How do I read more?

People who want to read more almost always have the time and lose it to something with less friction. The interventions that work are about friction and permission rather than discipline.

Step by step

1. Recognise what you are actually competing with.Not a lack of hours — a phone that is easier to pick up. Reading is lost in the five-minute gaps that get filled with scrolling, and that is where it is recovered.
2. Put a book where the phone usually is.On the bedside table, in the bag you carry, on the arm of the chair. Physical presence beats intention. A book in another room does not get read.
3. Move the phone out of the bedroom.The single most effective change for most people. If the phone charges in another room, the thing within reach at bedtime is the book.
4. Abandon books you are not enjoying.A book you are dutifully not reading blocks every other book behind it. Fifty pages is a generous trial. Stopping is not a failure and it is what keeps the habit alive.
5. Read something you actually want to read.Not what you feel you should. People trying to read more frequently pick something improving, stall, and conclude they cannot read. Genre fiction that you race through rebuilds the habit better than a classic that defeats it.
6. Aim for ten minutes daily rather than an hour weekly.Small and frequent survives a bad week; large and occasional does not. Ten minutes a day is roughly twenty books a year, which surprises people.
7. Attach it to something you already do.With the first coffee, on the commute, immediately after getting into bed. An existing anchor works far better than a slot found in the day.
8. Use audiobooks without guilt.They convert commuting, walking, cooking and washing up into reading time. For a household with no free hours, that is where the reading actually is.
9. Carry something on your phone as a fallback.An e-reader app for the queue, the waiting room, the delayed train. It competes with scrolling on the phone's own ground, which is where the time is being lost.
10. Use the library.Free, including e-books and audiobooks through library apps. It also removes the sunk-cost feeling that makes people finish books they dislike.
11. Keep the next book ready.The gap after finishing one is where the habit dies. Having the next one already there removes the decision at exactly the wrong moment.
12. Do not track it obsessively.Reading challenges and counts help some people and turn reading into an obligation for others. If a target makes you pick shorter books to hit a number, it is working against you.
13. Read more than one at once if it suits you.Something demanding for when you are alert and something easy for when you are tired. The rule that you finish one before starting another stops a lot of people reading at all.

Tips

• The bedroom phone charger is the intervention with the largest effect. Everything else is marginal by comparison.
• If you have stalled on the same book for a month, that is your answer. Put it down and pick something you would choose on holiday.
• Twenty pages before bed is about half an hour and roughly a book a fortnight. The arithmetic is more encouraging than it feels.

Common mistakes

• Persisting with a book you are not enjoying — It stops you reading anything at all, and the guilt attaches to reading rather than to the book. Fifty pages is enough of a trial.
• Waiting for a long free stretch — It does not arrive, and the habit needs frequency rather than duration. Ten minutes daily is more reading than an intended hour at the weekend.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask