How to get into reading as an adult

polygon.com:

It’s no secret that the Polygon staff loves to read. We’re genre agnostic, with tastes spanning categories such as mystery, science fiction and fantasy, literary fiction, romance, and even nonfiction, and we love manga and comics, too. But we’re also sympathetic to how hard it is to find time to do it. By the time the workday is over, you might be too exhausted to consume words on the page — or maybe you’re a parent, working hard to take care of yourself and your family. It also can be difficult to focus, with endless emails, texts, and social media notifications taking up brain space or needing immediate attention.

But there are so many different ways to add reading into your life. There’s this perception of reading as an activity that you need to dedicate discrete time and space to — that it’s uninterrupted and relaxing. Maybe that’s an accessible option for you, which is wonderful, but maybe it’s simply become difficult to focus for long stretches. Maybe you try to read before bed but keep falling asleep. Or maybe you’re busy as hell and wonder, How could I even find time to start a book, much less finish it?

We’re here to help. Some of the regular readers on the Polygon staff have shared our stories of how we’ve found time to read in the past year. We all had wildly different answers, which is to say, there are many different ways to add it to your life. We hope these ideas can serve you in your reading journey.

Working from home is the best thing that’s happened to my reading habits. When I stopped going into the office in 2020, I suddenly had an extra hour in the morning where my commute used to be. Instead of taking this as an opportunity to sleep in, I kept the time of my morning alarm the same, giving myself a bonus hour each morning to fill however I wanted. I tried a variety of things, including yoga and long walks with my dog, but nothing set a better tone for my day than using that time to read.

To this day, once I finish getting ready for work, I make