"Read 10 pages a night" is bad advice. Here's what to do instead.
Want to build a reading habit? Don't start with 10 pages a night....
Every time I hear some social media influencer tell people to kickstart a 'reading habit' by reading one, or five, or ten pages a night, a little part of me dies.
Maybe it's a personality thing. I hate the current mania with microhabits: flossing one tooth, repping out one pushup, washing one whole dish. I get it — I get why it’s popular advice (people are overwhelmed) and why James Clear sold so many damn copies of Atomic Habits (buying a book is an easy way to feel like you’re changing your life — especially one like this). But I also hate it. I hate that the only way to get people to do things is to render it so laughably easy that it is also entirely pointless.
But back to reading. Here's why I don't like the 10 pages a night rule, and why I think it's actually really bad advice.
Firstly, it frames reading as a chore. Something that’s painful but good for you; something to endure so you can get the end result. The good news is that if you mark your progress by counting the pages, you can limit your suffering to just 10 pages a night! It’ll barely hurt at all!
Why would we want to set people up with this kind of mentality toward reading? If you want people to read, don't you want them to enjoy it? There is no inherent moral value in ‘reading’ for reading’s sake — it’s just a really enjoyable way to spend your time and it also has the added benefit of giving you better context and nuance for navigating life. I don't think you should read if you don't enjoy it (well, to tell the truth, I think you should find a way to enjoy it). If you have to count pages to mentally make it through your 'reading time', you're not sinking into the book — and the best part about reading is sinking in. If this is how you're going to approach reading, you're better off finding a different activity that doesn't feel like a chore.
Secondly, good reading is deep, fully-zoned-out-from-the-rest-of-the-world reading. It’s what happens when you’re so invested in the material that the content itself is what carries you along — not the thought of how many pages you’re getting through. Good reading is what happens when you look up thinking you’ve only been there fifteen minutes, and it’s been an hour and a half.
You can’t reach this feeling after one or five or even ten pages. It takes time to enter the world of a book. It takes time for your brain to switch everything else off and build a new reality for itself to exist in. If you’re stopping before you even get to this good feeling, you’re going to think reading doesn’t feel very good — because it often doesn’t, in those first few pages. Not when you’ve just finished a 2X speed YouTube video that you watched while scrolling Instagram and boiling the kettle. Give it a minute — or a half-hour, maybe. But certainly more than ten pages.
Thirdly, it’s the wrong way to get started. I get the idea these books and influencers are trying to push: that the point of these little one-bite habits is to just get you started — to lure you into eating the full-course meal. And maybe this makes sense for something like flossing, which is a very straightforward process that is incredibly boring and looks the same for everyone. But it doesn’t make sense for reading. It focuses on the wrong thing. Telling people to read 10 pages a night jumps straight to the act of reading (actually, it jumps straight to quantifying the results of your reading activity) rather than starting with what matters: why do you want to read? Is there something you want to learn about? Do you remember a time when reading was part of your life, and you loved how it made you feel? Is it just something you feel like you should be doing because it’s ‘broccoli for your brain’ or some such nonsense?
Any advice on how people can build a ‘reading habit’ (I’m always going to put this in quotes because why does everything have to be a habit? Why can’t we just have things we enjoy?) should focus on what you’re reading, not how much or when or how you’re reading.
What is the right way to get started?
The right way to get started with a reading habit is not to focus on the medium (i.e. stop thinking about reading) and start focusing on subject matter: What are you interested in? What are you watching on YouTube right now? Which influencers do you follow on Instagram? What are you talking about with your friends or bingeing on Netflix? Books are not mysterious black boxes — they’re just vessels for information and stories. You’re already consuming things you’re interested in via other formats, so look at books as an extension of these interests and not a replacement or the polar opposite of whatever you’re into. Follow your interests, not what everyone supposedly says is a classic. If some bro influencer or a guy at work tells you that The 48 Laws of Power changed his life, look at him with suspicion—and then head to the part of the bookstore that interests you.
Look, as with any new endeavour in life, there are two ways to approach this: the hard way, and the fun way. If you want to get fit and you hate running, you could start running. Plenty have done it before you — and there’s even a small chance that you’ll eventually morph from a running-hater to a running-lover. But why put up with all that misery along the way? Why not just pick something you already like?
