Let’s do some maths.

The average book has 60,000 – 100,000 words. Let’s go with 100,000.

The average reading speed is 250 – 300 words per minute. Let’s go with 250. Note that this range is for mental readers; auditory or visual readers can read up to much faster speeds.

So if a book has 100,000 words, then reading at a pace of 300 words per minute means you’ll finish a book in 100,000 / 300 = 333.33 minutes, or roughly 5 hours and 30 minutes, or 11 blocks of 30 minutes.

That means if you just spend half an hour reading each day, you can pretty much finish most books in two weeks – and that’s if you’re reading a biggish book and reading slowly.

This reading pace of 30 minutes each day results in finishing The Great Gatsby in five days; Life of Pi in twelve days; and War and Peace – one of the largest classics ever written – in just over two months. Not much time at all, considering these texts have single-handedly turned societies around and changed people’s hearts.

Often, it’s the small practices done consistently that drive the biggest results.