How to read more books: the 10-pages-a-day approach

By Streako team

Most people who want to read more are not short of books. They have a stack by the bed and a dozen samples on their phone. What they are short of is a moment in the day that belongs to reading.

The good news: you do not need an hour. You need about 15 minutes, a book you actually want to read, and a way to notice when you skip it.

Why 10 pages a day works

Ten pages takes most people 10 to 20 minutes. It is small enough to do on a bad day and big enough to add up. Do the maths: 10 pages a day is 3,650 pages a year. At around 300 pages a book, that is twelve books a year, one a month, from a habit that fits in a lunch break.

Small targets also beat big ones for a psychological reason. A goal of "read more" is vague, so you can never tell if you have done it. "Ten pages" has a clear finish line, and finishing feels good. That feeling is what brings you back tomorrow.

Where the time comes from

You probably already have the time. It is just scattered and currently spent on your phone. Look for these gaps:

• Your commute: paper, e-reader or audiobook, depending on how you travel.
• The first 15 minutes in bed: swap the phone for a book and you may sleep better too.
• Lunch breaks: even 10 minutes is ten pages.
• Waiting time: queues, appointments, the kettle, the school gate. Keep a book or reading app one tap away.
• Instead of one episode: one fewer episode a night is roughly 40 minutes back.

Pick one of these as your fixed reading slot. Then attach it to something you already do: "when I get into bed, I read ten pages before I pick up my phone". A clear if-then plan like this is one of the best-supported tools in behaviour research: a meta-analysis of 94 studies found that implementation intentions improve follow-through (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).

Make the phone the harder choice

The phone wins most evenings because it is closer. Flip that. Leave the book on your pillow or next to the kettle, and put the phone on charge in another room for your reading slot. If you read on your phone, move social apps off the home screen and put your reading app where they used to be. You are not relying on willpower, just making the book the easy option.

Choose books you will actually finish

The book you are reading matters more than the time you set aside. A book you dread will kill a reading habit faster than any busy week.

1. Read what you enjoy, not what you think you should. Thrillers, fantasy and memoirs are real books.
2. Keep the next book ready. The gap between books is where habits die. Always know what is next.
3. Give yourself permission to quit. If a book has not grabbed you after 50 pages, put it down. Life is short and there are plenty more.
4. Mix heavy and light. Follow a dense non-fiction book with something you can race through.
5. Have two on the go if it helps: one for bed, one for your bag or phone.

Paper, e-reader or audiobook?

All of them count, as long as you are honest with yourself about what you are tracking. Paper is easiest to focus on. An e-reader or reading app is easiest to carry. Audiobooks turn walking, driving and chores into reading time. Many people use all three for the same book.

Track pages or minutes

Choose one measure and stick with it:

• Pages suit fiction and paper books. Set a Count habit with a target of 10.
• Minutes suit audiobooks and dense non-fiction where pages vary a lot. Set a Duration habit with a target of 15 or 20 minutes.

Streako supports both, and your streak only counts the days the habit is due. If you want weekends off, schedule it for weekdays and your streak will not break on Saturday.

Read with other people

Reading is solitary, but the habit does not have to be. A book club, a friend reading the same book, or a group challenge gives you a reason to open the book on nights you would otherwise skip. Sharing progress also helps: the same review of goal-tracking studies found the effect was stronger when progress was shared (Harkin et al., 2016).