READY
READY
Thirty minutes is the reading habit that survives a normal week. At an ordinary pace it is twenty to thirty pages, which is a book a fortnight without ever setting aside an evening. Reading targets built on pages fail the day you meet a difficult chapter; a target built on time never does.
It is also the standard block for school reading programmes and the one most children will sit through without negotiation, which is why the number turns up so often in reading logs.
One tip, and it is about the phone rather than the book. Put it in another room before you start rather than face down beside you. The interruption that ends a reading session is rarely a notification; it is the moment of boredom halfway through a slow page, when a phone within reach turns into a decision you have to keep making.
Start the timer, read until it rings, and stop wherever you are. Ending mid-chapter is not a problem; it is the easiest possible place to start again tomorrow.
While the timer runs it asks the browser to keep the screen awake, where the browser supports it. On a phone it is better to start the timer and put the phone down anyway.
It is the one most people keep. Twenty is fine, sixty is better if you have it, and the number that works is the one you do not have to rearrange your day for.
Yes. Set it, let them read, and the ring is the end, which takes the argument about whether it has been long enough away from both of you.