You turn off a TV show if it’s boring. You stop eating food that doesn’t taste good. You unfollow people when you realize their content is useless.
Life is too short to read books you don’t enjoy reading.
My rule is 100 pages minus your age. Say you’re 30 years old—if a book hasn’t captivated you by page 70, stop reading it.
2) Keep A Commonplace Book
In his book, Old School, Tobias Wolf’s semi-autobiographical character takes the time to type out quotes and passages from great books to feel great writing come through him.
I do this almost every weekend in what I call a “commonplace book”— a collection of quotes, ideas, stories and facts that I want to keep for later. It’s made me a much better writer and a wiser person.