Every day I sit to write or work on my laptop. Well, many days I just sit in front of my laptop and just stay scrolling on my phone or opening new windows and keep searching for all the things that come to my mind googling “Why does NYC have external Fire escapes” “what does 86 means” or scrolling Pinterest in search for inspiration for anything. All that without counting the days I spend organizing my desk, decorating the background, or literally heading out to buy a new notebook that I “need” to write my to-do list on.
Most of the time, life is not as straightforward as Monopolix; not only it’s not that easy to buy a house, Duh! But also you seek where to start and how to not get stuck. You try to find the motivation or simply procrastinate, seeking how to get distracted and be entertained by a show or a Youtube and just let go of the burden of overthinking. Well, sometimes you get lucky enough to end uplifted by a movie, a song, a documentary that actually ends up speaking to you and giving you the right inspiration needed to get things done and to get back on track, to stand up and go workout because of a particular character that evokes something to you, or to dress better the next day and head to work reminded with all the reason why you started on top of your mind.
One of the ways is also to read a book. But in reality, way too often, reading a book became assimilated to a task to do in itself, almost like an achievement of the to-do list that you could read about on an article listing the habits that successful people maintain on a daily basis (the ones that wake up at 5 in the morning and earn a million dollars before 6.30), which basically set standards so high that you might be tempted to keep up for probably no longer than two weeks before going back to a potato couch life probably more disappointed than when you started just because you feel that you weren’t able to keep up these fantastic routines.
To skip another extended reading while my aim is to share an easy way to enjoy what books have to offer, here it is. I recently found out that there is a whole bunch of free audiobooks available for everyone on Youtube, from the motivational and casual ones to the most classic and must-read in a lifetime. Here are the links for some of them:
The Subtle art of not giving a f*ck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7VM-pbk1Yk
You are a Badass by Jen Sincero: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoVtoawipSM
Big Magic by Elisabeth Gilbert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JnmIQxRZwI
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-VptYifsl4
Educated by Tara Westover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6NKkHVD2wI
The Art of War by Sun Tzu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnVdblZIkCs
1984 by George Orwell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gDmq0Rv6WU
The Meaning of Life by Dalai Lama https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpxVThzFa9M
The power of Now by Eckhart Tolle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1xQ40uaPro
Even though nothing will equal the feeling of holding a book, listening to an audiobook still has many advantages. (1) The weight: either you are at the beach, cleaning the house, grocery shopping, waiting for the doctor, or hanging lazily on the treadmill at the gym, you always have the opportunity to enjoy a good book without having to hangout everywhere with 300 pages just in case you have 5 minutes of free to read. (2) it is also an accessible format to assimilate because some days are only those where you keep reading the same sentence over and over. And (3) it is free. It’s just out there on Youtube, it’s not 15 dollars or more. So, even though it would be better to pay and encourage the authors if it’s for the worthy cause of having access to great knowledge and excellent inspiration, please feel free to indulge some exception to the right principles and values.
