How to Read More Books When You Are a Busy Dad

I used to be someone who read. Past tense. Before kids, before the mortgage, before I became the guy who falls asleep three pages into anything after 9pm. I’d look at my bookshelf (the same bookshelf I’ve been staring at for five years) and feel this low-grade guilt about all those unread spines. Then I’d scroll my phone for an hour instead because at least that didn’t require sustained attention.

But here’s what changed: I stopped trying to become a different person and started working with the person I actually am. A dad with a full-time job, kids who need help with homework and emotional regulation, a wife who deserves an actual partner, and about 47 minutes of genuinely free time per day if I’m lucky. I went from finishing maybe four books a year to 24. Not because I found more time, but because I figured out how to read more books without completely restructuring my life or joining the 5am club.

This isn’t about hustle culture or optimization hacks. It’s about building a system so simple and so integrated into your existing chaos that reading just happens. Like brushing your teeth, except you actually enjoy it.

The Real Problem Isn’t Time

Let me save you some trouble: you have time to read. I know that sounds dismissive, but hear me out. You have time to check Twitter seventeen times before breakfast. You have time to watch three YouTube videos about whether you need new running shoes. You scroll Instagram while your coffee gets cold. I’m not judging because I did all of this too.

The problem isn’t time. It’s that reading requires a specific kind of mental energy that we’ve already spent by the time we think about picking up a book. By 8pm, after the bedtime routine and the kitchen cleanup and the quick work email you promised yourself you wouldn’t send, your brain is cooked. You need entertainment that comes to you, not entertainment you have to actively process.

So the first shift is this: stop trying to read when you’re already depleted. The whole “read before bed” advice works great for people whose children sleep and whose brains don’t shut down the moment the house gets quiet. For the rest of us, we need a different approach.

How to Read More Books: The Actual System

Here’s what worked for me. Not theory, not aspiration, but the actual mechanics that got me from four books to 24 in a year without any dramatic lifestyle changes.

First, I stopped carrying my phone everywhere in the house. I got a Kindle Paperwhite and left it in three strategic locations: the bathroom (yes, really), the kitchen counter, and my nightstand. Not my phone. The Kindle. Because here’s the thing about phones: they’re designed to fracture your attention. A Kindle just has books. No notifications. No group chats. No doomscrolling. Just the thing you said you wanted to do.

This alone added about 30 minutes of reading per day. Ten minutes in the morning while coffee brews. Five minutes here and there when I’m waiting for pasta water to boil or the oven to preheat. Fifteen minutes before bed when I’m too tired for my phone but not quite ready to sleep. It adds up faster than you’d think.

Second, I made peace with reading multiple books at once. I know the purists hate this, but I’m not a purist. I’m a dad who needs flexibility. I keep one book going on the Kindle (usually something I’m genuinely excited about), one audiobook for dog walks and driving, and one physical book for when I actually have 30 uninterrupted minutes, which happens maybe once a month.

The audiobook piece is critical. I was skeptical at first because I thought it didn’t count as “real” reading, which is the kind of gatekeeping nonsense that keeps people from reading at all. According to research covered by NPR, your brain processes audiobooks and physical books in remarkably similar ways. It counts. It absolutely counts.

I listen at 1.3x speed during my 20-minute morning dog walk and my commute (when I have one). That’s another 45 minutes of reading per day, minimum. Some weeks I finish an entire book just from driving to the grocery store and walking the dog. It feels like cheating, but it’s not.

Pick Better Books (Not More Virtuous Ones)

I wasted years trying to read books I thought I should read. The classics. The prize winners. The books that would make me sound smart at dinner parties I don’t go to. And I’d get 50 pages in and realize I was retaining nothing because I didn’t actually care.

Here’s permission you might need: read books you genuinely want to read. If that’s sci-fi, read sci-fi. If it’s business books, great. If it’s celebrity memoirs, or horror, or cookbooks with essays, perfect! The goal is to read more books, not to impress your high school English teacher.

I started tracking what I actually finished versus what I abandoned, and a pattern emerged. I finish books that either teach me something immediately useful, or tell me a story I can’t stop thinking about. I abandon books that feel like homework. So I stopped picking homework.

This also means quitting books without guilt. I give every book 50 pages. If I’m not hooked, I’m out. Life’s too short, and my reading time is too valuable to spend it on books I’m not enjoying out of some misplaced sense of obligation. There are too many great books out there to waste time on mediocre ones.

Build Tiny Reading Habits Into Existing Routines

The morning coffee thing I mentioned earlier? That’s habit stacking, and it’s the closest thing to magic I’ve found. You take something you already do every single day and attach the new behavior to it. I actually drink tea, but either apply. Now I also read while the water boils. The tea is the trigger, reading is the behavior.

