In 2022, Gallup found that Americans read an average of 12.6 books each per year, the lowest number Gallup has measured since it began tracking the stat in 1990. In that same poll, a full 17 percent of Americans said they read no books at all during the prior year.
Nevertheless, a lot of Americans want to read more. We just seem to find it increasingly difficult to do so. Work, family, and especially TV and phone usage suck up so much time that little is left for reading. As a society, we’ve largely fallen out of the reading habit.
But fear not. Reading habits can be rebuilt; literary pursuits can be rekindled. If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to read more, then let this article be your guide to fulfilling that goal and reaping abundant literary delight.
Here are five tips to read more books in 2025.
1. Find Your Motivation
Hacking your way through a weighty book can be challenging. When you’re tempted to give up, you need some reason to keep going. As with any endeavor, when you set out to read more, you need to stake out clear goals to help you stay motivated. As philosopher Jared Henderson pointed out, reading more books simply as a vanity project probably won’t be enough to keep you engaged. Rather, aim to understand the value of good reading. Take it to heart. Recognize the way that reading can expand your mind, enrich your life, and ultimately develop your human potential.Some form of external motivation, such as a book club or online class, might help you to stay motivated during dry spells.
2. Schedule Your Reading Time
There’s no shortcut to reading more books. Ultimately, to read more, you have to spend more time reading. Speed reading techniques might be helpful in the short term, but when you speed read, you don’t absorb the material as well—and if you’re not going to glean much information or pleasure from a book, then why read at all?Many experts emphasize the importance of scheduling your reading time. By blocking off specific chunks of time to turn pages, you guarantee that you’ll get through more books. Author and productivity expert Cal Newport argues that we need to treat reading the same way we treat physical exercise: It must be regularly scheduled, not left to whim or chance (because it will never happen in that case). Mental workouts deserve as much attention and respect as physical workouts—perhaps more. If you schedule time at the gym, you can also schedule time at the library.
Writer and habit expert James Clear gives similar advice, although instead of setting apart a certain amount of time, he sets a daily page quota, and he meets it first thing in the morning
“I usually wake up, drink a glass of water, write down 3 things I’m grateful for, and read 20 pages of a book,“ he said. ”For the last 10 weeks, I have followed this new habit. As of today, I’m 100 pages into my 7th book. At that pace (7 books per 10 weeks) I’ll read about 36 books in the next year. Not bad.”
3. Read Books That Genuinely Interest You—Especially at First
To continue the exercise analogy, you must make use of practice and repetition in order to increase speed and endurance. If you’ve been out of the reading groove, you will need to retrain your brain to focus for long periods of time without distractions. Quite simply, you will need to slowly increase how long you read over time, since it’s unrealistic to think you can plow through 200 pages of “War and Peace” the first time you sit down. For most of us, internet and TV usage has likely eroded our attention span to some degree, and, like a weak muscle, it will take time to rebuild it.One way to rekindle your love of reading and to start building reading endurance is to start with an easy book that genuinely interests you. There’s no point in reading books you feel you ought to read, to read simply out of some sense of obligation, especially if you aren’t going to finish the book anyway. Pick up something that hooks your interest and doesn’t let it go, especially as you’re getting back in the swing of things. Once the habit has been established (or reestablished), it will be easier to tackle more challenging books.
4. Read Multiple Books at the Same Time
Newport, Hendersen, and Mark Manson all recommend reading more than one book at a time. The reasoning for this is simple: Fueling your mind with a variety of intellectual foods helps keep things fresh and keeps eyes on pages. If you get tired of one book, you can pick up another one. Ideally, your “currently reading” list should involve a wide range of books that balance each other well. For example, you might read a light thriller novel, a dense book of philosophy, a classic work of literature, and a memoir all at the same time. Switch which work you’re reading depending on your mood.It can also help mix up the formats in which you experience books: Try a combination of hard copies, eBooks, and audiobooks.
5. Keep Devices Turned Off or in Another Room
The ubiquitous presence of entertaining devices all around us accounts, in part, for the decline in book reading. It’s easier to check Facebook or dissolve into the couch in front of a TV show than it is to read a challenging book. The pinging phones in our pockets constantly distract us when we try to read. For this reason, multiple experts recommend turning off your devices, keeping them in another room when you read, or at least removing distracting apps. One way to do so is using the Minimalist Phone app, which allows you to block whichever apps tend to waste your time the most.The truth is, reading more will require you to sacrifice some other activities. But very often, the tradeoff will be worth it. Newport noted that cutting out some social media not only opens up time for meaningful reading but also eliminates a lot of stress from your life: “That time that used to be spent on your phone is going somewhere not just more productive but you are avoiding the anxiety, the stress, the addictive emotional manipulation that these apps are inflicting on you. [You’re] avoiding a major source of negativity. The difference between two hours spent on Twitter versus two hours spent grappling with Thoreau on the quality of your life is significant.”
With many weeks of winter still to go, now is the right time to reengage with reading. By following these tips, you’ll be well on your way to establishing a rewarding and enriching lifelong habit.
