14 tips for cultivating a reading habit

June 29, 2007
by Rodney Olsen
14 Comments

Do you actively work towards fostering a reading habit? Are you one of those people who always has their face in a book?

I don’t read anywhere near as much as I would like to. I admit that I really enjoy spending time in a good book and I’ve got shelves of good books at home waiting to be read.

If I love reading so much, why do I do so little of it?

I suppose it has a lot to do with cultivating a habit of reading. I’ve always been a competent reader but I don’t ever remember being encouraged to read books when I was growing up. That means that I don’t naturally gravitate to spending huge chunks of time between the pages.

One of my fondest holiday memories was spending a week on my own in a small country town. I read seven or eight books during the week. There was nothing I had to do so I sat around and consumed the words and thoughts of a variety of authors.

The problem is fitting reading into the normal daily schedule. How does it fit around work, family and the dozens of other committments that make up our daily routines?

I was so pleased to read a recent post at HisMethod which suggested 14 tips for cultivating a reading habit. Bruce took the list from this very helpful post at LifeHack which goes into some more detail for each of 14 tips points.

1. Set times.
2. Always carry a book.
3. Make a list.
4. Find a quiet place.
5. Reduce television/Internet.
6. Read to your kid.
7. Keep a log.
8. Go to used book shops.
9. Have a library day.
10. Read fun and compelling books.
11. Make it pleasurable.
12. Blog it.
13. Set a high goal.
14. Have a reading hour or reading day.


What do think? Do you think that those tips could work for you?

What are your reading habits? What are some of the ways that you’ve cultivated a habit of reading?

Rodney Olsen

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Making time for friendship

June 29, 2007
by Rodney Olsen
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We headed out to help a friend celebrate her 40th birthday last night. We met up for dinner at Jimmy Deans Diner in Midland along with a few other families.

It was a fantastic time to just be with other people.

When we were about to head home we talked about how we needed to catch up again really soon. I hope we do.

Life can get so busy that we never quite get around to catching up with those people who mean the most to us. Do you find that? Does your time get swallowed up by the unimportant while important relationships don’t get the attention they deserve?

Are there some friends that you need to find time for this weekend? Why not put down what you’re doing for a few minutes and make a call or two to arrange meeting up for dinner or a coffee over the next few days? Go on. You’ll be so glad you did.

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Celebrating small victories

June 28, 2007
by Rodney Olsen
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Do you ever feel like celebrating small victories?

I mean really small victories.

We had a dripping tap in our house which didn’t respond well to something as simple as a new washer. The dripping just kept getting worse even after I’d braved the world of plumbing and put a new washer in the tap.

I finally got around to finding the right bits and pieces to get everything working and I sorted it out on the weekend. I grabbed a tap reseating tool and started grinding the inside of the tap a fraction of a millimetre at a time. By the time I’d finished with it, the tap no longer dripped and all was well.

I know that would be no big deal for most of the population but I’m hopeless as a handyman so it was a major triumph for me. It may have been a bit over the top to throw a party to celebrate so I had to settle for a deep sense of achivement ….. over stopping a tap from dripping.

How about you? Are there things that everyone else can do blindfolded but when you do them you feel like celebrating? Are there things that everyone else mastered years ago but you have to really work at to get anywhere?

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Taking mentoring seriously

June 27, 2007
by Rodney Olsen
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While some churches are growing, statisitcs like those in my last post suggest that the Christian church in the west is in decline.

Does that mean that people in the western world are less interested in spirituality? I don’t believe so. I think the interest is still there but often the hunger in the human heart isn’t filled by what the church is offering.

The church may not have the answer but I know that Jesus does. So how do we strip away the sterotypes and communicate what Jesus is really about and what faith in him means if people are walking away from church?

My regular Wednesday morning guest on 98.5 Sonshine FM is Ross Clifford who is the Principal of Morling College in New South Wales and current President of the Baptist Union of Australia. Each week we chat about a range of issues relating to spirituality and belief.

Ross has just returned from the latest Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization in Budapest where 360 Christian leaders from around the world met together to discuss how to reach out to the world. One of the things that has impressed Ross is the focus on mentoring. Those in leadership at Lausanne are constantly in a process of training the next group of leaders and handing the over the reigns to the next generation.

Ross believes that mentoring isn’t just about leadership. He says it gives us oppportunity to share our faith in deeper ways than we ever could from the pulpit on a Sunday morning. He believes that it fosters a deeper kind of discipleship, essential for reaching a post-Christian world.

During our discussion, Ross talked about four basic mentoring principals that are part of a book by Franklin Graham. He pointed out that all of us need to be looking for opportunity to mentor others as well as seeking others to mentor us in various areas of life.

Can I encourage you to listen to our discussion? Just click here to listen or right click here and choose to save the mp3 so that you can listen later.

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Losing my religion

June 27, 2007
by Rodney Olsen
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Australians are walking out of churches and getting on with life without God.

Figures from last year’s census have been released today and accroding to this article from News.com.au Aussies are losing their religion.

The figures, released today, revealed that 3,706,557 Australians – or 19 per
cent – said they had no religion on Census night last year, which was 3 per
cent more than the 2001 figure of 2,905,993.

Christians still make up the majority of Australians who claim a religion but other religions are growing in popularity.

Christianity is still the dominant religion, with 12.7 million
followers nationwide. But as a proportion of the population, Christianity
dipped from 71 per cent to 64 per cent.

The number of Buddhists has doubled to nearly 2 per cent of the
population, while Hinduism has also doubled in popularity since 1996 to now
account for 0.7 per cent.

Do people no longer feel a need for connection with God? Are our churches failing to impact the nation? Does the decline in those who claim to follow a religion mean that there’s less interest in spirtuality or simply less interest in what some would see as a rigid set of beliefs?

I’d really enjoy hearing your thoughts on the census information. Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section of this post.

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