How to make yourself crave hard books (not just want to want to read them)

How creative intellectual projects make my pragmatic brain choose books

You love to read mind-expanding books.

But you rarely do it.

I know the frustration.

Just yesterday, I was sitting on my couch, tuckered out from a writing session, scrolling mindlessly through YouTube shorts.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw War and Peace sitting on the coffee table. At that moment, I desperately wanted myself to pick it up.

And yet, I kept on scrolling.

I just couldn’t tear myself away from the YouTube shorts feed to do it.

In other words, I wanted to want to read it. I knew from past reading sessions that reading it would be enriching and intellectually stimulating. I wanted to live up to my identity as a reader, and yet I just couldn’t choose the book.

How do we fix that?

How do we make the gravitational pull of books on our psyche stronger than that of our phones or other mediums of fast-paced, dopamine-pumping entertainment? How do we increase the rate at which we choose reading as an activity in our spare time?

There are many good solutions to this problem, from deleting social media apps to reading more in line with your curiosity.

But today, I want to focus on one powerful technique that has increased the likelihood I choose reading over other activities.

It’s called creative intellectual projects.

If you implement them, at least occasionally, into your self-education, you’ll be amazed at how often you feel the urge to read.

Moreover, it’ll deepen the reading experience and help you retain more of what you read.

Before I get into the technique and its benefits for your reading life, we need to understand why it’s so hard to choose reading hard books as an activity in the first place.

Our pragmatic nature and how it affects our reading habits

All humans, to some extent, are pragmatic creatures.

We are drawn to activities that will have a high fitness payoff. We feel the urge to take actions that are low-risk, easy, and likely to result in some concrete, desirable outcome.

Pragmatism is a survival strategy rooted in our evolutionary biology and amplified by the modern world’s obsession with efficient use of time.

The practical, future-based evaluation of activities is a tendency most of us cannot avoid. It’s part of us, whether we like it or not. So we might as well use it to our advantage.

Why do I bring this all up?

Because that pragmatic way of thinking is exactly what makes it hard to justify choosing a book.

Compared to other activities, like mowing the lawn or posting something clever on social media, where the result is right there in front of you, and your sense of progress is high, the positive impact of 30 minutes studying philosophy or classic literature is much more difficult to spot.

The invisible effects of book-reading

Let’s compare what happens after a weight-lifting session to what happens after a 45-minute reading session with a challenging book.

During a weight-lifting session, gym-goers get to add weight to the bar. And afterwards, they can admire their muscle pump in the mirror.

The added weight and the pump are signs that their strenuous action (going to the gym and lifting) is impacting their big goals (gaining muscle and strength). The payoff of the effort is clear.

And that’s highly motivating. It makes the gym-goer feel the urge to hit the gym again tomorrow.

Now let’s compare the effects of reading hard books.

In most cases, unless you are being tested or part of a book club, the positive results of a 45-minute session with Plato or Virginia Woolf are much more challenging to discern.

You cannot remove your scalp and inspect your brain for increased gray matter in the region associated with whatever subject you just read about.

You cannot really tell if you are now smarter or progressing on big goals like deeper expertise, improved critical thinking, or better understanding of the world and yourself.

You may feel calmer. Perhaps a bit more thoughtful.

But these benefits are mild and often hard to notice and appreciate, especially if, right after shutting the book, you must immediately return to he hustle of daily life, attend a work meeting, or plunge back into social media.

This problem of “invisible results” is especially common for autodidacts

Self-learners don’t have the opportunity to raise their hand in class to show off what they learned last night during their bout with Hemingway or Freud.

Therefore, in self-education, it can be difficult to stick to a reading habit precisely because we cannot sense the fruits of our labor.

And this inability to see the results generates doubt about whether reading Freud is actually getting us closer to our goals of becoming sharper and better educated.

Even advanced autodidacts and readers sometimes have these flare-ups of doubt.

I know I still wonder:

• Am I actually learning the material?

• Is it making me smarter?

• Is reading this book helping me achieve my intellectual and creative goals?

In sum, the results of reading are often completely hidden from sight.

And therefore, the pragmatic part of our brain doesn’t let us read, despite how misguided it is in its cost/benefit analysis.

It’s misguided because it’s missing data.

We need to give our brains evidence that the hard work of grappling with a text is leading to meaningful results, like learning, understanding, and intellectual transformation.

Then, in theory, our mind will decide to read hard books at a higher rate. The pull of books will be stronger.

So how do we do that?

How do we make the results of our reading clear and obvious?

Use creative intellectual projects to make the results of your reading clear as day

Writers, teachers, creators, and students have an advantage when it comes to motivating themselves to read.

If they want to perform well in their craft and produce good work, they need to hit the books.

