How to Actually Build a Reading Habit (When Your Phone Is Right There)
Co-founder, Markaz ·
Everyone wants to read more. The phone has other plans. The gap between the two isn’t discipline — it’s design: readers aren’t people with more willpower, they’re people whose books are easier to reach than their feeds at the moment it matters. This is the practical version of building that design, tuned for real life in Pakistan — load-shedding, joint families, jobs — not a productivity fantasy.
Rule 1: Ten pages, not one hour
The habit that survives is the smallest one. Ten pages a day is fifteen minutes, and it compounds to roughly a book a month — twelve a year, which puts you ahead of almost everyone you know. On a bad day, read one page. The streak is the asset; volume comes later.
Rule 2: Pick books you’ll actually finish
Serious literature is a terrible starting gym. Start where the pull is: if you loved a drama, read its novel — the best Urdu novels of all time is full of gateway titles, and Nimra Ahmed’s thrillers were engineered to be unputdownable. Finishing books is the habit; impressing people is not.
Rule 3: Put distance between you and the phone
Charge the phone in another room after Isha and keep the current book where the phone used to be — the habit rides on the laziness that used to defeat it. Load-shedding hours, commutes and the wait at the tailor are all reclaimable reading time if the book is physically with you.
Rule 4: Always know your next book
Most reading habits die in the gap between books. Keep a two-book buffer on the shelf — the moment you start a book, decide its successor. A small stack of unread books isn’t guilt; it’s infrastructure.
Rule 5: Track it somewhere visible
A notebook page with finished titles and dates is enough — the growing list becomes its own motivation (the Stationery shelf has notebooks for pennies). Family version: a shared list on the fridge turns reading into a friendly race.
Stocking up without leaving home
Browse the Novels, Self-Help and Poetry shelves on Markaz, order the buffer stack in one go, and pay cash when it arrives. A reading habit is a supply chain; keep yours full.
