The book on the nightstand

Hi, it's Nora.

Wednesday was the holidays, and the dozen decisions that make them calmer. Today is gentler, and it's for anyone who's looked at the same book on their nightstand for about six months.

You know the one. You bought it with real enthusiasm. You read the first chapter, maybe two. Now it's a coaster for your water glass, and every night it looks at you a little reproachfully while you scroll your phone for forty minutes.

I went through about two years like this. I'd been a big reader my whole life, and then work got bigger, and then a baby arrived, and one day I realized I hadn't finished a book in eighteen months. I didn't decide to stop reading. It just quietly left.

The good news is that it's easy to bring back. Not with a reading challenge or a goal of fifty books a year. With a few small changes to where and when reading happens.

Before the fixes, it's worth understanding what actually happened, because it's almost never "I don't have time."

Reading lost its slot. For most adults, reading used to live in a specific place. The commute, the lunch break, the half hour before sleep. Then something moved into that slot, and usually that something was a phone. The phone didn't take your time. It took your reading time, specifically, because it's easier and it's always there.

The book was the wrong book. A lot of stalled reading is simply a book you don't enjoy that much. You feel you should finish it, so you don't start anything else, so you read nothing. One dull book can hold your whole reading life hostage for months.

Reading got promoted to a project. Somewhere along the way, reading became self improvement. Books you should read, lists of the top hundred, highlighting and note taking and summaries. All fine in moderation. But when reading becomes homework, it gets treated like homework, and put off like homework.

So the fixes are: give reading a slot, give yourself permission to quit books, and make it pleasure again.

Reading needs a regular place in your day, the same as any other habit. Here are the three slots that work best for most people.

The first twenty minutes in bed. The most common, and the best for most people. Phone charging across the room, book on the nightstand, twenty minutes before lights out. It also helps you sleep, because it's the opposite of the stimulation your phone gives you.

The first ten minutes of lunch. If you eat lunch at a desk, try ten minutes with a book before you open anything else.

The waiting times. The school pickup line. The doctor's waiting room. The ten minutes before a meeting. Most of us fill these with our phones. If you keep a book, or an e-reader, in your bag, those minutes add up to a surprising number of pages.

Pick one to start. Just one, for two weeks. Then see whether you want another.

And here's the key detail for the bedtime slot: the phone can't be on the nightstand. If it's within reach, you'll pick it up, and it'll win. Charge it in the kitchen, the hallway, anywhere but next to the bed. Buy a cheap alarm clock if you use the phone as your alarm. I talked about this in the phone issue, and it's the single change that brought my reading back. Everything else in this issue is secondary.

If you're getting back into reading, don't set a goal of a book a week. Set a goal of twenty pages a day.

Twenty pages is about twenty to thirty minutes for most people. It's small enough that you'll do it even on bad days. And it adds up faster than you'd think. Twenty pages a day is about six hundred pages a month. That's somewhere around eighteen to twenty five books a year, just from a half hour before bed.

Most people who "don't have time to read" would be astonished to finish twenty books next year. Twenty pages a day gets them there.

This is the most important permission slip in this whole issue: you're allowed to stop reading a book you don't like.

There's no prize for finishing. Nobody is checking. And every hour you spend dragging yourself through a book you don't enjoy is an hour you're not spending on one you'd love, and it's teaching you that reading is a chore.

A good rule I've adopted: give a book fifty pages. If you're not interested by then, stop. Put it back on the shelf, give it away, or just close it. You can always come back.

For older readers, there's a well known rule of thumb from the librarian Nancy Pearl: subtract your age from a hundred, and that's how many pages you owe a book. The older you get, the less time you have to waste on books you don't enjoy.

This sounds like the opposite of focus, but it works. Keep three different kinds of book going at once:

One easy. A novel, a thriller, a memoir. Something you read for pleasure, that pulls you along. This is your bedtime book.

One useful. A book that teaches you something you want to learn. This is your morning or lunch book, when your brain is sharper.

One slow. Poetry, essays, something you can dip into for five minutes and put down. This is your waiting room book.

The point isn't to read more at once. It's that you always have the right book for your mood. On a tired night, you're not staring at a dense business book you're not in the mood for. You're picking up the thriller.

A quick note, because people always ask. Yes, audiobooks count. Listening to a book on a walk, on a commute, while you're folding laundry, is reading. You're getting the story or the ideas. The medium doesn't matter much.

Audiobooks are especially good for the useful kind of book, and for the parts of the day when your hands are busy and your eyes aren't free. Walking the dog. Doing the dishes. The drive to work.

If you're looking for somewhere to start, here are a few that fit the spirit of this newsletter. Not required reading, just good company.

Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. The best book about time I've read. It argues that you'll never get everything done, and that accepting this is a huge relief rather than a defeat. If this newsletter had a founding text, this would be it.

Essentialism by Greg McKeown. A clear, practical book about doing fewer things better. Especially good if you've enjoyed the issues about saying no.

Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff. On treating your life as a series of small experiments rather than a set of fixed goals. Very good for anyone tired of resolutions.

Any novel you loved as a teenager. Seriously. Re-reading something you loved is one of the fastest ways to remember why you liked reading in the first place.

A lot of reading friction happens before the first page. You go to bed, you don't know where the book is, you can't remember where you left off, and the phone is right there. So, a few very small setup fixes:

One book, one place. The bedtime book lives on the nightstand, always. The bag book lives in the bag. Don't make yourself look for it.

Use a real bookmark. Or a receipt, or a train ticket. Anything but trying to remember. Picking up exactly where you left off takes the effort out of starting.

Get a light that works. If your partner sleeps earlier than you, a small clip on book light or an e-reader with a warm backlight removes the excuse entirely.

Try the library. Many libraries let you borrow e-books and audiobooks through apps like Libby, free, from your phone. It lowers the cost of trying books, which makes quitting the ones you don't like much easier. You haven't paid for it, so there's nothing to feel guilty about.

One last small habit. Keep a note on your phone of every book you finish, with the date. Just the title and the date.

It sounds trivial. It turns out to be quietly motivating, especially in the first few months, when you look back and realize you've read six books since the summer. And at the end of the year, it's a lovely thing to scroll through. A kind of diary, told in books.

Move the phone off the nightstand. Tonight. Pick one book you actually want to read and put it where the phone was.

Twenty pages. See how you feel in two weeks.

Back Wednesday, when I want to talk about the people in your life you keep meaning to call, and a small system that makes sure you actually do.

Better, not busier.

Nora Bishop

P.S. I'd love to know what's on your nightstand right now. Hit reply and tell me the book you're reading, or the one you keep meaning to start. I read every reply, and I may share a few of the best picks, without names, in a future issue. If you want somewhere to start in the meantime, Four Thousand Weeks is the one I hand to everyone.