If a teacher wants to effectively engage and educate students in their upcoming lecture on War and Peace, they have to study and learn War and Peace.

For those in intellectual professions, reading books is often a necessity, not an option.

Moreover, they are working in an environment where they can see the rewards of their reading. The teacher, talking about War and Peace with a student, can actually hear how lucidly they speak on the subject, not to mention see the student’s reaction.

Herein lies the key to making yourself want to read more:

Attach your reading to exciting, creative intellectual projects. A project is one of the best ways to increase a book’s gravitational pull on your psyche.

You don’t have to be a professional teacher or a writer to teach and write. You don’t have to make a living from your intellectual work to justify integrating occasional creative intellectual projects into your life.

A project that forces you to read, think, and create is an enriching and fulfilling challenge that everyone should take part in.

A creative intellectual project could be any of the following:

• Writing Substack essays about every classic novel you read

• Creating a YouTube channel about political philosophy

• Joining a book club and engaging in live discussions

• Journaling about the ideas you come across in your reading

• Building a product using the knowledge you’ve acquired in your reading

• DIY courses where you have to write a final essay

• Teaching students, either in person or online

Any project that will make the results of your reading tangible so that your pragmatic brain is convinced the effort is paying off—so that it can see how much you’re learning and growing intellectually.

If you can attach the project to some larger personal or career goal, like helping your community, solving a problem in your life, or becoming an author, the book that helps you accomplish the project will become even more enticing. Because now, that book isn’t just helping you finish a high-quality project—it’s helping you change your life.

To illustrate how these projects encourage you to read, here’s an example from my own reading life

These past few days, whenever I have free time, I find myself wandering over to the 600-page James Madison biography.

It happens naturally without the exertion of much willpower. I’m like a lion drawn to the watering hole.

The reason it’s easy for me to choose reading this book over television is partly that it’s fascinating, but, in cases when I’m tired, fascination doesn’t cut it.

My creative intellectual project—an essay about his intellectual life—steps in to pull me when curiosity isn’t available and energy is low.

If I want to write an essay that performs well and inspires my audience, I have to read the book. I’ve given myself no other choice.

But creative intellectual projects don’t just motivate you to read by getting you to obsess over the potential future payoff.

Creative intellectual projects also make reading more fun

The actual act of reading also becomes extremely engrossing and energizing when you attach it to an exciting project.

You become laser-focused.

You start to see patterns that’ll help you answer questions.

You generate new ideas from your reading.

For example, with the Madison biography, I’m on the hunt for anecdotes and details I can use in my essay. And I find this experience enjoyable, and so I find myself going back to the book more than the other books I’m reading at the moment.

The finished project is the ultimate motivator

And, of course, when I finally produce the essay, I’ll have a clear indicator that my hours spent reading were well worth it.

I can see the positive results of my studies right there on the page. I can see how much I learned, how much my mind changed, how many new ideas and concepts are floating around in my brain.

This proof will, in turn, motivate me to read another book.

I’m like our ancestor who spent hours scouting the movement patterns of a rogue warthog, and then, days later, speared it and dragged it back to camp.

I’ve learned that the time-consuming, cognitively-demanding action, reading, is not only mentally stimulating and emotionally moving; it can also help me pull off challenging creative and intellectual goals.

And so, in the future, I’ll be more likely to choose reading over other activities.

Reading buddies, book clubs, and online learning communities

Engaging in conversations about the book is another way to make the results of your reading beyond a shadow of a doubt.

In addition to giving you a place to show yourself (and others) what you’ve learned, group discussions and book clubs also act as great social-pressure accountability mechanisms.

To join the conversation and not sound like a moron, you have to actually read the assigned book.

A creative intellectual project will also help you deeply learn and remember what you read

An intellectual, creative project will not only inspire you to read more often.

It will also improve your ability to retain what you’ve read.

After all, doing an intellectual creative project is a form of self-testing—one of the best learning techniques for moving information into your long-term memory.

To complete the project, whether it’s an essay or a conversation, you must recall what you have studied (active recall) and put it into your own words (summarization).

Both mental actions increase the likelihood you’ll remember what you’ve read.

Pragmatism vs reading for the love of stories, ideas, and the life of the mind

In an ideal world, at some point in your self-education journey, you will fall so deeply in love with reading hard and mind-expanding books that thoughts of future payoff will barely fall into your “how do I spend my time?” equation.

Instead, you’ll pick them up out of sheer excitement for the activity itself rather than what the activity helps you achieve.

But even then, there will come times when the difficult book doesn’t seem worth the effort.

There will be times when your curiosity is out for lunch, and that pragmatic you has taken over.

In those moments, that project you’re working on might be the thing that tips the scales in favor of the book, not to mention keep you from choosing the unhealthy, highly addictive forms of media you’re trying to avoid.