Same with the dog walk. I was already walking the dog. Now I listen to audiobooks while I do it. I didn’t add a new obligation to my day. I just layered reading onto something that was already happening.

Look at your day and find the gaps. Not big gaps (you don’t have those), but the three-minute, five-minute, ten-minute spaces where you’re waiting or transitioning or doing something that doesn’t require your full brain. Waiting for kids to finish soccer practice. Sitting in the parking lot before you go into the office. The 15 minutes between when you get home and when you need to start dinner.

I keep the Kindle in my car now too. If I’m early to pick up my son (which never happens, but theoretically), I read instead of scrolling. Five minutes here, seven minutes there. It compounds.

The Health Benefits Nobody Talks About

Here’s something I didn’t expect: reading more made me feel better in ways that had nothing to do with intellectual growth or cultural literacy. My mental health improved. My sleep got better. I felt less anxious.

Turns out there’s actual science behind this. Research from the National Institute on Aging shows that reading regularly can help maintain cognitive function as we age and may even reduce stress levels significantly. Six minutes of reading can reduce stress by 68%, which is better than listening to music or going for a walk.

For me, the biggest shift was having something that was just mine. Not dad stuff, not work stuff, not household management stuff. Just a book I picked because I wanted to read it. That sense of autonomy, of doing something purely because I chose to, matters more than I realized.

Reading also became my transition ritual. Instead of bringing work stress home or home stress to bed, I had this 10-minute buffer where I lived in someone else’s story. It reset my brain in a way that scrolling never did.

Make It Easier Than Not Doing It

The Kindle thing keeps coming up because it genuinely changed everything for me. Not because I love Amazon or because e-readers are objectively better than physical books (they’re not), but because the friction disappeared. I don’t have to remember to bring a book. I don’t have to hold a 400-page hardcover with one hand while I’m standing on the train. I don’t have to turn on a light and risk waking up my wife.

The Kindle Paperwhite is waterproof, backlit, holds thousands of books, and the battery lasts for weeks. I can check out library books on it wirelessly. I can read in the dark. I can make the text bigger when I’m tired. It removed every excuse I had.

But the device isn’t the point. The point is removing friction. If physical books work better for you, keep a stack in every room. If audiobooks are your thing, set up your library app so it’s one tap to resume. Make it so easy to read that not reading requires more effort.

Track Progress (But Not Like a Psychopath)

I use Goodreads to track what I’ve read, not because I care about the social features, but because seeing the list grow is genuinely motivating. When I hit 12 books at the six-month mark last year, I realized I was on pace for 24, and that became a thing I wanted to accomplish.

But I don’t track pages per day or set reading timers or gamify it beyond that. The goal is to read more books because reading makes life better, not to optimize reading into another productivity metric that makes me feel bad about myself.

Some months I read five books. Some months I read one. It evens out. The system works because it’s flexible enough to survive the chaos of real life. Sick kids, work deadlines, weeks where everything falls apart. The reading habit bends but doesn’t break because it’s built into the structure of my day, not added on top of it.

What This Actually Looks Like in Practice

Here’s a random Tuesday from last month. I woke up, made tea, read 12 pages of a novel while it steeped. Walked the dog, listened to 20 minutes of an audiobook about urban planning (I’m fun at parties). During lunch, I read another 15 pages while eating a sandwich at my desk. Picked up my son from school, waited in the car line, read seven pages. Before bed, too tired for anything demanding, I read 10 pages of a different book, something lighter.

Total reading time: maybe 50 minutes spread across the entire day. Total pages: around 60, depending on the book. I didn’t sit down for an hour-long reading session. I didn’t wake up early. I didn’t sacrifice time with my family. I just read in the margins.

Do that most days and you finish a book every week and a half. That’s 24 books a year. That’s more than most Americans read in a decade.

The Part Where I Tell You It’s Worth It

Look, I’m not going to tell you that reading more books will transform your life, or make you a better dad. Or unlock some hidden potential. That’s not how this works. But I will tell you that it makes the day better. It gives you something to think about besides work and logistics, and whether you remembered to pay the water bill.

My kids see me reading now. Not constantly, not performatively, but enough that it’s normal. My son asks what I’m reading. My boys see books around the house that aren’t just theirs. I’m modeling something I actually want them to pick up, which feels better than modeling my previous habit of staring at my phone while pretending to listen.

Figuring out how to read more books as a busy dad wasn’t about finding time I didn’t have. It was about using the time I already had differently. Smaller pockets, lower friction, better books, zero guilt. That’s the whole system.

Start with one thing. Put a Kindle in your bathroom. Download a library app and queue up an audiobook for your commute. Keep a book on the kitchen counter. Just one change, and see what happens. You might surprise yourself.

And if you want to talk about what you’re reading or share what’s working for you, the life section of WCP is always open. We’re all just trying to figure this out as we go.