let's do a 'couch to 5k' for reading

we're going to work ourselves back to good 'reading fitness' over the next eight weeks. come and join us.

this is a young Katharine Whitehorn reading in Hyde Park

I mentioned this idea in this post and the response has been so strong and immediate that I have thought: let’s just do it. Let’s get started. Let’s learn in motion.

I have been thinking a lot about how to do this properly. I have some expertise in this. With the help of a trainer, I put together the 5k training for my running app Zombies, Run! which has had hundreds of thousands of users¹. And of course I’ve been making that game for, JFC, nearly 15 years now. So I’ve thought a lot about how to help people at varying levels do something that they really want to do in a way that builds fairly slowly, incorporates other training activities and is fun and sustainable.

Now, I am a crap runner, but a good reader.

For running, the great advantage of having me involved in planning what we’re up to is that I am a really reluctant runner, a very slow runner, so I can guarantee that almost nobody who uses the app will be worse than I am. So I’m never going to be too ambitious for anyone. I’m never going to make you feel shit for not being able to do some particular amount. When I did my own 5k training it was very, very challenging for me. I still look back on that 5k that I did as a really heroic effort. After many weeks of training it took me a bit more than an hour and I still had to walk parts of it.

And obviously, given that I read and write for a living I am at the top end of capability for reading, so I probably have an idea of what is a normal amount to read every day that might be a bit ambitious.

When we made Zombies, Run! I did have the input of my friend and business partner, Adrian Hon, who is a very keen runner. He made sure that the app was also suitable for people who are good at running. I’m aware that coming up with this myself might be pulling towards being too ambitious, and I don’t have the ‘balancer’ of the Reluctant Reader like I was the Reluctant Runner. We’re trying something out here, and I want to hear from you if it doesn’t work for your needs.

Having said all that: let’s FUCKING GO. The whole point of Couch to 5k is that it picks an amount which is doable for a lot of people and tells you how to go from “I can’t do that yet” to “now I can do it!” So, I’m going to SET A PROGRAM. YES.

first, pick your lane

This is what we’re doing. First of all, this program, as I’m conceiving it today, is essentially intended for people who have great memories of reading enjoyably but have found that their brains have been sucked into social media and the smartphones. It feels like a long time since they were in a regular enjoyable life-sustaining reading habit. It’s not our fault. When we bought our first smartphone, we didn’t know that they were going to have this addictive or compulsive effect on us. I wrote here about how it’s comparable to the way that men used cigarettes to get through the horrors of the trenches in World War I. They did not know that cheap, mass-produced cigarettes would be so much more compulsive and deadly than an evening pipe-smoking habit. We didn’t know. It’s not our fault, and now we have to try to fix it.

There are two other constituencies who have mentioned themselves in the comments on my original thoughts about this:

1. People who have genuinely limited time rather than knowing that they’re spending a lot of their time scrolling. People who are eg raising a tiny newborn or running a demanding business or caring for sick relatives. (Or all three!)

2. People who are reading but know that they are shying away from the difficult stuff towards things that are a bit more pappy and would like the motivation to tackle something harder. People who need more.

In a sense, this is like asking: actually, do you want to do Couch to 1k (that would have been great for me) or Couch to 25k instead?

Here’s my calibration question for you:

given who you are and what you know about yourself, given the season of life you’re in right now, how much do you want to be reading every day?

What feels to you like “yes, this is me at my good level where I am not feeling constantly frustrated that I’m not reading enough and missing out on stuff, but also you’re not going ‘ugh this is overwhelming, I wake up every day and feel stressed about how I’m going to fit this reading in’?”

Just really sit with the question for a bit. How much time are you spending scrolling social media every day? How much of that are you willing to replace with proper reading? When you think back to earlier periods in your life, what’s the longest you’ve enjoyed sitting with a book?

If your answer to this question for whatever reason is 20 minutes or less per day you are in Track 1. We’re going to build up to 30 mins a day but just for the final week of the program, right, which should give you a good nudge to be where you want to be.

If your answer is 20-60 minutes per day I’m going to encourage you into Track 2, which is the core track, where we’re aiming to work up to 30 minutes of reading every single day with some longer stints a couple of times a week.

