For an utter age now I have been trying to read proper literature more often. There’s a pile of books on my desk, all shiny and new, but unfortunately barely even leafed through. Just waiting patiently and asking me to please give them a read, are they bad books, perhaps they’re too fat? No you’re not fat book honey, I’m just busy.

Two days ago I said, fuck it, this situation needs to be resolved, I used to read a lot, I love reading, so what’s the problem?

As it turns out the problem is that starting is hard, isn’t that always the problem? Beginnings are always hard, sometimes it’s hard even to start going to bed or, hell, start having sex (and I don’t mean when you’re a virgin, I mean on a daily basis). But there was this other problem, I still didn’t have a lot of time.

And so I came up with the concept of 20 minutes a day. Twenty minutes might seem like a lot of time at first, but think about it. 20 minutes is the kind of time you waste walking to school, going to the post office, hell, just waiting for risotto to cook takes around 20 minutes. It’s NOTHING!

Everyone’s got 20 minutes of free time in any given day.

Yeah so everyone’s got twenty minutes, obviously that’s so little time you can’t do anything with it. WRONG! You absolutely positively can do a lot of valuable stuff with that time. For instance you could read ten pages of Dickens, yes Dickens of all things, it reads slow, but in 20 minutes a lot can be done. Or you could devote 20 minutes of unadulterated attention to your children if you’ve got any, or your pets. Or you could spend the 20 minutes getting through your RSS feeds (it’s doable), or do some Pilates like you’ve been wanting to for years.

The thing is you just gotta get off your fucking lazy arse and DO IT! Go on, take 20 minutes out of your busy day and do something for yourself.

Tags: Charles Dickens, food for thought, intrigues, life