How to Get Out of a Reading Slump
There’s no right way to get out of a reading slump, but when I tell you there are many ways that could work for you, I mean it. The problem with a reading slump is that it seems to come out of nowhere. I know I’ve experienced them a time or two in my own life. It feels defeating to look at a stack of books and not feel inspired to read one of them. More often than not, it feels like nothing is going to be able to pull you out of that reading slump, but I want to offer some light approaches to change up your reading routine so you’ll feel excited about reading again.
Identify the Cause of the Reading Slump
I can smell a reading slump coming from a mile away when I start to notice repetition in what I’m reading. Whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, when I can start to predict how something is going to go, or if I notice that several non-fiction authors are citing the same references over and over again, I find myself pulling away from the work. When I used to read business books, self-help books and professional development books like they were going out of style, I was enthralled with what I was learning. At the height of my business development years, I was reading at least three books a week.
I certainly wasn’t in a reading slump. I couldn’t get enough of what I was reading. Of course, I was learning so many new things and was taking the time to apply what I had been reading. But then something interesting started to happen: I noticed myself complaining about the fact that I hadn’t read anything new or insightful for a while. Every book I picked up was citing the same references, the same business bros, and giving the same advice. It becomes really hard to continue to grow a business when the advice well has seemingly dried up.
Of course, I thought it was me, so I kept reading for a while, hoping to find some new information. Despite my continued desire to read new information, I just kept coming up against the same old advice. It wasn’t the fault of the authors of course. They were just writing what they knew and what they knew people wanted to hear, but it did mean I had to start looking outside of the same circles of information to get what I needed.
Identify What You Need Instead of What You’re Getting
Once I knew that the typical business advice book wasn’t going to cut it for me anymore, I realized I needed to take some time to think about what it was I was looking to learn. Until that point, I had been living in a cycle of read > learn > apply and then I’d start doing it all over again. But because I was basically just learning new information all the time and trying to apply it to my business to make more money, I wasn’t coming back and following up on what was actually working. I was growing for the sake of growing without stopping to ask if I actually needed this information to continue to grow.
When I took some time to consider what was next, albeit in order to identify what books to read to get to the next level in business, I discovered that I actually didn’t want to learn anything new. Shocker, I know, especially as an experienced adult educator. It never occurred to me that I might get to a point where I didn’t want to learn anything new. And it broke my heart a little bit when I had that thought.
But the truth was I didn’t want to keep piling on the information just for the sake of having new information if I wasn’t sure how the existing information was serving me. So I did the thing we all fear: I stopped reading. But I stopped reading on purpose.
Taking a Different Action to Get a Different Result
Instead of buying another business book to take my business to the next level, I started digging into my daily journals to see how I’d been applying the information I was learning. I started listening to business podcasts instead of reading books to try to shake up the variety and get some new and different voices in my head, and I signed up for a few classes online to learn some skills instead of just reading about these skills.
And the most amazing thing happened: the coaches, consultants and gurus I was learning from were citing the same damn books I had already read! I was still stuck in a loop of hearing about the same successful business owners (mostly white men from San Francisco) and it became increasingly clear to me that I needed to get out of this warp zone and do something different.
That was back in 2020. I’d been in business for several years full time and even longer on a part-time, side-hustle basis. I’d gotten my business to a point where it was functioning and I was mostly satisfied with what I’d created. But I also felt burnt out from trying to get to the next thing. I was constantly trying to learn and apply without taking a break or stopping to check in with myself to make sure I was still creating something I wanted to create. The pandemic was all the rage and the scary part about it was how much was unknown. It was impossible to say what was going to happen, especially to small business owners.
Let the Learning Guide You
In what now feels like fate, I decided to take my business in a different direction. I stopped selling one-on-one coaching, digital courses, and workshops to entrepreneurs, and I started focusing on consulting services for non-profits looking to get their services online. It was an easy transition and luckily, my business not only survived the pandemic, but it thrived during it. Once I decided to go in a different direction, it became easier for me to choose new books to read because I needed to learn about new areas of interest.
For example, I was no longer reading about how to market a digital business: I was reading about how to grow a consulting firm. I was no longer reading about how to scale through automation. I was reading about how to hire employees to do the majority of the work for me.
Instead of reading about how to time block my tasks to be more efficient, I was reading about how to do deep work. I found myself reading at a rate I hadn’t done in years. And it was invigorating again because I was able to apply new information to my business to get a new result. This time, I was getting clearer on what I was building and trying to grow, not just growth for the sake of growth.
Kicking the Productivity Trends
One of the things I noticed during my reading slump was how much guilt I had about not reading new materials. I realized that social media has trained us to think we should be constantly moving and doing and while I am a mover and a doer, there are plenty of times when I just want to relax too.