If your answer is more than an hour a day, you’re in Track 3 and you’ll be focusing on choosing books that are hard enough for your intellectual level as well as improving your ability to sit and focus.

Please please don’t beat yourself up about any of this! Nothing is better or worse, lives are different and interest in reading is different. You might be a Track 3 person in general but where your life is right now is Track 1. I am incredibly committed to doing what we did with Zombies, Run! and making something that is accommodating to different lives and levels without being a dick about it.

We are all starting in the same gentle place for week 1.

Track 1 will be only reading and will ramp slowly. Tracks 2 and 3 will ramp more quickly and will have some additional activities and suggestions about how to identify hard-enough material. Of course you can always have a peek at the other tracks and steal some stuff meant for them if it appeals to you.

week 1 - what to do today and every day this week

All tracks: every day: read for five minutes, twice. (ie 10 minutes total).

You can do it joined up as one session, or in two lots

Think about where this will fit in your life. My suggestion is if at all possible to start your day with reading, not with your phone. Five minutes of reading is something you could do in bed as you wake up, or on the loo, or while waiting for your morning train. And then find somewhere toward the end of your day as a bookend (as it were) for the other five minutes. On the evening train. In bed before sleep. While supper is cooking. After you watch the news.

But you need to think about it. Where in your life do you want to fit reading in, where you’re currently doing something else? How are you going to make sure that the book is there and easy to find? Can you put a book or a Kindle in your bag or your jacket pocket now? Can you leave a book by your bed where your phone usually sits?

Another thought. I think “reading” means “a period of time when you’re reading or you’re doing nothing”. One person that I spoke to about this said that they might need small breaks even within a five-minute reading period. I think if you’re staring into space a bit that’s fine. Particularly if you’re reflecting on a good sentence you just read! So I think for most Substack readers five minutes sustained reading will be fine but if you don’t get sucked in/find yourself re-reading/need to just break and look into the middle-distance during that time that is fine and you’re still ‘doing it’.

additional activities for Tracks 2 and 3:

We’re working on our focus and on our discipline, OK? So this week, we’re doing something that apparently young people are increasingly finding challenging. I want you to watch a film that is at least 120 minutes long without looking at your phone (or tablet or laptop etc, no cheating) at all during it. No second screening. Enjoy looking at the actual cinematography.

For track 3: to be clear, these ten minutes of reading every day need to be The Hard Stuff not the easy stuff you know you don’t need to work at. If you need somewhere to start, try this essay by Walter Ong. It is hard and I had to read it quite slowly to understand what he was saying.

You have an additional additional activity which is: having read The Hard Stuff for 70 minutes, try to explain to someone what you’ve read. You can do it in a Substack note, or just to a friend or your partner or whatever. Just test yourself to see if you really got it.

what are you reading?

You may know immediately what you want to read in which case please read that. Nothing I can recommend is as good as something you very much want to read right now. If you have a book you’ve been dying to get on with even if you know you won’t finish it this week, just get started. Your interest is much more significant than my recommendations.

If you’re stuck for ideas, I strongly recommend working on something this week that you can finish with 70 minutes of reading. Not skimming; reading. I don’t know your reading speed, and it’ll vary depending on what you’re reading but a quick google suggests that average is about 10-12,000 words in 70 minutes. So:

• get a copy of the New Yorker (remember! in many places you can get it free on Libby!) or the LRB and read a good long article or two, and/or the short story. If you’re reading articles it’s particularly important not to skim and to make sure you get to the end

• buy an anthology of stories from an area of the world you’re interested in - Penguin have great anthologies like this lovely one from Japan - pick one and dive in

• sign up for George Saunders story club and read a story or two that he recommends

• scroll through Longreads which helpfully lists the word count for various stories - pick one that you are very interested in!

Here is a rule: if you are reading articles this week I want you to either read them on a dedicated reading device (eg Kindle, Kobo) and not your phone or… print them off. Yes, like it’s 2004. We’re trying to build new habits here and it’s too easy for reading articles on a phone to turn into scrolling.

And if you’re truly stuck for ideas of what to read, here are some short things I bloody love. I will recommend a few bloody brilliant things every week.

