Years of scrolling have hijacked our attention spans, along with our ability to sit down and read a book. If reading more is on your 2026 resolutions list, here's some tested advice from avid readers to help you make the goal stick.
Despite being a former English teacher and literacy specialist, Y.L. Wolfe realized that her scrolling habit meant she'd barely finished a book in years. Embarrassed by that realization, she agreed to read along with a friend's book club. She quickly found that reading on a regular schedule rebuilt her speed, focus, and ability to stay with a story. Her best tips for rebuilding the habit: Don't force yourself to finish a book you dislike, spend time sourcing books you will love, and be a little less precious about what you read but disciplined in making sure that you are reading regularly.
Once you start to enjoy reading again, you may as well get good at it. Ryan Holiday draws on decades of reading as a writer and bookstore owner to outline the habits good readers actually practice. He emphasizes strategies that help you build a reading life that compounds over time rather than chasing whatever happens to be newest—carrying a book so idle moments turn into reading time, and reading with a pen so ideas are processed, questioned, and retained. Re-read books that matter. And let one book lead to another through footnotes, bibliographies, and recommendations.
When you start reading constantly, you'll realize how hard it is to remember what you read. Bobby Powers should know: He's read over 700 books in the last 10 years. He describes a simple system he uses to keep track of ideas across these hundreds of books. As he reads, he stars passages he wants to return to and underlines only the lines that capture the core idea on a page. When he finishes a book, he writes a short index inside the back cover with page numbers, key takeaways, and related recommendations. By treating each book as a working document, Powers creates something he can easily revisit instead of something that fades once the cover closes.
🔎 Medium reads for your weekend:
- If you're looking for book recommendations, Barack Obama just shared his list of favorite books, movies, and music from 2025.
- For years, publishers on the open web have relied on advertising while platforms used their content to build much larger businesses. As generative AI becomes dominant, entrepreneur and Wired co-founder John Battelle sees publishers facing a familiar conundrum: Make deals with the big platforms or try to develop a sustainable marketplace that lets them fairly value content — and build a healthier internet.
- Sarah Paris reflects on how Rob Reiner's films shaped her relationship to storytelling: The Princess Bride showed how a story could be sincere and hopeful without denying darkness; Stand by Me revealed that childhood fear, friendship, and longing were emotionally real and worth writing about; When Harry Met Sally offered an early model for love built slowly through friendship and time.
- After a former boyfriend died suddenly at 53, Karla L. Miller revisits their years together, the moment she realized she wanted marriage and he didn't, and the breakup that followed. At his funeral, she reckons with what she lost, what she chose, and the unsettling truth that loving someone doesn't mean they were meant to be yours.
- After Alzheimer's took away much of her father's independence, Michele Cambardella discovered that baking pizzelles—the traditional Italian Christmas cookies—was a ritual he could still perform by muscle memory. Her lovely essay on making them with her father in the dining room of his assisted-living facility includes her family's time-tested recipe.
📺 Your weekly dose of practical wisdom about screen time
"Passive consumption (mindlessly scrolling or watching low-quality content) is associated with negative outcomes. Interactive, educational, or creative screen use? Often positive or neutral. Social connection via screens? Depends entirely on the quality of those connections."
— Psychologist Constantin Patrascu, arguing that the science on kids' screen time is far more nuanced than panic-driven headlines suggest.
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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb and Carly Rose Gillis
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