How to build a book brain in less than 66 days

Phil Knight. Elon Musk. Bill Gates. J.K. Rowling. Warren Buffett. Mark Cuban. Marissa Mayer. Charlie Munger. Oprah Winfrey. Madeleine Albright.

These are ten of the most successful and wealthiest people on the planet who have built book brains. Their love for reading is no secret. They read daily. Reading has become a common and automatic habit among highly efficient and productive people.

“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.” Mark Twain said.

If you want a better, happy, healthy or productive life, you have to read more. If you want to be financially independent, you have to find the hidden lessons, principles and proven ideas in great books.

If you are not learning anything of practical value in life, don’t expect your next life to change. You can’t step into a better future with the same mindset from yesterday. What got you here won’t get you the future you want.

Oprah Winfrey once said, “Books were my path to personal freedom.”

I learned the reading lesson five years ago. Since then, I haven’t stopped reading and learning. Everything you want is hidden in the books you are refusing to read.

There are more proven paths for a better life than you can ever imagine.

The bad news is, they are hidden in life-changing books. The good news is, you can easily access these books and change your life.

Building a book brain doesn’t have to change your schedule.

But you must be willing to adapt and embrace a new habit into your routine.

A new habit takes almost a month to become automatic. It’s sometimes more and depends on other internal and external factors.

“On average, it takes more than 2 months before a new behavior becomes automatic — 66 days to be exact,” says James Clear.

I’m a huge fan of slow progress to building a better habit. You can improve your skill level from beginner to intermediate if you embrace the consistency principle — practice the habit a few minutes every day. And in the right amount of time, the behavior will become automatic.

That’s how I’ve built both writing and reading habits. Today, I write almost every day and read every single day without fail. I read both physical books and digital ones.

If you are serious about building a book brain, you have to find a specific time to do it without fail for several days.

I read first thing in the morning and late in the evening (an hour before sleep). I’m able to block distractions and focus on reading successfully at those times.

To make deep reading work for you, identify the best time to practice.

Even if you can make just 10 minutes every day to read, it’s a good start. The trick to keeping going is to start with your favorite book.

Mark Zuckerberg picks his books “with an emphasis on learning about different cultures, beliefs, histories and technologies,” he wrote in a Facebook post. “Books allow you to fully explore a topic and immerse yourself in a deeper way than most media today. I’m looking forward to shifting more of my media diet towards reading books,” he said.

Don’t read books you don’t enjoy when you are at the early stages of building a book brain.

And don’t worry too much about missing a day without reading. You are not in the perfect reading game. A day or two without reading has no measurable long-term effect.

What’s important is to plan on getting back on track the next day. Building a book brain is a process, not a destination.

You are aiming to build a habit for life. It’s a long-term game. You are building a system that will keep delivering for the rest of your life. I don’t plan on stopping reading completely. I deeply enjoy it and will keep on reading great books for the rest of my life.

That’s why you have to choose your books carefully. If the reading process/habit becomes a chore, you will abandon it in a few weeks. So commit to a few pages every day. Make incremental progress to your goal. Don’t try to read 50 books in six months or one book a week just yet. Get the basics right. Build a solid reading engine first.

Successful readers know the value of reading — so they’ve made it a lifelong habit. And they make time for it, even if they have busy schedules. Warren Buffett spends 80% of his time reading.

Randall Bell Ph.D., the author of Me We Do Be: The Four Cornerstones of Success says, “Those who read seven or more books per year are more than 122 percent more likely to be millionaires as opposed to those who never read or only read one to three.”

Knowledge compounds — successful readers know this. They’ve built book brains because it’s one of the most effective ways to accumulate better knowledge to change the trajectory of your future.

A book brain can help you speak well, write clearly, think better, become more creative, solve problems better and make informed decisions.

66 is a good number to make a habit stick. But at the end of the day, the goal is to make reading a lifelong habit; whether it takes a few months or 365 days, you have to keep practicing.

And the only way to build a book brain is to start with Day 1. So get started today. Find the great books that will teach and instruct you to build a better life, and don’t forget to maintain a curious mind.

This article originally appeared in Medium.