How to Read More: 12 Tactics and a 30-Day Starter Plan

How do you read more?

You read more by making reading the easiest thing to do at one moment you already have each day, not by finding spare hours. Pick a cue, keep the book there, start with 10 minutes and track the days you read. Small daily sessions add up: 20 pages a day is about 7,300 pages a year.

Most people who want to read more already know how to read. What is missing is a slot in the day and a book within reach when that slot comes. The tactics below fix those two things first, then the smaller frictions that keep a book closed.

Why is it hard to read more?

Fewer people read on any given day than twenty years ago. In 236,270 American Time Use Survey diaries, the share of people who read for pleasure on an average day fell from 28% in 2004 to 16% in 2023 (Bone et al., 2025). Among people who did read that day, average reading time went up, to about 1 hour 37 minutes.

That pattern matters for anyone trying to read more. Once people start, they tend to keep going; the hard part is opening the book at all. Meanwhile, screens fill the gaps. In 2025, watching TV took 2.6 hours a day on average, half of all leisure time, for Americans aged 15 and older (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026). Moving even a small slice of that time to a book changes the year.

12 tactics that help you read more

You do not need all twelve. Start with the first three, which do most of the work, and add others when those feel normal.

1. Set a daily time, not a yearly book count. Minutes stay the same size from book to book; pages and books do not. Ten or 20 minutes a day is a goal you can keep on a busy Tuesday.
2. Tie reading to a moment you already have. Write it as an if-then plan: "After I put the kids to bed, I read on the couch." Plans that say when and where you will act had a medium-to-large effect on reaching goals across 94 tests (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).
3. Stack it onto an existing habit. Coffee, lunch, the train and bedtime are reliable anchors. The habit stacking builder turns one into a sentence you can print.
4. Put the book where your phone usually goes. On the pillow, beside the coffee maker, in your work bag. Charge the phone in another room for the session.
5. Swap a slice of screen time. Twenty minutes is about 13% of the 2.6 daily hours of TV in the time-use survey. Take it from the end of the evening, when you are watching out of habit.
6. Carry a book everywhere. A paperback in the bag or an e-book app on your home screen turns waiting rooms, queues and the pickup line into reading time.
7. Use audiobooks for time your eyes are busy. Walks, commutes and chores become reading time. A meta-analysis of 46 studies with 4,687 participants found no reliable overall difference between reading and listening comprehension (Clinton-Lisell, 2022).
8. Read what you actually enjoy. Thrillers, romance, comics and rereads all count. Enjoyment is what brings you back tomorrow.
9. Quit books faster. Set a checkpoint, such as page 50. If you dread opening the book, switch. A book you avoid can stall your reading for weeks.
10. Always know your next book. Keep a short list of three titles so finishing a book never leaves a gap.
11. Track the days you read. A tick on a calendar is enough. Across 138 studies, monitoring progress improved goal attainment, more so when it was recorded (Harkin et al., 2016). The reading log records dates, pages and books.
12. Plan for missed days. Decide now what you will do on a bad day: one page, or one audiobook chapter. If you miss a day anyway, restart at the next cue. In a study of 96 adults building daily habits, missing a single day did not materially affect habit formation (Lally et al., 2010).

How much will you read in a year?

More than most people expect. Average adult silent reading is about 238 words a minute for non-fiction and 260 for fiction, based on a meta-analysis of 190 studies (Brysbaert, 2019). The table uses 240 words a minute, a 300-word page and 300-page books.

The 20-pages row is plain arithmetic: 20 times 365 is 7,300. At an average pace, 20 pages takes about 25 minutes. Your own numbers will differ with the book and your speed; the reading time calculator works out how long a particular book will take you, and the guide on how many pages to read a day helps you pick a daily target.

For context, Americans aged 15 and older averaged roughly 15 to 16 minutes a day of reading for personal interest from 2017 to 2023, counting people who did not read at all that day (National Endowment for the Arts, 2024). A steady 20 minutes already puts you above that average.

How do you get into reading if you have not read in years?

Start smaller and lighter than feels necessary. The goal of the first two weeks is to make opening a book feel normal again, not to finish a classic.

1. Pick a short, easy book. A novella, a thriller, a graphic novel or a favorite book from years ago. Under 250 pages is a good first target.
2. Read for five minutes, at the same moment each day. Stop while you still want to go on.
3. Sample before you commit. Read the first few pages of three books at the library or in a free e-book sample and take the one you want to continue.
4. Expect your focus to be rusty. Losing your place is normal at first. The guide on how to focus while reading a book has a 7-step setup for a focused session.
5. Grow the time only when it feels easy, for example from 5 to 10 minutes after a week.

Which reading routine fits your situation?

If focus or attention problems affect your work, school or daily life, talk to a doctor or another qualified professional; that is more than a reading habit question.

A 30-day starter plan to read more

Each week adds one change. Keep the same cue all month.

On day 30, count your ticks. Twenty reading days out of 30 is a strong first month. For a day-by-day version with a hard-day option for every step, follow the 30-day reading habit plan, or build a reading plan around your schedule. You can track the month in the habit tracker.

Worked example: one reading day

Priya works full time and used to scroll for an hour after dinner. She wants to read 20 books in 2027.

• 7:40 a.m. On the bus, she listens to 20 minutes of an audiobook memoir.
• 12:30 p.m. Five minutes with the e-book app while her lunch heats up.
• 9:15 p.m. Phone on the kitchen charger. She reads her paperback novel on the couch for 20 minutes.
• 9:40 p.m. One tick and the page number in her reading log.

That is 25 minutes with her eyes on a book and 20 by ear. Her 20-book goal needs about 16 pages a day, and the evening session alone covers it at her pace.

What are the most common mistakes?

• Starting with a hard book. A dense classic as book one makes reading feel like work. Save it for month three.
• A big goal and no cue. "Read 50 books" with no set moment leaves reading to whenever you have time, which rarely comes.
• Counting only print. Audiobooks and e-books fill gaps that print cannot.
• Catching up after a missed day. Doubling tomorrow's session makes the habit heavier. Restart at the normal size.
• Finishing every book you start. Pushing through a book you dislike can stop you reading for weeks.

What does the research say, and what are its limits?

The research supports the parts of this guide that are about habits and planning: if-then plans help people act on goals, recording progress helps people reach them, and a missed day does not undo a habit. Reading more also goes with stronger reading and language skills; a meta-analysis of 99 studies with 7,669 participants, from preschool through college, found moderate to strong links between print exposure and reading comprehension and spelling (Mol & Bus, 2011).

The limits matter too. Most habit studies ran for weeks or months, often with students or volunteers, and none tested a reading routine for working adults over a full year. The links between reading and skills are correlations, and they run both ways: better readers also read more. None of the studies sets a daily amount of reading needed for any benefit. Read because you enjoy it, and use the research to make it easier to start. More detail is in what research says about reading for pleasure.

Where to go from here

Choose your cue tonight and put the book there. If you want a list to work through, the 2027 reading challenge prompts give you one book idea for every week of the year, and the 2027 reading challenge tracker keeps a record of the titles. The reading habit guide has two short plans with a spreadsheet, good reading habits lists ten habits that make reading stick, and the reading topic hub has everything else.

Two tools make the plan visible: the reading list maker keeps your next books in order with a finish date, and the book tracker fills one bookshelf spine per finished book. If you want books that also help with habits and focus, start with our best productivity books list.