Finish a book in a set number of days: the pages-per-day method
· 4 min read
A goal like read more rarely survives a busy week. A goal like read 14 pages today does, because it is small, specific and finishes by itself.
The arithmetic
Take the pages you have left and divide by the days you have given yourself. A 420-page book to finish in 30 days is 14 pages a day. If you are already on page 120, the 300 pages left over 20 days make 15 pages a day.
Re-do the sum after every session. When you miss a day, the number rises a little instead of the plan collapsing, and you can see at once whether the deadline still holds.
Pick a slot, not a mood
Attach the reading to something that already happens every day, such as after the dawn prayer, on the commute or before sleep. Fourteen pages is usually 20 to 25 minutes, which is easy to find once it has a fixed place.
Write down what you understood
After a session, note one or two sentences about what you took from those pages, with the page number. This small notebook of benefits, fawa'id in Arabic, is what makes a book stay with you after it is closed.
Where Qimtar fits
Set a finish date in Qimtar and it computes today's pages. You can mark only part of today's reading as done, add a note tied to a page, and see your progress per volume.