How to Read More Without Trying Harder

The question I get asked most when I mention how many books I’ve read is some version of this. How do you find the time?

The honest answer is that I don’t find it. I designed the conditions for it to happen on its own, and then mostly got out of the way.

Reading isn’t something I schedule or discipline myself into. It’s just what I do in certain moments of the day because those moments are set up for it. No phone nearby, no screen in reach, a book already open at the page I left. The path of least resistance points toward the book rather than away from it.

That’s the whole system. Everything else is just details.

The phone is the competition

Before any conversation about reading more, there’s a prior conversation that needs to happen. Your phone is not neutral. It’s the most sophisticated attention-capture device ever built, and it is genuinely competing with your book for the same pockets of time.

Cal Newport makes this point in Digital Minimalism more precisely than I can. The apps on your phone are not designed for your benefit. They’re designed to keep you engaged for as long as possible. That’s a different goal than yours, and when the two compete, the phone usually wins because it’s been engineered to.

The implication for reading is simple. The phone can’t be in the room if you want the book to win. Not face down on the table, not on silent, not just out of arm’s reach. Not in the room.

I know this sounds extreme. It’s not. It’s just removing the competition. A book sitting on a nightstand in a room with no phone is not competing with anything. You will pick it up.

Where reading actually happens

Most people think about reading as a single block of time they need to carve out. An hour in the evening, a dedicated reading session, something that requires scheduling.

That’s not how it works for me, and I don’t think it’s how it needs to work for most people either.

Reading happens in the gaps. The ten minutes before the house wakes up. The last fifteen minutes before sleep. The twenty minutes during a lunch I’m eating alone. The wait for something that’s taking longer than expected.

None of these are large. Together, across a week, they add up to several hours. Several hours a week is three to four books a month, depending on length and density.

The key is that the book needs to be there when the gap appears. Not somewhere you have to go and find it. Already in that spot, already open, already at the right page. One fewer step between you and reading is the difference between doing it and not.

I keep a book on the kitchen table, one on the nightstand, Kindle in my office. Different books, different purposes. Whatever gap appears, there’s something within reach.

None of this works perfectly, and I want to be honest about that. Life happens, and it has a way of collapsing the gaps entirely. During my wife’s pregnancy, I was helping with our daughter, doing more around the house, and often just exhausted by the time evening came. Some nights the book stayed on the nightstand. Some nights I grabbed the phone anyway, or simply went to bed early because rest was what I actually needed. I’m not describing a flawless system. I’m describing a direction.

What I’ve come to believe is that the compounding is the thing, not the consistency. One page read before putting the light out still counts. One chapter listened to while making dinner still counts. It adds up differently than a disciplined reading hour, but it adds up. A new baby arrived in our house this week, and I already have a sense of what the next few months will look like. I’m not expecting to read much. But I know that reaching for the book instead of the phone, even once, even for two minutes, is a better default to have than not having it. That’s the habit worth protecting. Not the volume, just the direction.

Dedicated devices beat the phone every time

The medium matters less than most people think. I read on physical books, on a Kindle, and through audiobooks, and I’d argue all three are valid in ways the phone never quite manages.

The problem with reading on a phone isn’t that it’s a screen. It’s that it’s a screen with everything else on it. The habit of reaching for a phone has been trained into you by thousands of repetitions to mean something other than reading. You pick it up intending to read and thirty seconds later you’re somewhere else entirely. There’s no equivalent drift with a Kindle or a paperback. They only do one thing.

Physical books have something the others don’t: a tactile memory of where you were. I retain more from physical books, and I find I reach for them on evenings when I want to slow down properly. The Notebook: History of Thinking on Paper traces the long relationship between humans and physical objects as thinking tools. The same logic carries over. Holding the thing changes how you engage with it.

The Kindle earns its place for a different reason. It’s lighter than most books, holds everything in one place, and is genuinely easier to read in bed without disturbing anyone. I use it as often as a physical book. The key is that it stays a reading device, nothing else installed, no browser in active use.

Audiobooks are where reading time comes from that wouldn’t otherwise exist. Cooking, cleaning, a walk that would otherwise be silent or filled with a podcast. I’d rather have a chapter of something I chose than an episode of something I half-listened to. The comprehension isn’t quite the same as reading, but it’s far better than nothing, and for certain books it’s actually ideal.

The rule I work to is simple. Whatever the format, it needs to be a dedicated device or experience. Not the phone, not a browser tab, not something competing for the same screen space as everything else.

Before the phone in the morning

The single highest-leverage change I made was reading before looking at my phone in the morning.

Not for long. Sometimes ten minutes, sometimes twenty. Just long enough to put something worth thinking about into my head before the day starts filling it with other things.

Oliver Burkeman writes in Meditations for Mortals about the importance of choosing deliberately what gets your first attention each day. The phone is an inbox. It presents you with other people’s priorities, other people’s news, other people’s urgency, before you’ve had a moment to establish your own.

A page or two of a book is the opposite. It gives you something you chose, at a pace you set, with no one asking anything of you in return.

The compounding effect of this over months is larger than it sounds. You get through more books. More importantly, you start more days on your own terms rather than someone else’s.

The last thing before sleep

This one is less about reading volume and more about how the day ends.

The habit of reading before sleep replaced a different habit. The phone. I used to scroll until I was tired enough to put it down. The problem with that is the same one I described above. I was putting other people’s content into my head as the last thing before sleep, and that’s what stayed there.

Reading something you chose, something slow and deliberate, is a better ending. Not because it makes you sleep better, though that’s what most sleep hygiene articles will tell you. But because it creates a gentle boundary between the day and the rest. A transition, in the same way the journal does at the end of the workday.

I don’t always read for long. Some nights it’s two pages before I’m done. That’s fine. The habit is the thing, not the page count.

The reading list as a commitment device

One practical thing that changed how I read. I keep a reading list in my Field Notes collections book.

Not a wish list of things I might read someday. A short, live list of what’s next, in rough order. When I finish a book, I don’t have to decide what to read. I just open to the next one on the list.

The decision about what to read next is actually a significant source of friction. If finishing a book means you now have to figure out what comes next, you’re much more likely to fill the gap with something easier. Phone, scroll, nothing in particular.

Remove that decision in advance. Keep the next book on the nightstand before you’ve finished the current one. The gap closes itself.

It’s not about discipline

The mistake most people make when they want to read more is framing it as a discipline problem. They think they need more willpower, more commitment, a stricter routine.

They don’t. They need better conditions.

Discipline is finite. Conditions are structural. If the book is there and the phone isn’t, you’ll read. If the phone is there and the book requires effort to find, you won’t. Neither outcome involves willpower. It’s just what happens when the path of least resistance points a particular direction.

James Clear makes this point in Atomic Habits better than anyone. The environment shapes the behaviour more reliably than the intention does. You don’t rise to your intentions. You fall to the level of your environment.

Make the environment one that reads.

This week, try one change. Put a book on your nightstand and leave your phone charging in a different room. Just that. See what happens to the last fifteen minutes of your day.

See you soon.