Time your reading.

Why time your reading at all?

Most people badly misjudge how much they read. A session that felt like an hour was twenty minutes, and the book that felt endless was four sittings. Timing removes the guesswork, and the number is almost always kinder than the guess.

It also makes a plan possible. Once you know you read about 30 pages an hour, a 300-page novel stops being a vague commitment and becomes ten hours, which is twenty minutes a day for a month. That is a decision you can actually make.

How long should a reading session be?

Long enough to get past the settling-in. Most readers need a few minutes before the room goes quiet and the page takes over, so a 10-minute session spends most of itself arriving. Twenty to thirty minutes is where a session starts to feel like reading rather than like starting to read.

Consistency beats length. Thirty minutes a day finishes roughly twelve average novels a year at an ordinary pace. One three-hour Sunday does not, because it rarely happens twice.

What a timer will not tell you

Time is not comprehension. You can sit with a book for forty minutes and take in nothing, and the timer will happily record forty minutes. If you want a number that accounts for how much you actually absorbed, a speed reading test that scores comprehension is the honest instrument.

It also will not make you read. A stopwatch is a measuring tool, not a reason. That part tends to come from other people, which is the problem ReadersGuild is built around.

How to use the reading timer

1. 1

   Start the timer

   Press start when you open the book. Nothing to install and no account needed. The timer keeps running if you switch tabs or close the laptop lid, because it reads the clock rather than counting while the page is awake.

2. 2

   Read

   Put the phone somewhere else. The running time stays visible in the browser tab title if you want to glance at it.

3. 3

   Pause and see your pace

   Press pause when you stop. Enter how many pages you got through and the timer works out your pages an hour and an estimated words a minute.

Frequently asked questions