I found it difficult to sit with my thoughts during quiet moments when I was neither moving, nor doing, and if I’d try to drown out the noise in my head with social media, I felt even worse about myself because everyone was talking about how many books they read that week. It was then that I realized and then became annoyed by the fact that there is a consumption problem with books and an expectation to be constantly spending money on knowledge. Ironic, I know, especially coming from an adult educator, but that’s how I felt. I felt like if I didn’t have a book in my hand all the time, I was wasting my time.
It took seeing the crazy amount of books people had on their shelves, thanks to BookTok or Bookstagram, for me to realize that we’ve gamified reading. Whereas I was reading to be better at my job and run my business, some people were reading because of who they thought it made them out to be. I found myself questioning whether or not people could actually read that many books and if so, were they actually applying what they were learning?
I had taken my reading to a level that made me resent it a bit and I worried that I’d never get back into it. But then I found smutty romance novels and I fully understood why people had row after row of books on shelves, and I could see why people felt the need to buy the next book and keep up with the trends. Much to the dismay of my bank account.
How Shifting Genres Saved Me From My Reading Slump
I hadn’t read a book since university, and if we’re being fully transparent, the truth is I barely read a book in university. That seems like a far cry from the truth because I majored in English Literature, but it is the truth. I didn’t claim to be valedictorian of my class. Yes, I attended university. I did well enough and then I left and never thought about reading fiction for another 15 years.
It wasn’t until 2020 when I found myself sighing heavily at the thought of reading another business book about time management that I started reading romance novels. At first, they seemed silly. And I was kind of embarrassed to order one online, but I immediately fell in love with the storytelling aspect. Something we learn in business is vital to our success: we need to be epic storytellers if we’re ever going to succeed in the sea of noise that is the marketing economy. But there was something so fantastic about a romance novel that I dove in, head first, and read over 100 romance novels within the year.
How My Reading Slump Helped Me Shift Gears into Fiction Authorship
As I was reading these smutty romance novels (the smuttier, the better, to be clear) I found myself discovering some of the same problems in my business reading: there were repeatable themes, ideas, and even characters felt like they were being lathered, rinsed and repeated in some cases! But that’s because fiction books also cater to what’s working and what people want to read.
I discovered that romance novels, like non-fiction books, followed a pattern, a plot line, and there were certain expectations that needed to be considered for a book to a best seller. Like any lifelong learner would do, I started studying these books to understand their themes and patterns and eventually applied what I learned in writing six of my own romance novels.
I’d always wanted to write a romance novel, as cheeky as that may sound. It was on my bucket list for years and I’d had several people offer to help me whenever I’d mention it in passing, but once I started reading them, I quickly realized that writing wasn’t just something I was naturally good at. It was something I could continue to develop and refine and apply in different ways.
As a result, I hauled out a shitty first draft of a manuscript I’d written years earlier and started applying much of what I’d read in over 100 romance novels to my own writing. And by the time I was finished, I’d practically created my own course in writing romance novels. The formula worked so well for me that I ended up writing six complete novels, over two complete trilogies. And then I promptly started writing a seventh novel.
You Don’t Need to Write a Book to Get Out of a Reading Slump
Of course, I’m not saying you need to write a book to get out of a reading slump, but I am saying that if you paid attention to what’s boring you to death about what you’re reading, you might find that there’s a gap somewhere that can be filled. For me, it was finding new and interesting ways to apply skills I already had in new arenas.
For you, it might be exploring a topic you’ve never thought you’d be interested in before. Maybe you’re also reading endless business books looking for a golden nugget of advice, but if you turned your brain off for a while and read a smutty romance novel, you might find a character has a similar problem to you and solves it in a unique and interesting way. Or, you might take a class to learn a skill you never had interest in developing and then apply those skills to what you’re trying to do now. The results will be dictated by the approach you take, so when you take a different approach, you get a different result.
Finding Your Way Back to Your Love of Reading
I’ve since found my way back to business books in recent months, after nearly three years of not reading a single one, but they came in a different form this time. Instead of buying the latest bestseller advice book, or seeing what influencers were talking about online, I turned to audiobooks. I hadn’t bothered to get into audiobooks before because I thought I wouldn’t like it when someone read to me, but it turns out, I love it. And I can simply pick a book and see where it takes me.
Sure, I do specific searches for specific topics, but I’m more open to what titles might come up if I change my search slightly. There’s loads of trending books on money, for example, but I made an effort to choose ones I wouldn’t normally choose. I ended up reading books about spells, class and race, side hustles and politics. These topics spoke to me in the moments so I followed that inspiration and I learned some pretty incredible things I wouldn’t have if I’d just gone back to listening to the same old kind of books I’d been reading years earlier.
So if you’re experiencing a reading slump and you’re looking for ways to shake things up just know that you might be one decision away from something new and amazing. But in order to find that new and amazing thing, you have to keep looking. Take the break you need, and then come back stronger than ever by choosing different. Pick something a little out of reach. And see where it takes you.
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