• This incredible New Yorker piece which has now become the book London Falling, but you get the whole story from this article.

• The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula Le Guin. Brilliant and sharp.

• The Library of Babel by Borges. If you like this, do I have a short book to recommend you for the final week.

• The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate by Ted Chiang. God he’s an incredible writer.

• A stone-cold classic, Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville author of Moby Dick. Yes, you can read classic literature in a week.

• Oh lord if you’re stuck please just get a book by Lydia Davis, put it in your bag and read some. Her pieces are extremely short and strange and atmospheric and 100% really literature.

AND ALSO: if you have recommendations, please do put them in the comments. I think this will be so good if we can recommend each other stuff.

some questions. (can’t call them FAQs as it’s all new right now)

something about this program really doesn’t suit me

I am a games designer and I would love to encourage you to approach this like a favourite family board game. Which is to say: I have given you rules, by all means give a good go to following my rules. But, if something doesn’t work for you and you know that a different rule would be better, you can do a modification. Let us know about it in the comments! I love to hear about people’s rules-mods. Rules-modding is a very legit and enjoyable way to play a game. Families often end up with ‘house rules’ for favourite board games.

why is this organised by reading time not by numbers of pages?

This is just my instinct about what works. Track 3 will be doing numbers of pages by the end of their track but in general my big insight into this (which I have to keep realising over and over again) is:

if you want to read more, you need to spend more time reading.

I know. And number of pages is also very susceptible to “some books are easier than others” and could end up skim/speed-reading to get to your page count very quickly. But! If you love reading by page count and that’s a useful modification for you, do let us know how you make it work.

how should I time my reading?

Ideally not your phone! Smartwatch, kitchen timer, or just look at the clock? Google has a timer so if you have a computer around the place go here. I think even a laptop is better than the phone.

I’m worried this all feels a bit easy

It’s week 1 and it’s supposed to not be intimidating.

I’m worried this might be too hard

It will be like Couch to 5k where you can repeat weeks as often as you like before you move on. Everything’s going to be fine. And: we’re doing an experiment right now. If it’s too hard or too ambitious for you, I really want to hear from you so that I can recalibrate for the next version.

what about audiobooks?

Up to you! I’m not going to stop you. My recommendations are twofold:

• if you’re doing audiobooks…. to work on your focus, I strongly suggest that you listen while not doing anything else or at least anything that might take your focus away. So like, doodling or drawing or knitting is fine. Something practical ‘to double up on time’, like driving or shopping is not fine. (You will have to be honest with yourself about whether walking or eg washing up helps with focus or distracts from focus.) Just give yourself a few minutes a day for your focus.

• I think after this week, which is the first week, see if you can do 1.5x or 2x the amount of time for audio that I’m recommending for eye-reading. Just see if you can. Because listening is slower and you take in fewer words than eye-reading (you can check: a book that averages six hours to read on Kindle is 10.5 hours on audio) so I want you to have the same experience of satisfaction and getting through material that the eye-readers get.

where can I check in if I want to talk about this?

I am going to open up chat threads for paid subscribers for the FIRST TIME EVER for this. And I might even do some scheduled “we all read at the same time on a Zoom chat” things. But everyone can leave comments on this post and please please do. I would love to hear how it’s going for everyone, what you’re reading, how fun/easy/hard you’re finding it. Feel free to leave comments like “just going to do my reading, here for accountability” and then post again when you’ve done it! It’s OK to want to do that, I do it all the time with text messages to my friends!

right but what’s going to be free?

I’ve thought about this a lot. I am going to put some of my personal reading recommendations in every week and those will often be paywalled. The main program will be free throughout. It’s been a lot of work to put this together so if you can pay for it for the next couple of months that’s lovely! My paid subscribers are paying me to do this. But reading is important, and please enjoy and join in and comment under this post without guilt if you can’t! The more the absolute merrier and giving your views is a wonderful way to contribute and will help this thing improve.

where are we heading?

Like Couch to 5k, the spine of this whole thing is going to be slowly ramping up the time we can do the thing for, in this case: ‘amount of reading every day’ and ‘amount of reading in one go’. It will be kind of mathematical in the way that C25K is: it’ll go up by a little bit every week so that it never feels too daunting. And you can always repeat a week.

