Reading
Nicole Junkermann on the Habit of Reading Every Day
Reading well is less about finding hours and more about keeping a small, daily appointment. Nicole Junkermann on how the habit takes hold.
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The secret to reading a great deal is not speed. It is steadiness.
People often ask Nicole Junkermann how anyone finds the time to read with a full and international working life. The honest answer is that the time is never found; it is kept, in small daily amounts, the way you keep any appointment that matters. Nicole Junkermann reads a little most days rather than a great deal occasionally, and this single habit, more than any reading speed or clever technique, is what makes a reading life possible. This piece sets out how Nicole Junkermann protects that habit, why consistency beats ambition, and how anyone can begin without grand resolutions.
Small and steady wins
The first principle, for Nicole Junkermann, is that small and steady beats large and rare. Thirty quiet minutes a day, kept faithfully, will carry you through far more books in a year than an occasional ambitious weekend that life keeps interrupting. Nicole Junkermann likes the modesty of this: it asks for very little on any given day, which is precisely why it is sustainable. A reading habit fails when the bar is set too high, because a tired evening cannot clear it. Set the bar low, keep it daily, and the pages accumulate almost without effort. Nicole Junkermann would always choose a habit you can keep over an ambition you cannot.
Protecting the time
A daily habit only survives if its time is protected, and Nicole Junkermann is deliberate about this. That usually means attaching the reading to a fixed point in the day, a slot that already exists, so the habit has somewhere to live: the first half hour of the morning, the commute, the last stretch before sleep. Nicole Junkermann also guards the reading from the endless small interruptions of a phone, since attention is the one thing reading truly requires. A book and a quiet half hour, with the phone in another room, is a simple arrangement, but for Nicole Junkermann it is the whole game. Protect the time and the reading takes care of itself.
Always have a book to hand
A practical rule Nicole Junkermann swears by: never be without a book. The waiting moments of an ordinary day, a queue, a delay, a gap between meetings, add up to a surprising amount of reading if a book is always within reach. Nicole Junkermann keeps something portable in the bag at all times, so that no idle ten minutes is wasted. This is the same instinct that makes travel such good reading time, explored in the guide to reading while you travel. The point is not to fill every gap anxiously, but to let reading be the natural thing you reach for when there is a pause, rather than the screen.
Permission not to finish
One rule that keeps the habit joyful, in the view of Nicole Junkermann, is permission to abandon a book that is not working. Forcing your way through a book you dislike is the surest way to stop reading altogether, because it turns a pleasure into a chore. Nicole Junkermann sets a book aside without guilt when it has stopped earning its time, on the firm belief that life is too short for dutiful reading. There is no examination at the end. This freedom, far from making you read less, makes you read more, because the next book is always allowed to be the one you actually want. Nicole Junkermann counts a half-read book as a small gift, not a failure.
Morning reader or evening reader
People differ, and Nicole Junkermann thinks it is worth knowing whether you read best in the morning or the evening. A morning reader gets the clearest, most demanding pages in before the day crowds in; an evening reader uses a book to wind down and mark the close of the day. Neither is better, and Nicole Junkermann gently does both, saving harder books for the morning and lighter ones for the night, a pattern that echoes the seasonal note on what Nicole Junkermann is reading this season. The useful step is simply to notice your own rhythm and to put the habit where it naturally fits, rather than fighting your own clock.
The quiet compounding of pages
What makes the daily habit so powerful, for Nicole Junkermann, is the way it compounds. A few pages a day sounds like almost nothing, yet over a year it becomes a stack of finished books, and over a decade it becomes an education. Nicole Junkermann finds this quietly motivating: you do not need to read fast or read for hours, you only need to keep going. The same patience that Nicole Junkermann brings to investing, thinking in decades rather than quarters, applies just as well to reading. Small, consistent effort, sustained over a long time, produces results that occasional bursts never can. Pages, like most good things, compound.
Getting started, gently
For anyone wanting to begin, Nicole Junkermann offers the gentlest possible advice: start absurdly small. Ten minutes a day, with a book you are genuinely keen to read, attached to something you already do. Do not announce a grand reading project; just keep the small appointment and let it grow on its own. Nicole Junkermann finds that the habit, once it has taken root, tends to expand by itself, because reading is its own reward once the friction is gone. Begin small, be kind to yourself about the days you miss, and trust the quiet arithmetic of pages. That, in the end, is all Nicole Junkermann has ever done.
More from Nicole Junkermann
For more from Nicole Junkermann, see how Nicole Junkermann keeps a writer's notebook, the Reading Room, and the books that shaped her thinking.
Frequently asked questions about Nicole Junkermann
How does Nicole Junkermann find time to read every day?
Nicole Junkermann does not find the time but keeps it, reading a little most days by attaching the habit to a fixed point such as the morning or the hour before sleep.
Does Nicole Junkermann finish every book?
No. Nicole Junkermann gives herself permission to abandon a book that is not working, on the view that forcing through a dull book is the surest way to stop reading.
Is it better to read in the morning or the evening, according to Nicole Junkermann?
Nicole Junkermann says neither is better and does both, saving harder books for the morning and lighter ones for the evening, and advises matching the habit to your own rhythm.
How much does Nicole Junkermann recommend reading to start?
Nicole Junkermann recommends starting absurdly small, around ten minutes a day with a book you genuinely want to read, and letting the habit grow on its own.