It’s exactly the same with reading. If you tally up your five pages a night by hitting yourself over the head with the latest Ryan Holiday release or David Goggins torture manual or some tired 20th century advice for getting rich, you might eventually become a voracious reader who can’t think of anything better than sinking into their TBR. But why approach that way in the first place? I guarantee I can turn almost anyone into a voracious reader overnight simply by handing them something they’re actually into.
Trust me, there’s a book for everyone. And it doesn’t have to be an aggressively masculine self-help book — although there are plenty of those, if you hadn’t already noticed.
Reading is not like other things
Some things in life do need a little structure to them. You really do need to clean your teeth twice a day. You do need to hit the gym with a certain volume and frequency for anything to come of it. But reading comes with far fewer requirements and constraints. Reading can be whatever you want it to be. You can read wherever, whenever, however, and whatever you like. Unlike other valuable pursuits in life, it doesn’t have to be a habit — it can just be part of your life.
I consider myself a serious reader: I get through at least 100 books a year — but what’s more important is I enjoy them. If you ask the people in my life whether I have a ‘reading habit’, they’d say yes, but they’d be much more likely to describe it as a hobby, or an interest, or a passion, than a ‘habit’. A habit is a depressingly clinical way to describe something that can bring this much joy and open up so much of the world to you. Flossing is a habit. Reading is a joy.
I only have one rule around my reading: if you’re interested, read it. If not, ditch it. If I’ve just bought a book and I hate it 50 pages in, it’s gone. If I just started one book but suddenly become wildly interested in another topic, I’ll put it down for a while to pick up the other. This does lead to a lot of books getting temporarily or permanently abandoned. But it also means I almost never have a bad time reading. I care far more about my reading experience than my reading stats — and unfortunately, many of the influencers out there telling you to read every night would rather you tick off 52 books on your Goodreads this year than sink into five incredible books that you can’t stop thinking and talking about.
Influencers often talk about reading as being like ‘the gym for your mind’ or ‘broccoli for your brain’ — seriously, what a way to turn people off reading. Scrap that. Reading is not the gym, and it’s not broccoli. Reading is your rest day after a week of training. It’s the dessert you wait for at the end of the main course. Reading is the fun part — not the tough part.
A better way to build a reading habit
If you had ‘read 10 pages a night’ on your resolutions list, scratch it off now. There’s a better way to get this thing off the ground. Block off a weekend morning and take yourself to a bookstore or library. On your way there, have a think about what you’re interested in at the moment. What are you trying to achieve in other parts of your life? What’s a true story you heard recently that made your jaw drop, or a little fantasy world you’d love to escape to right now?
In the bookstore, take your time. This is not a book-finding mission, it’s a reconnaissance exercise. It’s your chance to breathe it in and soak it up. Just enjoy being there. Appreciate the atmosphere. Flip through the books, read the back covers, see what leads to what. Whip out your phone and use the Internet as a little helper if it’s difficult to follow a coherent trail in the store — read about the authors, see what else they’ve published, look up the top books on a particular subject.
Why reading (the right way) feels so good
The beauty of allowing yourself to really read something (and not just count the pages) is the feeling of mental stimulation without overstimulation. Our brains are constantly seeking new things to engage with, but with all the noise in our modern world, they also need a break from the buzz. The book, the paragraph, the well-crafted sentence, heck, even just black words on a white page: it’s the perfect amount for our brains to take in without feeling overwhelmed. It’s almost like the written word was perfectly designed to meet our brains where they’re at. They give us a job to do (focus on something, understand information, make mental pictures), without asking us to do it at an unnatural pace or bombarding us with flashing lights and colours and sounds and all sorts of excess stimuli. It’s the perfect mix of taxing and relaxing.
Reading is a little like tea here — the perfect combination of caffeine (stimulating) and L-theanine (has calming properties, among others). A cup of tea will calm you down if you're stressed, or pick you up if you're tired. If you let it, a good book will do the same. But not if you're counting the pages.
Alright, enough from me. My Kobo is calling.
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This really resonates. I've recently noticed I am much more consistent when treating activities (gym, reading, healthy eating) for the sheer joy and interest they bring to my present, rather than a chore to fulfill long term goals