My Daily Reading Schedule
I get a lot of questions about how I read so many books—specifically, I get asked about my daily reading schedule. With a full-time job and three young kids, how do I work in enough actual minutes and hours to read 100+ books per year? (Without leaving my wife and kids hanging.)
When I break it down for people, the reaction has usually been, “Oh, that seems really doable, actually.”
The main thing I tell people when I get this question is that I’m just a guy who loves to read. Which inevitably means I spend a lot of my free time doing it, just as you would any other hobby. It’s not something I have to think a lot about because reading naturally finds its way into my days and weeks without much resistance.
Okay, let’s take a look at the details of my reading schedule.
My kids are generally and quite consistently up between 6:45 and 7am. I work from home and have no need to be awake before then, but I set my alarm for either 5:30 or 5:45am during the week and 6am on weekends.
Sitting in bed with a book and a hot cup of coffee for 45-60 minutes before the kids are awake is absolutely the best part of my reading routine. Starting the day with calm instead of crazy is immeasurably wonderful.
Now, I’m someone who has no problem getting out of bed that early, but I know that’s not everybody. Again, the simple fact is that I love coffee and I love reading, so I’d rather do those things than sleep. Plus, with bedtime at 9:30 or 10, it’s just not that hard for me to get up at 5:45 or so.
Throughout the work day, I’ll have a couple 10-minute chunks of time where I’m waiting for something or just need a brain break—perfect chance to pick up a book and read a handful of pages.
After work and school and before the kiddos’ bedtime, there’s about 4 hours of unstructured family time. That time ends up being a combination of independent play, outside time, chores around the house, dinner, tablet time, exercising, and an assortment of other random, chaotic things. More days than not, though, I’ll sneak in another ~20 minutes of reading, sometimes more, while waiting for water to boil on the stove, while supervising outside, while the kiddos have tablet time, etc.
Sometimes that 20 minutes is broken up into 10 2-minute chunks of time—this is the time of day when I’m often found carrying a book around the house or yard and sneaking in a few pages whenever I can.
Kiddos go to bed. We watch an hour or so of some non-Nickelodeon TV. And then the day ends with Jane and I reading in bed for another 20-30 minutes before it’s lights out.
On a good day and when everything is clockwork, that’s about two hours of reading time. Even when things go south, it’s incredibly rare for me to have less than an hour of reading in a day. It adds up! (Especially when you consider how many hours per day you use your Netflix account and/or smartphone.)
I read pretty quickly (it happens with practice!), so I can usually get 100+ pages in if it’s on the two-hour side, or 50+ pages if it’s on the one-hour side.
There are days, of course, where I don’t read hardly at all; but there are also days where I can binge-read a few hundred pages at a crack (snowy weekends, vacations, etc.). For me, this has been a decade-long, consistent routine that has led to ~100 books per year, even with kiddos factored in.
You asked and I answered, but I don’t think this routine is ideal or doable for everyone. I don’t have a commute, I don’t have to “get ready” in the mornings, my job doesn’t require more than 40 hours a week, and I have a disposition that allows me to both wake up early and be able to focus on a book when there’s kid-created chaos around me.
If you’re happy with what you’re reading and how much you’re reading, there’s no need to push yourself to read more. But if you have a feeling like you’d rather watch a little less TV and read just a little more, consider how I structure my own reading and see if you can pull some ideas from it.
The very last thing that reading should ever be is dogmatic. Do what works for you and consider your reading to be an essential element of your self-care.
I’d love to hear about your reading schedule! Let me know in the comments.
-Jeremy
I think an important part of reading more books is also categorizing your reading. My reading falls into three: I read something from a writer (fiction, drama, poetry), scholar (history, philosophy, reference), and teacher (essays, memoirs, scriptures). So I can be reading 3-9 books at any one time. My mind tends to drift after 10-15 pages of reading any single book, so I like to pivot to different material that sometimes requires more careful reading to something that is lighter.
Also, don't discount audiobooks! It's a great way to "read" in a different way. I listen to Great Courses and fiction around the house while I'm doing things. I'd argue it's the ONLY way to read fiction. There's nothing like someone telling a good story!
Jeremy - thanks for the tips. I'm curious if you focus on one book at a time or go to a few each day as is my habit. It's common to find myself engaging 3-4 books throughout my reading week.