Best Results Organizing

If you love reading, summertime means finding a good beach read. Thanksgiving and the December holidays may mean finding books to read for when you finally escape the hubbub. And the darkest part of winter gives you a great excuse to snuggle up with a good book.

However, whether you’re a reader or just want to be one, chances are that you’ve found yourself too busy doing too many things (and probably things you like less than reading) such that you make it to the end of the year with more books on your TBR (To Be Read) pile than your already-read list. And you aren’t be alone.

The American Time Use Survey (ATUS), put out by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics,  measures the amount of time people spend doing various activities, such as paid work, childcare, volunteering, and socializing.  An analysis published this summer in iScience recently found a downward trend in reading for pleasure over the past 20 years. 

In fact, per the New York Times:

Researchers from University College London and the University of Florida examined national data from 2003 to 2023 and found that the share of people who reported reading for pleasure on a given day fell to 16 percent in 2023 from a peak of 28 percent in 2004 — a drop of about 40 percent. It declined around 3 percent each year over those two decades.

I don’t think it’s because people don’t want to read; prior research found that during early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, people spent significantly more money on recreational reading material than they had in 2019. Indeed, consumer spending on recreational reading went up almost 23% in 2020 and another 1.8 percent in 2021. When people have the time, they do read.

To borrow from an old phrase, the spirit (to read) is willing, but the flesh (of our eyeballs? of our tushies?) is weak.

People are busy — with work, parental obligations, sandwich-generation obligations to kids and parents, volunteering, and with anxiety over [Paper Doll waves her arms around, frantically] everything going on in the world. Studies, particularly from the pandemic era bear this out, as people living in households without children and people 75 and over read (for pleasure) significantly more than those in the middle categories. 

So, as you make up your wish lists for Santa, I’m hoping this post will give you confidence that if you asks for books, you’ll have read them by this time next year.

HAVE BOOKS, WILL TRAVEL (OR SIT)

It’s easier to be inspired to do something specific than something vague. Start by figuring out your options.

Be a Book Collector

Walk around and gather up every unread book in your home. Use a laundry basket, if you have to, and drag everything to a central location. You may have enough for a bedside table, a bookshelf or an entire library, but once you’ve got these all together, divide them into three piles:

• books you’re excited to read now — They may be in your favorite genre, by an author you adore, or just books that if you had the time, you’d grab a hot cocoa and a blanket banish everyone while you read them.
• books you’re somewhat enthusiastic about, but daunted by — Maybe this is because the book is thick, the writing is complex — hello, 19th-century Russians — or you just don’t have the focus right now, but with some situational support, you could/would embrace the books.
• books you have no desire to read — These might be books that once appealed to you, or that were lent or given to you with great glee on the part of the person who loved it and felt it necessary to press it into the hands of everyone (no matter their tastes). You have this random internet stranger’s permission to move the book along (to a friend who is a voracious reader with varied tastes, to used book stores, or to Little Free Libraries).

You may have to rearrange your bookshelves a little, or create a reading shelf out of a deep windowsill or mantle or the back or far side of your desk (with the help of some sturdy bookends). This is where you will keep your To Be Read books. Put the most desirable books front and center so you’ll be more inclined to read them! (The more daunting books can go on a lower shelf for once you’ve tackled the ones with more sparkle.

No books at home? Visit your public library (in person, or digitally) to pick two books that get you excited. (If one fails to spark, you’ve got a backup.)

CREATE A READING ENVIRONMENT

Earlier this month in David Kadavy’s Love Mondays newsletter, in a piece entitled “Why I bought a $600 Lamp,” notes that while, “Lots of people with a scrolling habit would rather have a reading habit,” it’s hard to really break that habit of grabbing your phone to scroll (when you’re bored, when you’re anxious, when you are procrastinating doing something that will take you toward your goals).

Longtime readers have heard me say many times that developing an organized system for being productive, whether at home or in your workspace, requires eliminating friction; as Kadavy says, “you need to remove the resistance.”

Kadavy writes:

Invest in reading. Buy all the things that make reading comfortable, easy, even luxurious. I bought a $600 lamp, which was more than enough to get me to say, “Well, I spent all that money on this reading lamp…”

I’m not going to encourage you spend $600 on a reading lamp; I’d rather buy more books. But what could you more reasonably buy, make, rearrange, or otherwise revise in your environment to make reading more inviting?

