I often try to force myself into good habits – running, eating healthy, learning new languages, etc. And lots of the time, I manage for like a week or so and then it’s just back to normal.

It is really hard to create new habits, especially when I get no joy from them. It’s even worse when I have an expectation that I should be able to plow through while being bored and/or miserable but I just find I can’t.

This is even worse if it’s a habit I was once good at, but that I’ve let lapse, and now I’m not longer where I was.

Let’s talk about reading. Reading is really good for you. There are a lot of studies that reading to kids is like the key factor in how smart they are likely to be.

And I was lucky and grew up a reader. I would devour books. A very common punishment that worked well in my house for my parents was refusing to take me to the library.

Not only that, but I liked to read so much that my parents could even do things like say they would pick a book I had to read each time we went to the library and as long as I could get all the other books I wanted to read, this was a tolerable irritation to me (my dad would always pick the most boring non-fiction books).

Even as an adult, when I worked on the cruise ships, we would have giant production shows some days but comedians who needed nearly nothing from us the next. On those days, I would sit in a wing with a book, just in case something went wrong.

I still loved devouring trashy fiction books (Stephen King is still my favorite author), but I liked a challenge back then too. I would read one “easy” fiction book and then a more difficult classic. I read all of Jude the Obscure on one contract, which promised “the most shocking twist in literary history” on the book flap when I picked it up in the book store. Arguably, it might have been, but man oh man was it a long and tedious journey to get to that twist.

But I sometimes get stuck on the idea that I used to be able to read Jude the Obscure while multitasking at work. So shouldn’t I still be able to?

I have found that my ability to focus while reading has depleted like crazy. Honestly, my ability to focus on things in general isn’t what it used to be, which makes me very anxious and is something I constantly think about how I can fix.

And, fun story, lots of my research points back to reading again. Reading helps with focus. TVs and computer screens and especially phones do not.

So I grabbed a book and started reading and I would get distracted after a minute or read for a little while one night and never come back to it.

The last few months, I rethought this project and realized that when I first started reading, it was because I liked the stories. I didn’t start out with Jude the Obscure. So I took a step back and thought – let’s see what Stephen King’s been doing. Let’s see what Janet Evanovich is doing.

And it worked. Not like a charm. I couldn’t suddenly concentrate like gangbusters again, but slowly over the last few months, my ability to sit and read for hours at a time has been returning.

Because I made it fun. We like doing things that are fun, like betting on Slot Games Casino or baking a cake we know we can devour later. It’s all about the enjoyment – if you want to make a change, that’s the first thing to focus on.

When I think of personal finance, some of the things I did in the beginning were things that I find fun (and I’m going to 100% admit most people might not find some of these things fun). I designed Excel sheets for tracking my budget and net worth (I like making spreadsheets).

I also liked all the little challenges that a lot of more “advanced” personal finance folks make fun of. They’re all like, “what does a single no spend week get you?” Well, in my case, I was just curious if I could do it. And it did save me some money.

And then I was curious about what else I could do. And after I managed that challenge, I was curious about what else I could do. And these challenges helped me find some frugal ways I liked and some frugal ways I hated, but I had fun doing them too.

Fun really helps me when trying to set a new good habit. It might not be the most efficient way to get started with something new, or the best way for an immediate payoff on the habit, but I think that for me it’s a better way to encourage a long term commitment to the project.

Now if anyone knows how to make learning Russian fun, drop me a comment and let me know how, ok? Cause I’ve been struggling with that for like 20 years.