How to Read More Books (and Build the Habit)

Most people who want to read more books already own a stack of them, half-started, gathering dust after a "busy week" that never ended. The average adult reads around 238 words per minute, which sounds slow until you realize it is not really the problem.

Here is the part that surprises most people: it was never a speed issue, or even a time issue.

At that ordinary pace, a typical book takes about six hours, which breaks down to roughly twelve minutes a day to finish one a month. Almost everyone already has twelve minutes.

This guide skips the willpower pep talk and gets into what actually works: building a daily reading habit small enough to stick, keeping a book within reach so dead time gets used instead of scrolled away, and giving yourself permission to quit the books that bore you.

Why people stall (it is not lack of time)

The average adult reads about 238 words per minute, a figure from a 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies. At that pace, a typical 90,000-word book takes roughly six hours. Six hours across a month is twelve minutes a day. Almost everyone has twelve minutes.

So time is rarely the real problem. The real culprits are smaller and sneakier:

• No trigger. Reading is not attached to anything, so it never starts.
• The book is a chore. You picked it out of obligation, not interest.
• The goal is vague. "Read more" has no finish line, so any amount feels like failure.
• Your phone wins. It is closer, easier, and engineered to hold you.

Fix those four things and the habit mostly builds itself. The excuses people give usually point straight at the fix:

Set a goal you will actually hit

A goal does two jobs: it gives you a target and it tells you when you are on track. The mistake is aiming too high. Someone who read three books last year sets a goal of fifty, misses by week three, and quits.

Start from where you are, not where you wish you were:

• Read 3 books last year? Aim for 12. One a month is a real, life-changing jump.
• Read 10? Aim for 20.
• Already read 25-plus? Goals matter less for you. Focus on reading better, not just more.

Then convert the goal into a daily floor. Twelve books a year is one a month, which at average speed is about twelve minutes of reading a day. Frame it in minutes, because "read for fifteen minutes" is a thing you can do today. "Read four more books" is not.

If you want the exact math for any book on your list, our reading time calculator turns a page or word count into minutes at your own pace, so a 400-page book stops feeling like a vague mountain and becomes "about five hours."

Build a daily reading habit

The single biggest lever is turning reading into a habit instead of a decision. Decisions are tiring and easy to skip. Habits run on autopilot.

The most reliable way to build one is to anchor reading to something you already do every day. This is called habit stacking, and the formula is simple: after [existing habit], I will read [for X minutes].

• After I pour my morning coffee, I read one chapter.
• After I get into bed, I read ten pages before lights out.
• After I sit down on the train, I open my book.

Two rules make it stick:

1. Start absurdly small. Commit to two pages, not two chapters. Two pages is too small to dread and too small to skip. Most nights you will read more, but the only target you must hit is two pages. Showing up daily matters more than volume early on.
2. Never miss twice. One skipped day is life. Two skipped days is the start of a new, worse habit. If you miss, read a single page the next day just to keep the chain alive.

The bedtime slot is the most powerful for one reason: it replaces screen time at the exact moment scrolling does the most damage to your sleep. Swapping ten minutes of phone for ten minutes of paper is a double win.

Always carry a book

Readers who finish a lot of books share one unglamorous habit: they are never without something to read. Waiting rooms, queues, the ten minutes before a meeting starts, the bus. Those scraps add up to hours a week, and they are usually surrendered to your phone by default.

The trick is to remove every excuse:

• Keep a physical book in your bag at all times.
• Load a few ebooks on your phone so you always have a backup, even when the paper book is at home.
• Stash a book where you tend to wait: by the kettle, in the car, next to the couch.

The goal is that the moment you have a spare five minutes, the easiest thing to reach for is words, not a feed.

Use dead time and audiobooks

You do not only read with your eyes. Audiobooks turn time you cannot read during into time you can: commuting, dishes, the gym, walking the dog, folding laundry. For many people this is where the biggest gains hide, because it converts hours that were never going to be reading hours into finished books.

And yes, audiobooks count. Listening uses the same comprehension machinery as reading once words are decoded, so for most non-technical books you absorb the story or argument just as well. Save your eyes for the dense material that needs rereading.

A few ways to find more listening and reading hours:

• Commute: A 30-minute drive each way is five hours a week, easily a book.
• Chores: Dishes, cleaning, and cooking are perfect audiobook windows.
• Exercise: Walks and easy cardio pair well with listening.
• Speed it up: Most apps let you play at 1.25x or 1.5x. Nudge it up gradually and you will adapt within a few sessions.

If you would rather get more out of the reading time you already have, learning how to read faster lets you finish the same book in less time, which means more books per year from the same minutes.

Quit books that bore you

This is the permission most readers never give themselves, and it is the one that changes everything. You are not obligated to finish a book. Finishing a book you hate does not make you virtuous. It makes you slower to start the next one, and it quietly teaches your brain that reading is a slog.

A useful rule is the 50-page test: give a book 50 pages to earn your attention. If you are still bored, set it down without guilt and move on. The point of reading more is not to grind through every title you start. It is to spend your limited reading time on books that pull you forward.

The same logic applies to what you pick up in the first place:

• Read what genuinely interests you, not what you think you should read. A "trashy" thriller you devour beats a literary classic that gathers dust.
• Follow momentum. When you love an author, read their whole catalog. Streaks of enjoyment build the habit faster than a balanced, dutiful list.
• Keep a short to-read list, not a wall of 200 books that only generates pressure.

Quitting freely makes you read more, not less, because the next great book is always closer than the end of the boring one.

Track your progress

What gets measured gets done, and reading is no exception. A simple tracker turns a vague intention into visible momentum, and watching the number climb is its own motivation.

You do not need anything fancy:

• A reading app that logs finished books and a yearly goal.
• A notes file or spreadsheet with title, date finished, and a one-line takeaway.
• A physical journal, if you like the ritual of writing it down.

That one-line takeaway does double duty. It nudges you to actually remember what you read instead of letting books blur together, and it shows you which kinds of books you finish fastest so you can pick more like them.

Read faster to read more

Habits get you reading daily. Speed multiplies what those minutes return. If your daily reading window is fixed at twenty minutes, the only way to fit more books into it is to cover more words in the same time.

Most adults read at the pace they learned in grade school and never revisited, which leaves a lot of room. A few high-leverage changes:

• Stop sounding out every word in your head. That silent narration caps you near talking speed.
• Read in groups of words, not one word at a time, so your eyes make fewer stops per line.
• Use a finger or cursor as a pacer to keep your eyes moving forward instead of drifting back.

Done consistently, these can move a typical reader from the high 200s into the 400 to 500 words-per-minute range without losing comprehension. It helps to know the average reading speed for your age and profession first, then measure your own.

At 250 WPM, a 90,000-word book takes about six hours. At 450 WPM, it takes closer to three hours and twenty minutes. On a fixed daily habit, that is almost twice the books a year from the same minutes.

Key takeaways

• Time is rarely the blocker. A book a month is about twelve minutes of reading a day.
• Set a goal you can hit, then convert it into a daily minutes floor.
• Anchor reading to an existing habit and start absurdly small. Never miss twice.
• Carry a book everywhere and let audiobooks reclaim commutes, chores, and workouts.
• Quit boring books with the 50-page test so your time goes to books you love.
• Track what you finish to stay motivated and remember more.
• Reading faster stretches the same daily minutes into more finished books.

Before you set your goal, find your baseline: take the free reading speed test to measure your reading speed and comprehension in about a minute.