What’s your resistance to reading, and how can you get rid of it?

Don’t assume that the space you’ve assigned yourself for reading, by default, is a good reading space. For example, I have a bonus room that the blueprints for my apartment designate as “the library.” There’s one overhead light, a door to the balcony, and a window. However, the door is mostly glass, so during cold months, it’s chilly, and during much of the rest of the year, it’s too hot and sunny. I never read in there.

Conversely, the outer “wall” of my kitchen cabinet that faces my carpeted dining room-turned-office has ideal lighting, and I often enjoy sitting on the floor with my back to that end of the kitchen. I’m similarly comfortable reading when sitting criss-cross-applesauce at my desk chair, turned 90° from my desk and computer. 

What would make your reading environment more inviting?

• Seating — First, where are you comfortable sitting to read? Some people can dive into a book anywhere, while others need a squishy sofa or chair. Conduct an experiment, and every day for a week, pop into a different seating option in your home. You might be surprised to find reading comes naturally in an unexpected location, like the bottom of your steps or in your guest bedroom.              
• Ambiance — Can you read in the middle of a coffeehouse or university library? Are you able to delve into a story while your kids are running circles around you? Or do you need to control the environment so that you can concentrate? There’s no right or wrong, but the more easily you can fall into your book, the more time you’ll spend reading rather than adjusting the variables.
• Lighting — I’m an overhead-lighting girlie. My mother and my sister can’t stand light from overhead, and prefer lamps. I have clients who prefer soft lighting, and have known a few who prefer to read in the dark with the adult equivalent of a night light.

Have you ever seen these LED neck lights? For under twenty dollars, you can get six levels of brightness and three different colors of light from a rechargeable, bendable light that fits around your neck! 

For readers with sensitive eyes, having a reading light that comes from your direction toward the book, is key, and more comfortable than the more traditional overhead approach of the descendants of clip-on Itty-Bitty Book Lights.

• Bookmarks — It may seem small, but an appealing bookmark might be exactly what you need to bring you back to your book. Sure, you can dog-ear a (non-library) book or use a CVS receipt to mark your page, but a bookmark that reflects your passion, whether it’s kittens or Doctor Who, fine art or a silly catch phrase, is likely to level up your reading experience, and motivate you to get back to your book.
• Beverages — Depending on your personal style, you may prefer to read in a snack-free environment or devour sweet or salty goodies while reading. Paper Doll does not judge. However, if you’re developing a cozy reading habitat, consider investing in a corded or cordless coffee (or tea) warmer. 

DEVELOP A READING HABIT BY SYNCING TIME AND SPACE

In her recent piece, The 10-10-10 Plan for Reading 50 Books a Year, Laura Vanderkam suggested finding forty minutes per day to read, six days a week, to achieve 240 minutes (four hours) of reading per week, or possibly about an average-sized book each week.

Of course, finding forty minutes in your day — when you’ve got in-person meetings and Zooms and carpool leaves very little buffer space in your calendar — might seem impossible. Beyond the larger issue of time management, Vanderkam’s 10-10-20 approach says that in lieu of finding 40 consecutive minutes, get the same effect with smaller doses of reading time.

She suggests finding two ten-minute blocks you can comfortably commit to and put them on your schedule, and then add a 20-minute reading slot before bed.

If you feel that you truly don’t have forty minutes of potential reading time in your day, whether all at once or in chunks, I challenge you to set an alarm on your phone to remind you to put your phone down or on airplane mode for a fixed amount of time (say, a 25-minute Pomodoro), and set another alarm to let you know when your self-commitment is complete. Chances are good that you merely replaced doom scrolling with reading. 

Scheduling the time is one thing; sticking to it is another. If you do all of your reading on an e-reader, or in an app on your phone, you’ve only got one thing to keep at hand. However, if you (like Paper Doll) prefer the heft of a traditional book, there are definitely ways to use those books to tempt you. 

And if you’re never without a book, at least you never have that excuse for not being able to read.

