How to Build a Daily Reading Habit Even If You’re Busy

There’s a secret club out there. Membership is free, the benefits are endless, and the only requirement? You read. Every. Single. Day. But if you’re like most people who juggle early meetings, late emails, family chaos, and an overwhelming sense that there’s never enough time—this “read novels every day” club might feel as out of reach as a hammock nap on a tropical island. Here’s the thing: busy life isn’t the enemy of books. It’s just a puzzle to solve. And solving it means rewiring how you think about reading, time, and yourself.

1. Kill the Myth of Time

Don’t say: “I don’t have time.” Say instead: “I didn’t prioritize reading today.” Ouch? Maybe. But that shift in language matters.

The average person spends 143 minutes per day on social media, according to Statista. That’s over 17 hours per week scrolling, liking, and watching people you don’t know cook meals you’ll never make. Yet reading just 20 minutes a day is enough to finish around 30 books a year, depending on length and speed.

So, how to build a reading habit? Begin by reclaiming tiny, lost moments—those pockets of time you’re not even aware you’re spending. Waiting in line, commuting, lunch breaks, even those few quiet minutes in bed before you surrender to sleep.

2. Stop Worshipping the Hour-Long Reading Session

You don’t need an uninterrupted hour and a cozy nook by a window with rain falling outside. That’s a fantasy. (Lovely one, though.)

Here’s a new mantra: “Ten pages is better than none.” Or: “Five minutes count.” Or: “One paragraph is still progress.”

Micro-habits build macro-results. Read two pages while your coffee brews. Read on the toilet (yes, really). Read while brushing your teeth (audiobooks exist). Reading doesn’t need candles and tea. It needs you, a book, and willingness.

3. Make Reading the Default, Not the Reward

People treat reading like dessert. Something nice, something extra. Stop it. Make it the main course.

Take your phone’s home screen. Replace one app icon—say, Instagram—with your ebook app FictionMe. Set it right there, center stage. So next time your thumb twitches for distraction, it finds stories on FictionMe instead of someone else’s gym selfie. This approach helps change your focus and is much more convenient than using printed books.

But you can also carry a book like you carry your wallet. Not “when I remember,” not “when I travel”—always. This is how to build a reading habit that sticks: make the book feel like part of your body.

4. Use Triggers, Not Willpower

Willpower fades. Triggers stick.

Want to develop a reading habit? Attach it to something you already do. This is known as habit stacking, a trick from James Clear’s Atomic Habits. Try these:

• After brushing teeth = 5 pages.
• After breakfast = 1 chapter.
• After your morning meeting = 15 minutes of a novel.

Your brain starts to expect it. Like clockwork. Like craving coffee at 3 p.m.—suddenly, your day feels incomplete without a few pages under your belt.

5. Curate Your Books Like You Curate Netflix

Don’t read boring books. Life’s too short. Just because a book is “important” doesn’t mean it’s right for you. Drop it like it’s hot. Read what pulls you in. Just visit the iOS store, download the app, and you’ll have access to thrillers, romances, memoirs, essays about failed rock bands—anything that makes you forget you’re reading. “Forced” reading brings little benefit and clearly does not contribute to the development of the habit of secluded solitude with a book.

In fact, people who read novels every day often report that they do so because it doesn’t feel like effort—it feels like escape. Dopamine, engagement, a little time away from the hard edges of the real world.

Reading shouldn’t feel like a chore. When it does? You’re reading the wrong book.

6. Go Hybrid: Physical + Digital + Audio

We’re in the future. Use it.

• Physical books for intentional, screen-free time.
• Ebooks for sneaky in-between moments (grocery line, bathroom).
• Audiobooks while driving, cleaning, or fake-jogging on the treadmill.

Some of the most consistent readers are never sitting still. They’re folding laundry while listening to Dune. They’re cooking with The Count of Monte Cristo whispering in their ears. That’s not cheating. That’s genius.

7. Track It, or Don’t—But Know Yourself

Some folks love charts. Goals. Spreadsheets. Goodreads challenges. If that motivates you, go wild.

Others feel boxed in by that. They rebel. They dread the “you’re behind” notification. If that’s you—ditch it. Make your only rule this: Read today. That’s all. Even if it’s a sentence. Even if it’s bad. Even if you read it out loud in the parking lot while pretending you’re on a call.

8. Build Identity, Not Just Routine

You want to become “a reader,” not just “someone who reads.” That’s deeper. That’s identity-level stuff.

Tell people you’re a reader. Not as a brag, but as a self-description. Leave books out in the open. Talk about them. Let them bleed into your day-to-day life. You develop a reading habit not just through behavior, but through belief. Belief in yourself as someone who values story, idea, learning, language.

Eventually, you won’t ask how to build a reading habit. You’ll just say, “Oh yeah, I read every day.”

9. Protect Reading Like You Protect Sleep

Here’s a wild thought: you deserve to read. Not because it’s productive. Not because it’s good for your brain (though it is—reading reduces stress by 68%, per a study by the University of Sussex). But because stories and words and thoughts and imagination are your human birthright.

Carve out reading time with the same intensity you’d guard your last piece of chocolate cake. Reading is a joy. Reading is resistance. Reading is meditation. Reading is time bending to your will.

Final Page

So, how do you build a reading habit when your life is overflowing? Start small. Think sneaky. Think sideways. Think weird. Read one page while waiting for Zoom to connect. A poem before brushing your teeth. Half a paragraph on the bus. It all adds up.

Because building a reading habit isn’t about having time. It’s about choosing a story. Again and again. One day, then the next. Until one morning, you don’t reach for your phone. You reach for the page. And then? You’re in the club. No secret handshake required.