If you’re a guy and you’re anything like me, you do NOT like to read. When I pick up a book, it takes me only a few pages to start dozing off. Either that or my mind starts wandering and I forget the last few paragraphs I just read. Well, that has changed for me a little bit, now, and I have a theory why.

Every year, for Christmas, my parents like to give us money to spend on whatever gift we want. It just so happens that my grandmother (98 years old), also gives us money. I even still get money from my parents for my birthday. Well, this year I saved up. I didn’t spend my birthday money and then combined with my Christmas money, I bought myself a tablet. The Google Nexus 7 to be more precise. One of the reasons I wanted a tablet is because I wanted to use it in place of reading music at the piano. I was able to use it for that purpose last night and it worked out beautifully!

Our church (The Ark Church in Conroe, TX) uses Planning Center Online (PCO) to plan and organize its services. One of the features is that you can upload music so that the music team cash download it and print it out themselves. Well, it just so happens that PCO also has a couple of apps. One of them is called Music Stand and it allows you to view all your music in order without having to download it. All you do is set it up and the swipe through the pages. No more messing with paper and wasting printer ink! If that sounded a little bit like a commercial for PCO, I apologize. If PCO sounds like something you’ve been looking for, you’re welcome. 🙂

Anyway, that was a big reason on why I wanted a tablet. What I didn’t realize is that I would actually enjoy reading books on the thing! I had a couple of books downloaded onto my phone using the Kindle app, so I decided to put them on the tablet as well. While I did that I figured I’d play around a little and look at some free books that Amazon had available to download for free. I found a few on programming, internet marketing, even one on how to declutter your home. Surprisingly, I actually found myself reading a lot more! Had I changed? Did a ‘Reading Fairy’ come and bang me on the head with her magic wand? Here’s my theory on what happened.

First off, I’m a guy that loves gadgets. So that is one reason why my opinion on reading changed. Sure, its just like reading a physical book, but its a whole lot cooler, right? But here’s the real reason why I think I like it. Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘What you don’t know can’t kill you’? Well, unless you pay attention to the page numbers in the table of contents, you have no earthly idea how long a book on the tablet is. If you’re like me, when you are reading a physical book, you check out how much you’ve read based on how thick the pages stack up, looking at the side of a book. Many times, its discouraging and you wind up quitting. With a tablet, you don’t worry about how far along you are. You can’t! Anyway, if you find that you tend to not like reading, but you really want to, maybe getting a tablet would help. Just a thought.

P.S. Another thing you can do on a tablet is write blog posts. 😉