How to Develop a Reading Habit

Reading habits are typically measured by the number of minutes per day spent reading printed materials. You can also measure these habits by numbers of pages, documents, or books over time as well as the subject matter which is being read. Some experts say that people are reading less than ever. In one sense that's true, at least for certain forms of writing. Reading is a task that we've historically associated with printed materials. Novels, textbooks, reference manuals, magazines, newspapers, journals, articles, poems, short stories... all of these great documents were historically printed and distributed on pieces of paper, bound or loose, for centuries.

However, you might read a lot more than you think. There are more and more pieces of writing to read than ever before. However, the medium that we use to read is evolving. New technologies have had an equally huge impact on our world in a much shorter time. Just think of life without television, radio, and telecommunications: it almost seems impossible to imagine our world without these conveniences. They've become a huge part of modern life and many people spend hours each day using these media. Computers have grabbed a large slice of our available time and energies. You might think that the proliferation of video games, new television channels, and on-line games, along with Web surfing, might have had a negative impact on reading. The Internet did have an impact on reading, but the results may be a bit of a surprise. There's plenty of material out there to read on paper and on computer screens. The biggest change is the media which we read, whereby computer screens are capturing an increasingly large slice of total reading time.