Make Books a Daily Habit
Reading on a Consistent Basis
Reading like any other talent or activity takes practice and dedication. When you pick up a book you haven’t read in a while, it can be hard to remember the threads woven through the story. What is the storyline? Who are the characters? What is the formal argument being presented? When presented with these questions it may be hard to get back and enthralled into the world and narrative. When this happens you might find yourself lost and may have to retrace the steps that you had taken previously, or even drop the book entirely. Without a consistent plan put in place, reading might feel more like a chore than the stress-relieving activity it is meant to be.
Printed vs eBook, Which is More Popular?
Nowadays we have so many different options for reading. From your phone, IPad, Kindle, and even audiobooks reading a book on the go is the most accessible it has been. Alongside the (usually) cheaper price there seems to be no reason not to read digitally, but for many readers that is just not the case. A few years back, tech gurus were predicting eBooks would replace print, and recent trends are proving them wrong. Reading is now firmly a “both/and” print and digital world. Yet research shows people are still more likely to read a print book than a digital one. There are good reasons why, and the first is concentration. In a study done with over 400 university students in five countries, 92% of participants said print is the reading platform on which they concentrate best. Students complained about distractions when reading onscreen. And as we know, if you’re distracted, your stress level can go up and your attention span goes down.
Remembering What You Are Reading
The second reason is that we probably remember more of what we read in print. With so many distractions, and just the nature of online and digital media atleast with me, I find myself having to read a page multiple times because I wasn’t actively reading. Now we say “probably” because researchers are still figuring out how to move from laboratory-style comprehension tests to measuring memory that matters. Memory for abstract concepts or how the pieces of a storyline fit together. Memory connects our reading with other things we learn and with our everyday lives. Students tell us they remember more when reading in print. Not surprisingly, some report spending more time when reading print and reading more carefully than with digital texts.
