How to read more (and enjoy it): Stop treating books like medicine

Every January, people make the same resolution: "I need to read more books this year."
You download the habit-tracking apps. You set ambitious page count goals. You try to optimise your reading speed. You treat books like medicine - something to be endured for your own good.
And then you fail. Because you're solving the wrong problem.
Reading isn't a function of self-improvement. It's a function of engagement, attention, and curiosity. When you force yourself to read as some kind of productivity exercise, you're already setting yourself up for failure. It's like trying to fall asleep by thinking really hard about sleeping.
So let me tell you what you may have already come to suspect:
You don't have a reading problem. You have an attention problem.
People who read a lot don't do it because they're more disciplined. They do it because they're more engaged. They've preserved their ability to sink deep into ideas, to follow threads of thought, to lose themselves in stories. They haven't dulled their minds with constant stimulation.
It's easy to turn reading into a joyless exercise of self-optimisation. "I should read more business books." "I need to get through the classics." "I have to finish this book because it's important." And then we wonder why reading feels like a chore.
It's hard to read when you're trying to make every page productive. It's hard to read when you're counting pages instead of getting lost in them. It's particularly hard to read when you've spent all your attention credits scrolling through social media, playing video games, or binging Netflix - and then try to force yourself to focus on complex ideas at 11 PM.
The secret
The secret to reading more isn't in reading faster or finding more time. It's preserving your curiosity and protecting your attention.
Your brain has a finite capacity for deep engagement. If you spend it all on shallow dopamine hits, you won't have the mental space left to appreciate a good book.
If you're constantly consuming bite-sized content, you'll find it harder and harder to sink into longer forms of reading.
Choose how you want to consume, and what content you think will nourish you. But understand that some easy things, over time impede your ability to do hard things.
Every hour you spend mindlessly scrolling isn't a direct trade for an hour of attention you could've spent reading. It actually detracts from your future ability to spend an hour reading.
Every hit of quick-fix entertainment makes it a little harder to find satisfaction in slower, more demanding forms of engagement.
Want to read more? No need to optimise it. No need to gamify it. No need to turn it into another productivity metric. You can, if you like, but if it fails you'll know why.
Instead, protect your curiosity. Guard your attention like the precious resource it is. Read what genuinely interests you, not what seems good to others. Abandon books that don't grab you. Return to books that you love.
Reading isn't a challenge to conquer. It's not a habit to hack. It's a relationship with ideas, with stories, with the written word. And like any relationship, it thrives on genuine interest and dies of forced obligation.
The best reading metrics are joy, memories, and accumulated knowledge. Everything else is just counting pages.