I've put in a lot of effort to make reading a habit. While habitually opening social media, I often thought, "If only I read a book during this time..." but it was hard to resist the temptation to tap the social media icon. I tried various methods, and as mentioned in "Executing 25 Minutes a Day: A 14-Year Developer's Approach to the Day", although my reading amount is still insignificant compared to avid readers, I seem to have succeeded in building the habit itself.

Here are some good tips I learned while building my reading habit.

Measure Your Reading Speed

I believe the most important thing when building a reading habit is to figure out your reading speed. Before saying you don't have time to read, you need to know how much time you actually need to read. If you measure how long it takes to read about 100 pages, you can estimate the time required to finish one book, figure out how many books you can read in a month, and how many in a year. Understanding the time it takes to read reduces the vague burden associated with finishing a book. You also realize that you can read quite a bit even in small chunks of time. While other motivations are necessary, knowing that reading doesn't require that much time is a significant motivator itself.

A recommended place to measure your reading speed is a bookstore or library. You don't necessarily have to buy the book, and reading with others in a public space provides new stimulation and is better than reading alone. It's like how studying or working often feels more productive in a cafe. Now, make up your mind, set aside some time, and go to a bookstore or library. Pick up a book on a topic you've been curious about or related to your work and start reading. Before you begin, start a stopwatch on your smartphone and measure the time. What we want to know is the time it takes to read 100 pages. Why 100 pages and not 50? 50 pages is less burdensome, but it doesn't give you the feeling of getting closer to finishing the book. Reading 100 pages means you can finish a whole book after just 3 or 4 such sessions. From a motivational perspective, the 100-page unit seems more meaningful. Of course, you could measure the speed for 50 pages and multiply by 2, but this might be inaccurate because concentration levels can differ between reading 50 pages and 100 pages. It took me about 1 hour and 10 minutes (+/- 10 minutes) per 100 pages. For simplicity, I just set it as 100 pages per hour.

Plan

Once you've adequately measured your reading speed, decide specifically how much you want to read. I wanted to read about two books a month. Assuming a book is 400 pages long, at my reading speed, it takes 4 hours to read one book; let's generously say 5 hours. To meet my monthly reading goal, I need a total of 10 hours. Dividing this by the days in a month gives 10 hours * 60 minutes / 30 days = 20 minutes. I need to read for 20 minutes each day. That means covering 140 minutes per week. Allowing for some flexibility, I might miss reading on about 2 days a week. So, 140 minutes / 5 days = 28 minutes. If I read for just 28 minutes at least 5 days a week, I can read two books a month. Since 28 minutes is an awkward number, I set it to 25 minutes. Investing just this amount of time allows me to read more than two books a month. And indeed, I am reading more than two books monthly. By consistently reading even for such short periods, you can read quite a lot. If I were a fresh graduate or a student now, I probably would have aimed for one book a week. One hour a day means you can read more than four books a month.

Mark It Up

From here on, it's common knowledge. When you read, don't just read passively. Read while marking important parts. Mark content that impressed you or might be helpful someday – basically, anything you'll need to revisit. I mainly read during my commute, and it's easy to lose focus then. Marking important sections while reading helps increase concentration. The conscious effort to find important parts helps maintain focus. Sometimes, you might get so absorbed that you miss your stop. Since subways arrive almost exactly on time, I set a timer when reading on the subway.

E-books are not only lightweight but also easier to mark and search later. That's why I mainly read e-books using an e-ink reader. As an aside, I feel skeptical about collecting physical items, including paper books, so I try not to buy them if possible. I only purchase paper books directly if they are necessary but not yet available as e-books or difficult to borrow from the library. However, even the paper books I buy are scanned and read as e-books.

I often borrow paper books from work or the library, which makes marking tricky. Since they aren't my property, I can't use a pen. In such cases, I use my camera and finger. I point to the paragraph or sentence I find important with my finger and take a picture. Taking book photos on the subway can be awkward due to the camera shutter sound. When that happens, don't be timid; take the picture confidently with large movements so people clearly understand, "Ah, that person is photographing a book." Also, avoid pointing the camera towards women. People are surprisingly sensitive to camera sounds these days because the world can be unsettling. If you confidently establish this early on, you won't have to worry about it for the rest of that subway session. It's easy to manage these marked book photos by putting them into Google Photos and creating albums for each book. You can edit images (like rotating) and even search them using OCR.

Organize

After reading a book, take time to organize the marked sections. You can transcribe them using a pen and notebook or organize them in your favorite note-taking app. Any tool that allows you to review them anytime is good. Some people who read a lot write their thoughts in a notebook, like a book report, which seems ideal. I don't do that yet. At the very least, let's try to transcribe or summarize the underlined content. Even this is challenging. The speed of organizing can't keep up with the speed of reading.

Recently, I've also started using Notion to create a list in table format to track my reading progress. It's a task that takes almost no time but is surprisingly rewarding. I organize information like Title, Author, Category, Start Date, End Date, Status (Given Up, Completed), Book Format (Paper, E-book), Personal Rating, etc., in a table. Listing the books I've read also serves as motivation. I use RidiBooks' subscription service, Ridi Select, which makes it easy to access various books, so I'm often reading several books from different categories simultaneously. This sometimes leads to situations where I pause one book, switch to another, and then return later. Over time, I forget what I was reading. In such cases, this kind of list is helpful.

Wrapping Up

These days, I treat books much like YouTube or Netflix. What I mean is, instead of starting a new book only after finishing the previous one, I read multiple books at once. I don't binge-read one by one. I might read a novel, an economics book, and a work-related book, each from a different category, switching between them as the mood strikes, much like watching various series genres on Netflix.

Some might object to this reading method, but my main goal is to make reading a habit. Of course, if there's knowledge I need to acquire immediately, I'll invest significant time to finish one book quickly, but that falls under learning or research, not the scope of a reading habit. I believe reading becomes a habit when you can pick up a book whenever you're bored, just like turning on the TV and flipping to a desired channel, or opening Netflix or YouTube and watching a preferred video. If a book isn't interesting, there's no need to finish it. The e-book subscription model has enabled me to read this way. It's exactly the Netflix model.

Just take one day to commit and measure your reading speed. I believe it will change your perspective on reading.