But I want you to end up by doing something that feels impressive to you. That you feel you couldn’t have done before we started this, or haven’t done for a long while. So my suggestions are:

Track 1 is going to be reading one short book (150 pages or so) in a week. I will be suggesting some satisfying books you can take on, but you should also feel very very free to pick your own! If, for you, it is a Blake’s Seven tie-in novel that is TOTALLY LEGIT AND GREAT. Reading is also about finding out what you love and pursuing it as much as you want.

Track 2 is going to be reading a shortish book (150-250 pages) in 24 hours. That’s about 4-5 hours of reading depending on what book you choose, and it can be split overnight if you want. I want you to think right now about a day toward the end of August that you could set aside the time for this and make plans if you need to, to make it possible. We’re doing this not as some weird test of endurance but because it feels AMAZING to dive into the world of a book and finish it in a day.

Track 3 is going to be taking on a good ambitious book and getting through it in the last four weeks of the eight weeks, but I want you to have a day where you’re planning to read 300 pages towards the end of August, so also please identify that day and start planning.

the full eight-week plan, if you want to see it at a glance

Here is my plan for the full eight weeks, so you can see what we’re up to. But this doesn’t include enrichments and add-ons :-):

A few notes:

• ‘Daily’ is how many minutes to read that day — do it in one go, or split it: “10 + 15” means a 10-minute and a 15-minute session.

• ‘Daily’ means most days of the week — aim for every day but at the same time let’s not stress about it if you miss a day here or there.

• Repeat any week as many times as you like before moving on.

• The 24-hour read can be done in one delicious day, or split across, e.g., an afternoon, an evening, and the following morning.

• Track 1 is JUST daily reading. Tracks 2 and 3 add 2–3 longer reads a week on top.

Track 1 - easing in

Week 1: 10 min a day — 5 + 5, or in one go

Week 2: 12 min a day — 6 + 6, or in one go

Week 3: 15 min a day — split, or in one go

Week 4: 15 min a day — in one go

Week 5: 20 min a day — 10 + 10, or in one go

Week 6: 25 min a day — 10 + 15, or in one go

Week 7: 25 min a day — 10 + 15, or in one go

Week 8: 30 min a day — 15 + 15, or in one go

Celebrate your progress: finish a 150-page book this week (should be easy at 30 mins reading a day)

Track 2: building a reading habit

Week 1: 10 min a day — 5 + 5, or in one go

Week 2: 15 min a day — in one go + 1 longer read during the week: 30 min

Week 3: 20 min a day — 15 + 5 + 1 longer read during the week: 45 min

Week 4: 20 min a day — in one go + 2 longer reads during the week: 25 & 45 min

Week 5: 25 min a day — 10 + 15, or in one go + 2 longer reads during the week: 30 & 45 min

Week 6: 25 min a day — 10 + 15, or in one go + 2 longer reads during the week: 35 & 60 min

Week 7: 30 min a day — in one go + 2 longer reads during the week: 45 & 60 min

Week 8: 30 min a day — in one go + 2 longer reads during the week: 60 min × 2

Celebrate your progress: read a 150–250-page book across 24 hrs - could be one afternoon/evening and then the following morning

Track 3 - deep reading

Week 1: 10 min a day — in one go

Week 2: 15 min a day+ 2 longer reads during the week: 30 & 45 min

Week 3: 25 min a day + 2 longer reads during the week: 45 & 45 min

Week 4: 30 min a day + 2 longer reads during the week: 45 & 60 min

Week 5: 35 min a day + 3 longer reads during the week: 45m x 3

Week 6: 45 min a day + 3 longer reads: 45m, 60m, 90m

Week 7: 60 min a day + 2 longer reads: 90 & 90 min

Week 8: 60 min a day + 2 longer reads: 90 min & 2 hrs

Celebrate your progress: read 300 pages in 24 hrs - could be one afternoon/evening and then the following morning

Right! Stop reading this now and go and read something proper. Do five minutes right now, and then five minutes a bit later on today and then you’re DONE for today. Well done.

1. People who bounce off traditional Couch to 5k and ask for recommendations on running forums often get directed to the ZR version!