20 Inspiring Quotes from “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo

20 Inspiring Quotes from “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle

20 Inspiring Quotes from “The Obstacle Is The Way” by Ryan Holiday

20 Inspiring Quotes from “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius

20 Inspiring Quotes from “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne

20 Inspiring Quotes from “The Power of Positive Thinking” by Norman Vincent Peale

20 Inspiring Quotes from “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell

20 Inspiring Quotes from “The 4-Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferriss

20 Inspiring Quotes from “Think And Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill

20 Inspiring Quotes from “Rich Dad Poor Dad” by Robert T. Kiyosaki

20 Inspiring Quotes from “Who Moved My Cheese” by Spencer Johnson

20 Inspiring Quotes from “Getting Things Done” by David Allen

20 Inspiring Quotes from “Deep Work” by Cal Newport

20 Inspiring Quotes from “The 5 Love Languages” by Gary Chapman

20 Inspiring Quotes from “How To Win Friends And Influence People” by Dale Carnegie

20 Inspiring Quotes from “The Magic Of Thinking Big” by David Joseph Schwartz

20 Inspiring Quotes from “Quiet” by Susan Cain

20 Inspiring Quotes from “Big Magic ” by Elizabeth Gilbert

20 Inspiring Quotes from “Daring Greatly” by Brene Brown

20 Inspiring Quotes from “How To Stop Worrying And Start Living” by Dale Carnegie

20 Inspiring Quotes from “Man’s Search For Meaning” by Viktor Frankl

20 Inspiring Quotes from “The Courage to be Disliked” by Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga

20 Inspiring Quotes from “The 48 Laws Of Power” by Robert Greene

20 Inspiring Quotes from “You Are A Badass” by Jen Sincero

20 Inspiring Quotes from “Girl, Wash Your Face” by Rachel Hollis

20 Inspiring Quotes from “The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck” by Mark Manson

20 Inspiring Quotes from “Best Self” by Mike Bayer

20 Inspiring Quotes from “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz

20 Inspiring Quotes from “Thinking Fast And Slow” by Daniel Kahneman

20 Inspiring Quotes from “Atomic Habits” by James Clear

20 Inspiring Quotes from “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho

It gives you new ideas and helps your store information better. When you read a lot of books, you can connect the new ideas with the older ones already stored in your brain and you can form connections that will expand your intellectual horizons. 

That’s why reading is not simply a hobby. It’s a superpower. But even though we know how important it is to read books, we never manage to find time to fit in in our schedule. This post discusses some tips you can apply right now to read a book for thirty minutes each day without making any major changes to your schedule. Read on to know to build this amazing new habit that will result in rich dividends down the line.

1. Read before going to bed

A wonderful tactic to reduce your screentime as well as getting more reading done is to replace your phone with a book at bedtime. The next time you retire for the day, keep your phone in another room and take a book or an e-reader instead.

This way, you get some reading done before going to sleep and make sure that the time you would have otherwise spent mindlessly scrolling through social media is doing something productive.

2. Read after waking up

Another benefit of going to sleep with a book by your side is that you won’t have your phone at your bedside to check your notifications when you wake up the next day. Instead, you can pick up your book and start reading from where you last left the story.

Reading before starting your day is a great way to fill your mind with positivity and buzzing your consciousness with ideas.

4. Read while having meals

Practicing mindfulness while eating is great, but an effective way to get more reading done is to keep your e-reader propper up in front of you while having a meal. While this isn’t a great strategy if you share your mealtimes with family or friends, but can be a great way to dispel the loneliness and get the most out of your meal times if you live alone.

I’d have suggested keeping a book open while you eat, but turning the pages is hard with one hand, especially if you’re reading a paperback. And thus, having an e-reader solved the problem.

5. Set a reading goal

Websites like Goodreads are a great way to challenge yourself to read a fixed number of books each year. They have the option where you can set a reading goal each year and mark your progress as you complete each book.

Since Goodreads is a form of social media for book lovers, it’s also a great way to hold yourself accountable and meet fellow book-lover friends.

6. Track your reading habit

This is slightly different from the previous step. While in the previous step, you mark off each book you finish as you inch towards completing your reading goal; here, you congratulate yourself for sticking to your reading habit each day of the week. The former focuses on reading more books while the current one is focused on building a reading habit.

You can download a habit tracker and start marking how many pages you read each day. This will help you feel accomplished for small achievements and serve as an invaluable tool towards keeping you more accountable for your reading goals.

“[Our studies found that] Open Monitoring meditation induces a control state that promotes divergent thinking, a style of thinking that allows many new ideas of being generated. Second, Focused Attention meditation does not sustain convergent thinking, the process of generating one possible solution to a particular problem.” ~ Colzato, Lorenza S. et al.

Dr. Lorenza Colzato is a cognitive scientist and researcher at the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition in the Netherlands. Her recent research revealed that meditation can boost your creativity. Specifically, Colzato found that open monitoring meditation (such as when you notice different thoughts and feelings) improves divergent thinking, which is the kind of thought process that helps you brainstorm many ideas. Further, she suspects that meditation enhances creative thinking by improving people’s moods. We asked her a few questions about her research, which you can read in full here.

What inspired your research?

Steve Jobs, who is a very inspirational person. He is arguably one of the most creative minds of our time and he dedicated his life to Soto Zen Buddhist meditation practice.

Steve Jobs has often referred to meditation as the main source of creativity. So, I wanted to test the idea that indeed meditation makes you more creative.

What practical insights can someone take from your study?

The practical lesson for people is that if they need to do a brain storm session at work, they could do an open monitoring meditation (such as Vipassana) before it. By doing so, they will be able  to generate even more new ideas. So, in this respect practitioners could change “when” they meditate.

Do you have any future research planned?

Currently we are investigating how much practice is necessary to obtain meditation effects on creativity and whether this effect is due to a trait (of being an individual interested in meditation), a state (ad-hoc induced by meditation), or both. To test for these possibilities, we are comparing a group of practitioners and a group of novices.

[Tweet “Meditation For Creativity: an interview with cognitive scientist @LorenzaColzato”]

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