Most advice about reading more starts by telling you to make time, which is a bit like being told to have more money. If you had it spare, you'd already be using it.
The more useful version starts somewhere else: you probably do have the time, and the thing getting in the way isn't your schedule. Here's what actually helps.
Why is it so hard to find time to read?
Usually because the book isn't within reach at the moment you'd otherwise pick up your phone.
Reading doesn't lose to work or childcare nearly as often as it loses to ten minutes of scrolling on the sofa. Those ten minutes were available. The phone was simply closer, already unlocked, and asked nothing of you.
The second reason is that most people think reading requires a proper session. An hour, a quiet house, the right mood. Set the bar there and it almost never happens, because those conditions turn up about twice a month.
How many books can you read in ten minutes a day?
Roughly one a month, which is around twelve a year.
The rough maths: most people read somewhere near a page a minute, and most novels run to about 300 pages. Ten minutes a day gets you a bit over 3,600 pages a year. That's a dozen books from a habit small enough that you'd struggle to notice it.
It's an estimate rather than a promise, and it'll vary with what you read and how fast. But the point stands: the unit is much smaller than people think. Ten minutes is a real reading session, not a consolation prize.
Put the book where your phone is
This is the single most effective change, and it takes about a minute to set up.
Leave a book on the arm of the sofa. One on the bedside table. One in your bag. The aim isn't to read three books at once, it's that whenever you have a spare few minutes, something to read is closer than your phone.
Willpower is a bad system. Proximity is a good one. You're not trying to become the sort of person who resists scrolling, you're trying to make the book the easier option in the moment.
The phone version works too. Put a reading app on your home screen where a social app used to be, and move the social app into a folder. It's a small amount of friction in one direction and a small amount of ease in the other, and that's usually enough to tip it.
Give yourself permission to give up on books
Most reading slumps aren't a lack of time. They're one book you're not enjoying, sitting there making you feel guilty.
You stop reading it, but you don't start anything else, because you haven't officially given up. Weeks pass. You conclude you've stopped being a reader, when actually you've been held hostage by page 80 of something that isn't very good.
Put it down. There's no prize for finishing, nobody's checking, and the number of books you'll get through in your life is smaller than you'd like. Spending three weeks of it on something you're not enjoying is a genuinely bad trade.
Make the book easier to carry
Reading in the gaps means having the book with you, and the reason people stop carrying one is that books don't survive bags well.
A paperback that's been loose in a bag for a week comes out bent, and after that happens a couple of times most people quietly stop bringing one. A padded book sleeve is a small fix for that, and we've written about what size fits which books if you want to check first.
An e-reader solves the same problem differently, since it weighs less than a paperback and holds everything you own. Our guide to Kindle and Kobo cases covers keeping one safe in a bag.
Neither is essential. The point is just that the friction is usually physical, and physical problems have physical solutions.
Do audiobooks count as reading?
Yes, and the question is more interesting than the answer.
Comprehension research broadly suggests people take in a story similarly whether they read it or hear it. But the reason the question keeps coming up isn't really about evidence. It's that a lot of people carry a quiet sense that reading is supposed to be difficult, and that anything easier must be a lesser version.
Our view, and it is a view rather than a fact: audiobooks turn commuting, washing up, walking the dog and folding laundry into reading time. For anyone genuinely short on hours, that's not a compromise. It's the entire solution.
Should you set a reading goal?
Only if you're the sort of person who enjoys tracking things.
Goals work brilliantly for some people and quietly ruin it for others. The failure mode is specific and common: you start choosing shorter books to keep the number moving, avoid the 600-page one you actually want to read, and turn a hobby into a small ongoing performance review.
If tracking makes you read more, track. If you've ever felt a flicker of stress about being behind on a target you invented, don't.
You might not need to read more
Worth saying, since everything above assumes you should.
Reading isn't a moral achievement and the number of books you get through says nothing much about you. If you're reading less because there's a new baby, a hard job or a difficult year, that's not a habit problem. That's just what a full life looks like, and the books will still be there.
The advice above is for people who want to read more and can't work out where it went. It isn't a standard anyone needs to meet.
If you do one thing
Put a book where you usually put your phone down. Then give yourself permission to abandon it if it turns out to be boring. Almost everything else is detail.