it last year and I'm like, this is pretty good. I started "The Brothers Karamazov" when I was like 20 and I had a tough time getting into it.

I'm reading it now on my Apple Books and I'm super into it. Basically what I'm trying to say is, when you're in your twenties, you're dumb. When you're in your forties, you're less dumb.

Yeah, I'm just talking about myself here. There are plenty of very intelligent 20 somethings, in theory, like the person editing this video. Thanks Steven.

So that's it. That's the list. I hope I can help you read some more books because I feel like we, it's gonna just be good for all of us.

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com/wheezywaiter. Thanks Rocket Money and thank you for watching this video. I think I'll put on screen my other video about reading more books and I guess that's it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to continue reading my book, after I'm done here. I already put the book away. Would've worked better if I didn't put the book away already.

(piano key dings) (Craig sniffing) Got clean hands though. Yep. I wash 'em regularly.

I like 'em. Book might be better though.