I Read Every Morning for 30 Days

The Experiment

In May, I posted The Case for Reading in the Morning and called the morning the reading window I skip least. My logs from that same month disagree: I read on 15 of 31 mornings (and on 27 evenings). By summer, evenings had become my anchor and morning sessions more of a bonus. I knew the mornings took a dip, but not how far until I counted for this article: in July, 13 of 31.

So in August, I ran what Anne-Laure Le Cunff calls a tiny experiment: read every morning for a month, log the session, see what happens. Thirty-one days, 1 to 31, 2026 (one more than the title says). This post is the report (the May article makes the argument). Below are my rules, the two mornings my log missed, and whether I'm keeping it going.

The Rules I Set

Five rules, if you want to try this experiment yourself:

1. Any logged session counts. Two minutes is a session. I defined what counts as a reading session in an earlier article.
2. Morning means before noon. From waking up until 12:00, in the local time wherever I woke up (I change time zones quite frequently).
3. The evening session stays. The morning was added, not swapped in, so the total reading time below shows whether the mornings added anything.
4. No log, no session. Reading without logging doesn't count.
5. ReadingHabit times every session. Everything below is my actual data, not from memory (no cheating possible).

No bonus rules, no catch-up days, no retroactive credit.

Week One Was the Easy Part

Week one was pretty easygoing. My iPad mini sits on my nightstand, so a normal morning meant rolling over, opening Apple Books, and reading before getting up. The only mornings that took effort were the ones where I had somewhere to be. On those, I read only a few pages in bed, or I moved the session to later in the morning, as long as it started before noon.

The first miss came on day 2, a Sunday. I read that morning but never logged it, and rule 4 doesn't make exceptions. Two days in, I'd found the weak spot of a logged experiment: the logging.

Week four was the hard part. On day 22, my morning session happened on the plane. 20 minutes at 10:05 destination time, during an 11-hour overnight flight. After landing, in a new time zone and with a book that dragged, some mornings shrank to three or four minutes. That's what the any-length rule is for: the short sessions still counted, and not breaking the chain was reason enough to open the book (that's why reading streaks work).

The Numbers

Straight from my ReadingHabit log: July vs. August.

The two missed mornings:

• August 2 (day 2): read, not logged.
• August 31 (day 31): read, not logged.

So did I read every morning? Yes. Does my log say so? No. Because of rule 4, the log wins.

Two cells surprised me. Four finished books and 616 pages make August look like my better month, but the total time says it wasn't. The books were short and their pages read faster. That's why I track time, not just books. And the mornings got shorter as well: 10 minutes on average, half of them under eight minutes, five under five.

What Changed

When I read. Mornings went from 13 to 29, and 41% of my August reading time was before noon, up from 24% in July. The bigger change is in the row right underneath: days with both windows went from 9 to 24. I've been writing about my two daily reading windows for months, and in July I used both on fewer than a third of days.

The evenings got lighter. My average evening session dropped from 18 to 13 minutes, and was already down to 14 before the book that dragged. It felt like less pressure: once the morning session was logged, a short evening was fine.

The rest is subjective. Keep in mind this is only a snapshot of one month, one reader, and no control group. My days started with one thing already done, and I didn't pick up my phone until after the session was done.

What Didn't Change

How much I read. Since May, my months have averaged between 20 and 25 minutes a day, and August's was 23. Before the overnight flight (August 1 to 21), I averaged 26 minutes a day, more than any full month since May. After the flight, 15. One flight moved my numbers more than a month of mornings did.

The big promises. A morning routine is supposed to make your whole day more productive and focused. My days felt the same, and the focus didn't carry past the session. My reading speed didn't move either: the ReadingHabit dashboard showed 0.7 pages per minute at the end of July and at the end of August.

The one speed difference I found is about time of day (which wasn't part of the experiment). In 10 of the 13 books I've read in both windows since May, my morning pages went faster than my evening pages of the same book (the other three came out even). Counting only sessions of 10 minutes or more, mornings were about 9% faster.

Thirty days is enough to find out whether a reading window fits your day. I don't think it's enough to find out whether it changes you.

Did I Keep It?

Yes, but in a looser version. I now skip the morning session on days that really are busy, and so far in September, I've read on 17 of 21 mornings (81%): down from August's 94%, far above July's 42%. The evening is still my anchor, but the morning upgraded from a bonus. One thing I'm keeping my eye on: my evening sessions keep getting shorter (10 minutes on average this month). Whether that's the mornings or the new time zone, three weeks can't tell me.

To run your own experiment, copy the five rules (or tweak them to your liking), find your window with How to Make a Reading Schedule, and log every session, including the short ones. My only two misses were logs, not mornings.