It has been a while since I wrote my last blog post. The past years many things happened and some things didn’t happen. That’s life, not everything can be planned in full detail upfront, you sometimes just have to go with the flow. I’m not saying you should accept life as is, on the contrary actually, you should fight for your life and get the most out of it.

Your life is a gift. Go make it count! – Michael Hyatt

Based on this life motto I’ve set a new goal for this year.

My goal: reading about 3 books per week, that means about 150 books this year.

Why so many books?

As a person, I’m always looking for ways to grow and learn more about the world we live in. Books usually give you additional knowledge and experience. Additionally, it improves your vocabulary and it improves your communication skills. Moreover, some books can be very inspirational and can give you extra motivation in your life. Besides, it will give you a different perspective on life. Everyone has their own world view, which is usually biased. Did you know that most of the CEOs nowadays read about 50 books a year?

How and when to read a book?

During the day I don’t have much time since I have a full-time job. So I can only read during my free time in the evenings or during the weekend. Furthermore, I’m not a fast reader and easily get tired/bored when reading lots of pages. So that’s a bit of a challenge for me, but luckily I found something nice! Instead of reading I should listen to audio books. This should enable me to “read” 3 books per week. It has several interesting benefits for me:

• You can read faster
• You can listen while doing other things
• Hearing someone else talking to you, instead of your own reading voice, can be very relaxing, inspiring and motivational.

There are a lot of good audiobooks available online. However, buying about 150 books is a serious investment. On average a book cost about 10 euro, so I would end up with paying 1500 euro on books. Instead of buying them separately, it’s better to go for a service provider that provides audio books for a monthly fee. There are several audio book providers available like Storytel and Audible. I decided to go for Storytel since it’s cheaper and there is no limit on how many audiobooks you can listen per month. My intent is to listen to a book when doing my household chores or when travelling to work/home.

How is it going?

Initially, I thought my goal was crazy, but surprisingly it’s going extremely well. I started with listening to audio books about 3 weeks ago and I’ve already listened to more than 20 books. I noticed that listening to audio books is quite addictive. Every time when I have finished a book I’ve gained some new insights and inspiration, and immediately want to listen to more. Below I have listed my current top 3 audio books.

Top 3 audio books

1. Free Will – Sam Harris
2. Unfu*k Yourself – Gary John Bishop
3. The Virgin Way – Richard Branson

To me, listening to some audio books is like having a mentor sitting/standing next to you. Especially when the writer is also the reader, this is the case for the books listed above. I can definitely recommend to read or listen to those books.

Reading books can be very refreshing, inspirational and an eyeopener to you, it will definitely change the way you look at life. I’m definitely not planning to stop doing this. I realize that this goal is more and more becoming like a habit actually. Now if you don’t mind, I will stop writing and continue listening to my audio books.