It all started with a New Year’s resolution—you know, the kind that starts strong but loses steam. At the beginning of 2023, I set the goal to read one book each month. It felt ambitious, but realistic. I even prepared a list and ordered the first three books in advance. The first quarter was all planned, and I was ready to go.
I kicked things off strong, finishing the first book before January ended. It was a short one, but I figured it would give me a motivational boost—and it did.
Then came the second book: four times longer, with dense information that needed time to digest. By the end of February, I was only halfway through, and my motivation was slipping. I’m not the type to quit, but I knew I needed to change something if I wanted to keep going.
My original plan was to read during my commute. But reading on the bus? Not the easiest. Too many distractions, too little focus. So I switched to reading only on my way home, where things were quieter, but that halved my reading time—and my progress slowed even more.
Everything changed one Saturday morning. I was on my usual hike, I listen to an interview with Cliff Weitzman, the founder of Speechify. Cliff has dyslexia and struggled with reading, so he built a text-to-voice app that converts PDFs, books, and anything on the internet into audio. It helps people like him learn faster and with less effort.
As I reached the top of the mountain, I found myself smiling. Do you know that feeling when clarity hits you unexpectedly? When you’ve been wrestling with a problem for ages and suddenly the solution feels so simple? That was it for me. The books weren’t the problem—it was the way I was trying to consume them.
That moment changed everything. I subscribed to Audible that same week, and now I finish at least one book a week. Audiobooks took some time to get used to, and I did a lot of experimenting to find my rhythm, but I’m happy to report that after a year of listening—and over 100 books later—there’s still more to improve.