I read when in bed truing to sleep
I read if I am waiting for the friend or transportation
I read during boring meeting
I read 60 books this year, but this included Don Quichotte and Karamazov brothers.
2. So if I aim to read at least 30 minutes a day on weekdays and then 2-3 hours a day on weekends, they go by pretty quick.
3. I had a week’s vacation back in May and ended up reading 6 books that week. So prioritizing reading when I have extra time helps.
4. If a book sounds interesting, I buy it without thinking about it too much. It shows up on my Kindle and then when it’s time to read I know I won’t waste too much time picking out and buying a new book.
Novels like detective stories or whatever, I just want to follow the plot and enjoy it — I really don’t care if I can remember it at all when I’m done. One benefit of this is that there are some books I’ll revisit every few years and really re-enjoy. Then there’s some books where I’ll be like “this sounds good” and then 1/2-way into it I realize I read it a decade ago.
For non-fiction books (particularly those I want to learn from) I make myself go slower and rely on highlights and notes to improve retention.
https://www.workclean.com/
I use a remarkable e-ink tablet and have a template file I duplicate and complete at the start of each day. I didn’t complete it every day but I think on average I skipped doing it 1 day a month. Part of the success is that I’d feel like a moron if I had this $500 tablet gathering dust.
Personal - At the start of each month I set (what I think to be) an achievable goal for activity for the month. This year I focused on 60 minutes of some combination of running/walking/bicycling. I have a chart that I fill in with a blue square on the days I make my goal and a red square on the days I don’t. My biggest setbacks were ~10 days of inactivity due to COVID in April and then about a week I lost due to some hip pain in September. Other than that I missed about 1 day every other month usually due to depression or particularly bad weather. Resetting a new goal monthly helps and creates a fresh start in case I have a bad month.
I’ve also read 76 books so far this year. I had set a goal of 52 at the start of the year. Mostly that comes down to finding things I think sound interesting, spending a (relatively) large amount of money on books, and making reading a priority.
There’s no magic to any of this. I have pretty modest goals and putting 30 or so minutes towards each of them everyday leads to pretty big gains over time.