How to develop a reading habit?

How to Develop a Reading Habit for Beginners?

This post is about “How can you develop a reading habit (even if you have never read before and you are a complete beginner) and be consistent in it without feeling sleepy or losing your interest?”. Without delay, let’s begin.

Reading is one such habit that can help you tremendously to succeed in your life irrespective of your work domain.

Many great people like Sudha Murthy, Ankur Warikoo, Naval Ravikant, Bill gates, and Warren Buffet reads a lot in their daily life and encourage others to do so.

As they all agreed, for their success & growth, significant credit goes to their reading habit.

However, in spite of the countless benefits of reading, many people struggle to develop a reading habit or fail to be consistent with it.

Since any new habit takes time, persistence effort, and patience, in order to be part of our lives.

This post will help you develop a reading (non-academic reading) habit and also help you be consistent with it.

Let’s get started with the steps to develop a reading habit:

First, set a mindset that ‘You want to read’

You will not be able to set any habit unless you want to do it from the bottom of your heart. 

Don’t read because I (or any other person) is telling you to do so, or because all people around you are reading but you are the one who is left out. 

But develop a reading habit because YOU WANT TO DO IT.

Find out how will you benefit from your reading habit

We don’t do anything without a strong purpose attached to it.

List down the reasons (on paper) how the reading habit will help you in your life.

Will it be helpful to you in your job? 

Do you want to read such books that can help you in managing people, interpersonal relationships, and finance?

Or do you want to read such books that can help you understand others’ behavior, or help you understand your child better?

Find out what is your purpose behind reading.

[Note: Later on, this will help you choose books based on your purpose. However, while we are still developing a habit, we will start with other types of books that I will reveal in the next point.]

Don’t start with a known, big best-seller book

As we are just starting to develop a reading habit, we will not start with any hefty bestseller book.

However, we will start with a small book that has less number of pages (maybe around 100) and that is written in a story narrative format.

Due to the story narration format of the book, you will be motivated enough to read daily and not get bored.

With fewer pages, you could finish a book faster, and you will gain the confidence to start the next book.

Set a reading routine

Decide on fix time or fix evet for reading daily.

Like say for example:

I will read for 10 minutes after I wake up.

I will read for 15 minutes after dinner/lunch.

I will read while having my tea/coffee.

Once a routine is built up for the reading, you will be on autopilot mode to do the task, and your friction to not do the tasks will reduce by almost 98%.

But till the time routine is built, you have to be consistent with the habit forcefully.

Keep a book visible to you in your surrounding

Keep your book such that it is visible to you, so it can remind you about your new habit.

You can also purchase the kindle version of a book so that the book is accessible to you on your phone.

[Note: While you read a book on your phone or tablet, don’t forget to keep your device on DND mode so you won’t get distracted by other notifications.]

Track your reading progress every day

Every day write down in your notebook, how many pages you read and for how much duration you could read, and at what time you read.

You can also track your reading progress on some apps like notion or notes.

This way you can look back on your reading journey and feel good about it for further motivation.

These track records can also help you understand your reading pattern, like on which day(time) you could read better and why.

Read for at least 30 days as per the set routine

Do this for 30 days.

Never miss a day doing so, since we are developing a new habit.

If you do this with consistency for 30 days, your habit is set, and then after you don’t have to work hard to get yourself to read daily. 

After those 30 days, as and when the predecided time for reading comes, you automatically get to read.


Once your habit is set, then you can further add one more toughness to your reading routine like reading at least 20 pages in a day.

Reading Tips: How To Read Fast, and Better in 2023

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