How to Make a Reading Schedule

The Short Answer: Divide Pages Left by Days Left

A reading schedule usually starts with a date, whether it's library loan that ends soon, a book club meeting on the horizon, or a friend waiting for you a couple of chapters ahead. The math is easy: pages left ÷ days left = pages per day. For 340 pages due in 12 days, that's 29 pages a day.

The last reading schedule I followed came from school: so many chapters before the next lesson. To me, a deadline only felt like homework when a teacher chose the book. When I read Hooked by Nir Eyal, it had a deadline too (my thesis), but it didn't feel like one.

Today I schedule time, not pages: two daily windows, one in bed after waking up and one before sleep. When a due date does show up, I apply the same division as before. But what about buffer days, minutes read instead of pages, and a plan for falling behind? Read on to find out.

How Many Pages a Day to Finish a Book

Everything you need to figure out how many pages you’d have to read each day:

1. Pages left. From the page you're on to the last page of the text. A lot of nonfiction ends with notes and an index you won't read, so leave those out.
2. Days left. The calendar days until your deadline (for now, the next section will replace this method).
3. Pages per day. Pages left divided by days left, rounded up: 340 over 12 is 28.3, so 29.

Every page you read above the result lowers the number for the days that follow, so treat it as a minimum.

On an ebook, the page count changes with the font size (on my iPad mini, a bigger font means more pages). Keep the font the same until the deadline, or divide the percentage instead: 60% left over 12 days is 5% a day.

The same division for common page counts and deadlines:

Plan on Five Reading Days a Week, Not Seven

A schedule that needs seven good days every week will break eventually (if you don't have the habit yet). A late meeting or a sick evening and you're already behind.

The solution: divide by reading days instead of calendar days. Plan to read on five out of every seven days. That also means you'll have to read a bit more each day: 29 pages a day becomes 38. Harder per day, but it survives a hectic week. (The TBR Stack Planner defaults to five reading days a week, too.)

I've read every day this year, and I'd still plan with only five. My daily reading time is pretty much the same every day (between 15 and 30 minutes, mostly), but a travel day can shrink my usual two reading windows into just one that I fit in before leaving.

A target you beat most days keeps you coming back to the book.

Turn Pages Per Day Into Minutes Per Day

Your calendar contains minutes instead of pages. At the typical 40 to 50 pages an hour, 38 pages a day is 45 minutes to an hour. How Many Pages Can You Read in an Hour goes over the numbers by reading speed and book density.

Try dividing by minutes instead. The ReadingHabit dashboard shows me a time-left estimate on every book I'm reading, based on my pace in that specific book. I'm on page 171 of 728 in Influence by Robert B. Cialdini, and right now it says: "About 15h 18 min left at your pace". At my average of about 21 minutes a day, that's six more weeks of reading (I'd finish right at the end of October). Finishing by the end of September would take about 80 minutes a day, nearly four times my average. No schedule fixes that.

Then put those minutes into slots your day already has (How to Fit Reading Into a 9-to-5 maps them out for a working week). If you need to read more pages, make your reading window(s) a little longer instead of adding another.

What to Do When You Fall Behind

At some point, you'll fall behind (even if only a little). Four ways to handle it:

1. Recalculate from today. Pages left divided by days left, again. A recalculated plan is still a plan. My everyday version, without a deadline: when the time-left estimate on my book looks big, I read a little longer next session to make a dent in it. Gamified reading.
2. Buy the pages back in one block. Read more in one long session instead of adding a few pages to every remaining day. I usually read for longer when I reach the final 20 to 40 pages of a book, and sometimes finish it in one sitting (Commit to a Long Read covers how to protect a block like that).
3. Cut the fat. For nonfiction especially, read the chapters you need and skim the rest. Finishing the useful part on time is better than finishing all of it too late, and nonfiction rarely needs every page anyway.
4. Move the deadline, or put the book down. Renew the library loan or admit the book isn't earning its hours. When a book drags for me, I switch to another one depending on my mood (it finishes later, but it keeps me sane). And a shared read doesn't need a shared schedule. My partner and I read the same books without one and trade ideas whenever they come up (more often than you might think). If the problem is momentum rather than math, read How to Finish a Book You Keep Starting next.

From One Deadline to a Whole Stack

Most deadlines have a queue behind them: the next book club pick, the next library hold. Without an order, you finish the deadline book and then stall while you choose the next one.

The same practice works for a stack: each book's finish date becomes the next book's start date. The TBR Stack Planner estimates where each book lands. In January, I put the books I planned to read this year into it for a rough idea of what would fit. The dates were useful, but my mood changed the order (and some of the books) anyway. That's fine. Finish dates are a snapshot, and you can redo them whenever the stack changes.

A Schedule You Can Redo in 30 Seconds

A reading schedule isn't something you have to keep up with. It's one division you redo whenever the week changes: pages left, reading days left, one number.

Yours takes 30 seconds: open the book on your nightstand, check the page you're on, and do the division before you read tonight.