I’m no fan of New Years resolutions, I find the idea of suddenly changing your ways on an arbitrary date a bit pointless and ultimately not conducive to actual IRL change. That being said the last time I did it was back in 2012 and one of my New Years goals was to read more books. Even though I hated school and got voted “class clown” 3 years in a row (big up Royal Docks Community!) I always found reading quite pleasurable, but like many others post-University the last thing I wanted to do was read another book for enjoyment purposes, that experience burned me out.

Everything changed when I randomly stumbled upon ‘The 4 Hour Week’ by @timferriss – Cringe title aside that book made me realise time is our only non-renewable resource and spending all of it glued to social media wasn’t the best use of it. I used to spend days on end scrolling through feed after feed frantically looking for something I couldn’t find. To remedy the situation I decided to commit to reading at least 2 books per month for 1 hour a day. To make things easy I scheduled my reading time around my commute to work or during my lunch breaks.

And every year since then I’ve upped the ante book by book and I’m proud to say in 2018 I managed to read a TOTAL OF 32 books and 4 audiobooks! I wasn’t sure about posting blogging about it, I didn’t want give the impression that I’m gloating or that I think I’m better than anyone, that’s not what I’m about. But my hope is this serves as motivation for the people out there who complain about the amount time they spend on their smartphones glued to social media, there is a solution. For some you reading isn’t an option, whether its going for a walk for 30-60 minutes with your phone on airplane model, whatever it is try and find something that takes you away from your screen for a designated period time I promise you your life and mental health will be better off for it.

As Theodore Roosevelt once said “Comparison is the thief of joy” – so if you’re want make one resolution this year I implore you to unplug from the internet, at least for an hour a day.