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I know that I should probably spend more time reading. My shelves are filled with volumes I haven’t opened. Occasionally, I’ll take a trip to the library and bring home an ambitious stack of books … only to, weeks later, return most of them unread. For a long time, I’ve wanted to spend more time reading. But each day, I find myself preoccupied with other things—work, social media, etc. Before I know it, I’m heading to bed, without having cracked open a book or made it through a longform article.
Over the years, fewer and fewer Americans say that they read for pleasure. Americans read 23 minutes a day in 2004, a number that declined to 16 minutes in 2019. In 2012 the federal government reported that 54.6 percent of people reported reading at least one book in the past year. By 2022, that number had declined to 48.5 percent of people. This dip in time spent reading has been accompanied by alarming reports by educators from elementary school to college who claim that their students are having difficulty with foundational literacy skills. This compounds a general literacy issue in the United States. At least 130 million Americans read below a sixth-grade level.
Reading—or the lack thereof—can profoundly influence people’s lives, as well as society at large. For instance, according to a study of older adults, those who had better reading habits (such as reporting reading one to five books in the past three months) were also likely to have more knowledge of Medicare plans and to therefore be more equipped to navigate them; this association was found even after controlling for people’s educational status. As other studies have found, reading is protective against age-related cognitive decline, and it helps strengthen memory in older adults. Reading as a child is associated with better cognitive performance and mental health during one’s teenage years. Overall, reading is also associated with a longer lifespan; one study found a 20 percent reduction in mortality among those who read books compared to those who didn’t. This “survival advantage” was stronger for books than it was for magazines and newspapers. The study controlled for other variables, including race, age, education, comorbidities, and income. As with other practices we engage in for health—jogging, meditating, eating vegetables—reading might not be a singular magic pill, but it’s clear that it can help.
We might in fact conceive of reading as not just a leisure activity but an exercise for the mind. Just as we work out our muscles, our brains too need to be challenged routinely, and to get practice focusing. We don’t always want to exercise—we don’t always have time—but many of us are able to motivate ourselves to squeeze in workouts nonetheless because we understand that doing so will be worth it for our health and mood alike. We understand that even relatively short cardio or weightlifting sessions can, when done regularly, pay dividends.
I decided to adopt this framework for a week. I set myself a goal of 30 minutes a day spent reading, which I would complete in two 15-minute increments—one in the morning, and one at night. I could exceed 30 minutes if I wanted to, but I had to read at least that amount. I also chose to spend this time reading a physical book, to reduce distraction. Maryanne Wolf, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World, believes that technology has affected our ability to do deep, slower processing. The reading we often do on the internet, she argues, is more skimming than reading. As a result, we have depleted what Wolf refers to as cognitive patience: our ability to engage in concentrated and focused reading. In addition to providing myself the space to find joy in reading, I wanted to strengthen the muscle of cognitive patience.
There were a few things I noticed during my week of reading “workouts.” First off, deploying this strategy proved incredibly effective in getting over the initial hump of starting a new book. I find that the beginning of a book requires more concentration and investment than when I’m picking up a book halfway through and I’m engaged in the characters and subject matter and acquainted with the author’s style. Setting myself a time limit during which I could do nothing but read made it easier to concentrate. I was also less fixated on how much progress I had—or hadn’t—made with a book. At the end of the day, it was satisfying to just have spent time reading. Some days I even exceeded the 30 minutes and read at various intervals throughout the day.
Much as athletes will report being “in the zone” during a workout, setting aside dedicated time to read can provide a chance to unplug from the rest of the world and enter a state of immersion. That said, I didn’t always achieve that flow state; there were times I caught myself going on my phone or opening my laptop. I would promptly put away those devices upon remembering what I had set aside the time for and, like a runner who pauses in the middle of a session, simply resume reading and lengthen my total session by a minute or two. (In retrospect, setting my phone to Do Not Disturb might have been useful.)
Over the next few years, we will likely be bombarded with even more news and stimuli, and it will be even more crucial to maintain skills like focusing and processing information. Reading a little bit every day is your brain’s best bet for staying sharp. So join me in incorporating it into your routine: Brush your teeth, eat well, exercise, and read widely.
