How to Read More Books
Ali Abdaal presents 10 practical rules for reading significantly more books without requiring large blocks of dedicated time. The episode focuses on environmental design, habit stacking, and identity shifts as leverage points—showing how to make reading the default behavior rather than a willpower-dependent task. For builders and high performers, the core insight is that reading more is less about discipline and more about removing friction and redesigning your digital and physical environment.
Key takeaways
- • Use the pillow rule: keep a Kindle or book on your nightstand and charge your phone in another room to eliminate evening scroll temptation and create a default reading habit.
- • Redesign your phone's home screen to make reading apps (especially Kindle) the first visual option, removing social media from the top level to shift your default grab-and-scroll behavior.
- • Implement the multitasking rule by listening to audiobooks at 1.5x–2.5x speed during mundane activities like commuting, washing dishes, or exercising to generate 30–60 minutes of reading time daily from thin air.
- • Read multiple books in parallel (fiction, non-fiction, spiritual) rather than forcing yourself to finish one at a time, allowing you to match your current energy level and avoid getting stuck on difficult books.
- • Adopt the mindset "read what you love until you love to read"—prioritize page-turning fiction and guilty-pleasure books over classics and prestige literature to build the reading habit before attempting harder material.
- • Give yourself permission to abandon books without guilt; life is too short to slog through unengaging reads, and stopping a bad book is not failure—it's smart prioritization.
- • Gamify your reading by tracking books on Goodreads (which syncs with Kindle), rating finished books, and watching your annual reading numbers climb—small metrics create momentum without sacrificing reading quality.
- • Adopt the impulse buy rule: immediately purchase any recommended book without friction or deliberation, treating books as high-ROI investments even if you don't read them for months.
- • Train yourself to read or listen faster (eliminate subvocalization, use 2x speed on audiobooks) without sacrificing comprehension; faster reading lets you consume more books in the same time and makes slow passages easier to push through.
- • Shift your identity from "I'm trying to read" to "I am a reader," then always have a book accessible in any moment of downtime—identity-based habits are more powerful and sustainable than goal-based willpower.
Recommendations (12)
"the book that I'm currently reading on Kindle, in this case, The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman"
Ali Abdaal · ▶ 2:39
"I realized this when I was listening to the Wheel of Time series on Audible."
Ali Abdaal · ▶ 10:17
Mentioned (7)
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