• Keep a book in the kitchen and read while you wait for the coffee and your breakfast to be ready. (If the book is good, you’ll likely to continue to read while eating.
• Place a book on your vanity to read while you dry your hair. (Obviously, there are hygiene concerns with leaving a book in the bathroom, but having a book in one hand while drying your hair with the other not only evenly builds up the muscles in your arms, but it gives you something to do while you can’t listen to anything.)
• Tuck a book in your purse or work bag to read:
  • on your commute (if you’re taking public transportation)
  • in the driveway or parking lot (if you arrive at your appointment early, or — and here’s a nifty idea, to read when you return to your car before driving home or to your next location!)
  • when someone (your doctor, the friend meeting you for lunch, etc.) is inevitably late
• Keep a book in the trunk of your car — Imagine you get a flat or some other vehicular annoyance and you won’t merely be waiting ten minutes, but perhaps an hour. A book you can dip in and out of — perhaps a collection of short stories or a memoir that doesn’t require that you recall details from chapter to chapter — is perfect.
• Stash a book under the crib, next to the changing table, or anywhere in your child’s room so whether you’re called to rock an infant or keep a toddler company until they nod off, you don’t have to count tiles on the ceiling. While we tend to sleep in the dark, it seems a lot of kids nod off in a soft glow, so you may find that you can read either a traditional book or a phone/e-reader.
• Keep a small stack of books for professional reading in your workspace. — Most of the above ideas are best used for fiction or light reading, but if you’re trying to keep up with reading in your professional life, you’re most likely to pay attention when you’re in your workspace. Put three books within reach of your desk. Use reading time as a transition: read for ten or fifteen minutes before you leave for lunch, or spend your last 15 minutes of the workday (or fifteen minutes after your work is done) to get ahead on reading professional journals or books. Read with tape flags or a highlighter nearby to capture important concepts.
• Load audiobooks and ebooks onto your phone so you can listen when you can’t look. (It’s hard to read print while folding laundry or walking on the treadmill.) I’m not going to get in the middle of the debate over whether listening counts as reading. But I will suggest you check your public library for access to audiobooks (and ebooks); even if you prefer reading text, if you’re stuck for a while without the book you want to read, catching up with a few audio (or virtual) chapters will keep your committed to your reading plan.

Yes, that’s a lot of different places to stash books. You don’t necessarily have to keep moving your books from place to place; you can keep a few different books at the ready in various places.

If you only read fiction, it may be difficult (or impossible) to read multiple books simultaneously, especially if they’re in the same genre. However, reading a novel before bed and a non-fiction book in small bites throughout the day may keep your brain sharp.

I generally read one fiction book and two non-fiction books concurrently, with each assigned a different “home.” It’s less like trying to keep the plots and characters of Grey’s Anatomy, Chicago Med, Doc, and Brilliant Minds all straight in your head, and more like keeping up with both The Diplomat and The Great British Bake-Off.

MOTIVATE YOURSELF TO READ MORE

Zig Before You Zag — You Don’t Have to Tackle Reading Head-On

One of my friends is an eager reader, but due to work has strayed from the habit. However, he really enjoys Shakespeare, and goes to monthly communal Shakespeare readings where participants take turns reading sections of the plays. While that counts as reading, it wasn’t helping him tackle his backlog. 

Last year, I got him Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent, a memoir of sorts by Dame Judi Dench, where she regales the interviewer with tales of her decades of performing Shakespeare on stage.

The idea was that independently reading something easy and fun, but in the same neighborhood as his monthly group readings, made the leap easier.

If you plan to start reading books by a particular author (or on a non-fiction topic), try short stories or essays to whet your appetite. Be creative. If you want to carve out time to read a biography of the Founding Fathers, pay closer attention to who’s who and what they do in Hamilton, or musical grandpa, 1776!

If you haven’t read books with long chapters since college and feel wobbly, try picking books with short chapters. Ask your friendly librarian for some recommendations, or pick titles from 50 Books With Short Chapters at Keeping Up with the Penguins.

The key is that if you want to read, but aren’t feeling up to the task, it’s OK to find a back door. With classics, read a character description on Wikipedia. With modern books, read professional reviews, which are far less likely to reveal spoilers than reader reviews.

Give Yourself a Challenge

Just as with any habit you want to establish, sometimes you need to give yourself a push. I participate in the Goodreads Reading Challenge annually, setting a goal for how many books I’ll read each year. If I hit my goal, I increase it for the next year; if I fail, I set the same goal again. (I’ve been stuck at 39 books for a few year’s running.) I’m often reading three books concurrently, so my reading achievements lag for a while and then jump forward.

