How do you get back into reading with ADHD in 30 days?

The rules

• Five minutes counts. A page counts. Listening counts.
• A missed day is a missed day, not a failure. There is no streak to break.
• Quitting a book counts as progress if you start another one within two days.
• Change one thing per week, not everything on day one.

These rules come from two ideas with good support. Habits form through repeating a behavior in the same context, and missing an occasional day did not stop habits forming in a study that followed people building new ones. (Lally and others, 2010) And a plan that names when and where you will act ("after dinner, on the sofa, I open the book") makes people more likely to follow through. (Gollwitzer, 1999)

Week 1: five minutes, one book

• Choose one book you actually want to read. Not the one you abandoned out of guilt. Use the ten-minute test if you are unsure.
• Pick one cue you already do every day: after coffee, on the train, after brushing your teeth.
• Read for five minutes after the cue. Stop at five even if it is going well. Ending wanting more is the point.
• Tick the day on the tracker.

Week 2: fix the setup

Look at week one's ticks and notes. Pick the one thing that went wrong most and fix only that:

Week 3: add a second format

Add the same book, or a second one, in audio for times when your eyes are busy: walks, chores, a commute. Comprehension of the same text has been found to be similar whether people read or listen. (Rogowsky, Calhoun and Tallal, 2016) Your library probably has audiobooks free through an app such as Libby. (Libby Help) Raise the reading session to ten minutes if five has started to feel short.

Week 4: plan the next book before this one ends

• Write five next-up books at the bottom of the tracker. The gap between books is where restarts die.
• If this book is part of a series, write three lines on where the story stands the day you finish. A year from now they are worth more than a reread. Our series tracker has room for it.
• If you stopped mid-book at any point this month and came back confused, try a recap that stops at your page instead of starting over. Kindle's Story So Far covers many Kindle ebooks in the US (Amazon); Magic Bookmark covers its supported titles in print, ebook and audio on iPhone, with the first book free (App Store).