If you want to read more, the hardest part is keeping at it through a busy week. A few small things help a lot, and Penny can handle some of them for you.
Pick a goal you can hit on a bad day
Fifty books a year sounds great in January and feels impossible by March. A small goal you keep meeting does more for the habit than a big one you give up on. Ten pages a day works for most people, because even a tired evening has ten pages in it.
In Penny you can set your goal as pages a day or books a year, in Settings under Reading Goal. Penny lets you know when you hit it.
Read at the same time every day
Habits stick better when they hang on something you already do. For some people that's the first coffee of the day, for others it's getting into bed. Pick one moment and read then.
While the habit is new, a reminder helps. Penny's daily reminder is free and you choose the time. After a few weeks you might not need it anymore.
Time your sessions
A timer turns a vague "I should read more" into "I read for 22 minutes," which feels a lot better. Start a session when you open the book and stop it when you put it down. Penny asks which page you got to, then shows a recap with your minutes, pages, streak and how your week is going.
The timer can also sit on your Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island while you read, so you don't have to open the app to check it. Your first three sessions there are free, after that it's part of Premium.
Let the streak do some of the work
A streak is just the number of days in a row you've read. It works better than it has any right to, because breaking it feels worse than reading five pages. Penny counts a day when you finish a reading session, and the reading calendar shows every day you read, so you can watch the habit build up.
If you miss a day, start again the next one. A broken streak is no reason to stop.
Make it cozy
It's easier to come back to reading when it feels good. Some people like a bit of background sound while they read, so Penny has ambient sounds like rain, a fireplace or a forest, and four of them are free. Find a comfortable spot, put a sound on, and you have a reading corner.
Make it easy to get back into a book
A lot of reading habits end in the middle of a book. You stop for a week, forget who everyone is and never go back. Keeping a few notes and a list of characters as you read makes coming back much easier.
Penny 2.0 adds Previously on… for exactly this. When you return to a book after five days or more, it shows your last page, your last note and the characters you added.
Look back now and then
Every few weeks, have a look at how far you've come. Penny's Stats show your pages, your reading time and the books you finished, and the Bookshelf widget puts those finished books on your Home Screen as spines on a shelf. Watching it fill up is a nice little reward.