What I learned after successfully reading seven books in seven days.

A few days ago, I came across an interview of a former senior administrative officer. He had read 365 books in 365 days. I became a little skeptical about it. Though I love reading, I could manage to read only a few books so far. It generally takes a month or two to complete a single book. I was wondering, how is it possible to read a whole book every day? 

We all are so busy with our daily chores that it is hardly possible to make out some time during this busy schedule. Days and weeks pass but few tasks like reading a book remain as it is.

This time, however, I decided to give it a try and challenge myself to complete a book in a day and seven books within a week.

I started reading the first book on July 23 and completed the seventh book on July 29. This seven-day journey was a new realization of the inherent potential of our mind. A journey, a wonderful experience that I am so eager to share with you all.

1. No time to read: 

Although everyone has 24 hours in a day, many of us don't use all the hours effectively. The important lesson I learned here is, it is essential to use every minute and work towards the goal if you want to achieve it successfully. Excluding a total of 14 hours from my 24 hours, 8 hours for dedicated office work, and 6 compulsory hours of sleep, and decided to use the remaining 10 hours effectively towards the goal of reading the book and do other daily activities.

Since the number of pages of the books I decided to read was 300, 123, 286, 127, 106, 223, 236 therefore I had to read around 200 pages a day.
I have a habit of taking notes while reading so it takes me 1. 5 to 2 minutes per page. Accordingly, a simple calculation of math says I need to dedicate 4 to 6 hours a day out of the 10 hrs.

Before I started, it seemed like a challenge, but in reality, the experience was different, I never have to sacrifice on my routine like spending time with family, daily exercise, meditation, and yoga, talking to friends, watching the news etc.

This made me realized that we have a lot of time, and that "no time" is just a feeling beautifully wrapped up in our mind. In fact, we usually do not have energy or desire to read and that's why we don't go for planning our time properly. In short, for most of the individuals, 'no time' occurs sometimes but not daily.

2. Intense desire: 

Our mind always try to keep us at ease, so when we see a thick book, our mind provides us a list of reminders of other important tasks that are remaining, or it tells us, reading is a time-consuming task, instead, in the same time, we can complete other tasks, then automatically we find many good reasons for not opening the book, but trickily, even those thoughts and reminders disappear once we decide not to read, and finally mind wins the game.

At such a crucial moment, if one could hold back on his will power for a while and start with a small action like reading one or two pages, maybe the mind will start believing that reading one or two pages in a day is not difficult, then gradually the desire to learn more on the subject and curiosity to know more, will drive him to read more and complete the book. Taking small action is the key, and repeating it multiple times possibly converts it into a habit.

3. Prioritization: 

Time planning is life planning, prioritization has its own importance in life and in daily routine. In my schedule, I divided the whole day long task of reading the book into 7-10 sets of 30-40 minutes each. 3 hours before 10 a.m., and 2 to 3 hrs after 7 p.m. I spend reading books. We always have these extra hours in each day but we often spend these hours on less important tasks or on entertainment. Entertainment has its own importance in life, but when self-improvement is the priority one can exchange it with productive learning.

4. Perseverance: 

Almost everything is possible when one is accompanied by Perseverance. There is no better example of perseverance than the continues-flowing river which divides mountains into two and creates her own path.

Naturally, our minds cannot stay focused on anything for longer than 6-7 seconds, it starts running here and there.

The mind will automatically get into the habit of focusing for a long after repetitive imperfect attempt to hold it on any task for some time, we can teach the mind a lesson of self-discipline with the restraint of persistence.

The persistence originates from inner motivation, inner motivation comes from the clarity of the goal, thus the strength of persistence makes it possible to achieve a clear set goal.

I started believing that everyone has unlimited potential powers but its awareness is more or less individual. Sometimes we become aware of potential strengths through experience and sometimes it happens automatically. However, it is up to us to discover and develop our potential powers and strengthen our life energy.