Because I not only log, but review, each book after I complete it, it forces me to really think about what I’ve read. This makes it more likely that I will remember the book (for my own purposes and to recommend to friends), but it also makes the challenge more real to me.

Other reading challenges encourage not just volume of books read, but types. If you’re looking for a challenge that’s more, well, challenging to the diversity of your reading endeavors, check out The Candid Cover’s 2025 Reading Challenges: The Ultimate List. 

The More (Readers), the Merrier

Join the Club

Joining a book club is one way to inspire you to invest more of your time in reading. In small groups, you may feel obligated to speak up and put your take on a book (perhaps one you didn’t like) on display; if you’re an introvert, you may find the whole idea distasteful. However, there are a variety of book club options that don’t require you to meet in person; these existed before 2020, but since the pandemic, online book clubs have proliferated.

Whether you prefer time travel or romantasy, classics or graphic novels, business books or psychology, there’s a group somewhere that’s reading and discussing what you like to read. Just use your favorite search engine (or AI, cough, if you must) to point you in the direction of a group — in person or virtual — up for discussing your preferred author or genre. Or try the suggestions in these articles:

The 15 Best Online Book Clubs to Join (Reedsy)

These Are the Best Online Book Clubs to Read More (Good Housekeeping)

What are the Best Free Online Book Clubs for Adults in 2025? (BookBrowse)

Read Along

Of course, not all book discussions are book clubs. You may want to look for something billed as a “read along.” 

My favorite (classic) novelist is Jane Austen. I’ve read all of her novels (multiple times), but this year, I’ve participated in the Austen Connection’s Jane Austen Read Along in honor of 2025 being the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth.

Janet Lewis Saidi (going by the non-de-plume Plain Jane), author of the recently released Jane Austen: The Original Romance Novelist, is our fearless leader.

We do “close reading” of a handful of chapters each week; we’re rounding out the year having just hit the middle of our final book, Persuasion. Plain Jane’s weekly essays are a lively mix of her personal wisdom, erudite academic resources, and pop culture references, and subject matter experts share wisdom on related topics and diverse perspectives.

In the comments section each week, we heartily discuss and debate everything from geography to the in-joke of “shrubberies,” from why every man seems to be Charles or Williams or Thomas to (and I have to admit I think I started the whole kerfuffle) which of Austen’s heroes and cads are the most, um, bed-able. (My take? In the novels, it’s Mr. Knightley from Emma. In the adaptations, it’s Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy in 1995’s Pride and Prejudice.)

A read-along provides the benefits of an in-person book club, but doesn’t obligate you to pipe up. You can just, quite literally, read along, reading the book, the leader’s thoughts, and the comments. But you may find delight in eventually sharing your thoughts.

Shhhh, We’re Reading

Some people want company when they are reading, but don’t want to have to actually interact with anyone, or at least not interact about the book. Have you heard of the Silent Book Club, sometimes (not-so) jokingly called Introvert Happy Hour?

If grabbing ten minutes for yourself here-and-there makes you feel unproductive because you really crave serious reading time but the people in your life don’t respect your need for isolated reading time, Silent Book Club might be a better bet. From the site:

Silent Book Club is a global community of readers with 2,000 chapters in 60+ countries. There’s no assigned reading — it’s bring your own book.

More than a million members gather in person, online, and in destinations around the world to read together and swap stories. All readers are welcome!

Celebrating it’s tenth year, Silent Book Club gives you the opportunity to show up, socialize or not (with friends or strangers) for a bit, and then read for a solid block of time. I found three different groups within a dozen miles of my home!

Read more in the blog post, Highlights from 10 Years of Silent Book Club.

Over the last 18 years, Paper Doll has covered a variety of reading-related posts, including:

• 12 Ways to Organize Your Life to Read More — Part 1 (When, Where, What, With Whom)
• 12 Ways to Organize Your Life to Read More — Part 2 (Reading Lists, Challenges & Ice Cream Samples)
• Blending Libraries: How To Organize Books with Your Sweetheart
• A Professional Organizer’s Take on National Library Card Sign-up Month
• Organizing Your Reading Space for More Reading Time
• 12 Tips for Organizing Your Reading Time 
• Ask Paper Doll: How And Where Can I Donate Lots of Books?
• Paper Doll To the Rescue: How To Save Wet Books & Documents

When was the last time you got lost (and found yourself) in a good book?