A Good-Habit How-To
November 8, 2007
Now, I know you’re well on your way in your addiction to Instructify… I mean, let’s face it, the three posts a day are like candy for your RSS feed! But not all reading habits are this easy to develop. Books have a way of looking very comfortable on their shelves, and the 15 minutes you might have free over coffee in the morning seems an awfully short time to be worth disturbing them. But 15 minutes (or 10 or even 5!) might just be enough time to kick-start a new reading regimen.
At lifehack.org you can find “14 Ways to Cultivate a Lifetime Reading Habit” – a list with tricks both proactive and Pavlovian. This probably isn’t the best site to send a student who needs help getting through Jane Eyre , as the suggestions are geared toward reading for pleasure, and some of the advice may be counter-productive (ex. “If you are forcing yourself through a book, consider abandoning it and finding one that you’ll really love”). But suggestions like “Set Times” or “Find a Quiet Place” would be just as useful for assigned reading, so you could get some ideas here and then impart them to your struggling students yourself.
You don’t have to adopt the whole list, but give just a few of these tips a try, and maybe soon you’ll need a book in the morning as much as you do that coffee. -MARIELLE PRINCE
