How You Can Read Every Book By Charles Dickens On Only Work Breaks
2020 was a rough year for many people, and if you are one of them, take a small bit of time this year to read through the works of one of English’s greatest writers. If you feel like you’ve wasted a lot of time in life, you can’t possibly argue reading Charles Dickens is a waste of time. There’s nothing quite like excellent prose, description, characters, and the mind of a genius who lived a lot of life.
Can you read through all of Dicken’s novels in one year? The answer is, not only that you can, but you won’t have to cut into any of your free time. Sound too good to be true?
I’ve already done the math. If you read for only 30 minutes a day, you can read through all of: Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Pickwick Papers, A Tale of Two Cities, Little Dorrit, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times, A Christmas Carol, Dombey and Son, Martin Chuzzlewit, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Old Curiosity Shop, and Our Mutual Friend.
That’s a lot of great works. Here’s what you do:
1. Download a phone tracker app. I use OffScreen for the iphone.
By tracking your phone usage, you will quickly learn how much time you spend looking at your phone. I average around 2 and half hours. You may average more or less, but chances are you use a phone and spend time on it. If you do that, then chances are some of that time you spend on it is unproductive. Can you find half an hour in there?
2. Download the Kindle app if you don’t already have it.
The great thing about Charles Dickens books is that they’re all free to read. I prefer the Kindle app to read, but some of you may prefer another ebook reader. I am telling you to use a kindle app on your phone because this is where you will be doing your reading. If you have physical copies of the book, that’s fine, you are already a reader and can probably cuddle up with a book at night.
3. Work a 9–5? Do you get two 15 minute breaks? That’s when you read.
You don’t have to kill yourself reading Dickens. Some people prefer to immerse themselves in a book for hours at a time, but you don’t have that luxury (if you did, then go start reading). If you commute on a train, you may already have all the time you need to read Dickens. If not, take up reading as a new habit during your work breaks. It’s a nice way to decompress from the stress of a job and relax your brain a little more than the stimulation of social media or texting friends may. You can pad your 30 minutes with a few minutes from your lunch, or simply, take the time in your breaks to meditate and clear your mind, and use your lunch hour (or half hour) to read. Bonus: if you have an hour long lunch, you can read all of Dickens’ works in half a year.
4. Relax when you get home, you already met your reading goal.
The best part of calculating how long would it take to read something is saving yourself from the anxiety of not doing enough. If you are reading this article on Medium, chances are you a little bit into self-improvement. Maybe this year you want to get more reading done, but you don’t know where to start. Perhaps you already read a lot, but have neglected the classics. Maybe you have only read one or two of Dickens’ books and have deprived yourself of the rest of his enriching writing.
You will not be wasting your time, instead you will be training yourself to find productivity in the nooks and crannies of life. Maybe you don’t want to read Dickens on your breaks, and for that I’m sad, but if you want to know my formula to calculate other works you may want to read, this is it:
(Total number of pages of all books you want to read) divide by (60). Then, divide the number of (hours) by (365). The number you end up with is the average time you need to read per day. For Dickens, my number was .41, or a little less than half an hour a day. Happy reading.
