Seven minutes a day. That is the amount of time the average American spends reading according to Jason Merkoski in Burning the Page. What I suspect this means is that many Americans do not read at all, other than texts on their phones and Facebook status updates. The truth is though, even our spouses may be getting shortchanged by our addiction to our phones and social media.  A Daily Mail story indicates we spend more time on our phones than with our spouses (119 to 97 minutes per day).

What I wonder about is how this changes our capacity to think and imagine. Visual media does so much of our imagining for us. What happens to the richness of our interior lives when our imaginations are not captured by great stories? And what happens to our capacity for critical thinking and dealing with complex ideas when everything is reduced to soundbites and 144 character snippets?

Reading more is not a problem for me (!), but here are some thoughts (assuming one wants to read more) for finding a few more minutes to read in a day (just don’t take them away from a significant other!):

1. Online and smartphone activity can be a huge time sink. Don’t always carry your phone, particularly when you come home from work. Consider setting limits to how often you check messages.

2. Find something your really like to read–don’t force yourself to read something that you think you “should” read.

3. Carry that book, or magazine, or the e-reader it is loaded on in your bag so you can pull it out when you have a few minutes over lunch, on public transportation, at the airport or while you wait for an appointment.

4. Some find they can read and work out on an exercise bike or treadmill.

5. One less TV show a week could mean 30 minutes to an hour more time to read. Do you really need to watch another season of American Idol?

How have you found time to read? When were you last engrossed with a book? And what was it your were reading? Chances are, finding time wasn’t a problem…