The one-page method that transformed me into a reader

The psychological technique that changed my relationship with reading

🏷️ Categories: Habits, Behavior.

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For years I kept telling myself that I wanted to read more.

And I meant it—but in my case, there was an uncomfortable irony… I had a giant bookshelf at home, filled from floor to ceiling, covering an entire wall. But I didn’t read. It all started because an elderly man I once met gave me more than 600 books. So there they were—mountains of books just a few meters away from me, staring at me every single day. But I, day after day, kept doing the same thing…

• Sofa → phone.

• Bed → phone.

• Boredom → phone.

It wasn’t a conscious choice.

The truth is, it was an automatic sequence. I was simply following a habit I had reinforced for years. I didn’t have a discipline problem—I had a system perfectly designed to distract me. And this was happening for one simple reason:

The brain strengthens what you repeat.

Let me tell you how I got out of that, became an avid reader, and later a writer…

Neural Pruning

Quite literally, we have a mental garden. And we prune our brains.

As we grow, the brain “prunes” neural connections that aren’t used and strengthens the ones that are frequently activated (Chechik et al., 1999). In fact, a newborn has more neurons than an adult, but fewer strong connections. An adult, on the other hand, has fewer neurons and many more optimized pathways (Abitz et al., 2007).

This is neural pruning: dead branches get cut away.

The brain is an efficient gardener—it invests energy where there is use and withdraws energy where there is neglect. That’s why every repetition strengthens one connection, and every neglected mental process weakens another. In my life, the main branch wasn’t reading—it was scrolling on social media. So what was frequent became automatic.

You become what you repeat.

For a long time, I tried the typical approach: “read 20 minutes a day” and things like that. It sounded good, but it was a floating goal, too abstract. It depended on my mood, on the day being light, on me feeling energetic. And when fatigue arrived, what always wins won: the easiest option.

The mistake wasn’t the intention. It was the lack of anchoring.

Let me explain.

I was trying to build a new habit from scratch, in midair, ignoring that I already had dozens of automated habits that required no effort: exercising in the afternoon, going for walks, using my phone at night… Those habits were already fixed. They were strong connections in my neural pruning, repeated day after day, automatically.

That’s when I saw the key: I needed to use inertia to my advantage.

The change would come from linking the habit of reading to an already existing habit.

And just like that, everything changed in a short time.

The Power of Habit Anchoring

The best way to maintain a new habit is to associate it with one that already exists.

Habit anchoring consists of linking a new behavior to an existing one—either by doing it at the same time or immediately after. It’s not about saying “I’ll read more.” It’s about designing a concrete sequence where reading becomes the next thing you do.

After/while [current habit], I will [new habit].

• While I eat breakfast, I will read a few pages.

• After getting into bed, I will read a few pages.

• After going for a walk, I will read for 10 minutes.

When you link a new habit to an old one, you take advantage of a neural network that’s already consolidated. You don’t build from scratch—you build on top of what’s already there. The old habit acts as the trigger for the new one. So I identified an action that never failed: getting into bed and looking at my phone.

It always happened.

Then I designed a clear and specific rule: after getting into bed, I will read one page. Just one. One page reduces initial friction to almost zero. It’s impossible to resist something so small, so the action was always repeatable. On top of that, every morning, after making my bed, I left the book on the pillow. This made the environment remind me of the habit. And finally, I used the rule of not bringing my phone into the bedroom.

• Make the bed → leave the book visible.

• Get into bed → open the book.

• Enter the bedroom → leave the phone outside.

I didn’t try to read more.

I simply replaced the phone sequence with the book sequence.

That’s crucial: habits are almost never eliminated. They’re overwritten. Someone who quits junk food doesn’t stop eating—they replace their diet. Someone who starts running doesn’t add a habit—they replace sedentary time with exercise time.

We overwrite our habits, and in doing so, we trigger new neural pruning.

This anchoring idea allows you to build long sequences over time. One behavior leads to the next, and then to the next. You take advantage of the natural momentum of an action already deeply rooted in your brain. We all move through life with a certain inertia. If you design the sequence well, you’ll always know what comes next.

You don’t negotiate with yourself about whether you feel like it. You simply execute what comes next.

Repetition rewrites identity.

The first week I didn’t read much, honestly. The second, a little more. By the third, opening the book began to feel natural. It wasn’t that I had more motivation—it was that I felt more comfortable. It was becoming familiar. I was strengthening a new connection. “Bed” stopped meaning “phone” and started meaning “book.”

One page became three.
Three became ten.

That’s how I began reading—book after book—the enormous shelf of 600+ books that had watched me day after day. That’s how we change. You become a reader because you read repeatedly. Every page was one more reinforcement of the person I wanted to become.

There was no pressure—just a little time at night. But it was enough.

And while I strengthened the new path, the old one began to weaken. I used my phone less and less. So little that social media started to feel unnecessary. Eventually, it felt natural to prune it away—I uninstalled the apps and changed my routines.

I didn’t fight scrolling head-on. I just stopped practicing it in that context.

Most of us (myself included) try to change through big, vague goals: read more, eat better, exercise. But that’s ambiguous, because it doesn’t specify how to replace current habits. It becomes natural if you do it this way:

• After working, I read one page.

• While eating breakfast, I read for a few minutes.

• After brushing my teeth, I leave the book ready.

I was never a reader until I understood this.

And that’s how the final habit anchor came: after reading, I write what I learned on Substack.

So here we are.

And what will you do?

Want to know more? Here are three related ideas to explore:

1. How to Change Habits (Without Willpower or Effort)

2. How to Maintain Habits Without Failing: Why Some Succeed and Others Quit

3. The Elderly Man Who Turned Me Into a Reader: A Small Tribute to a Great Person

✍️ Your turn: Which “branch” of your mental garden are you watering unintentionally… and which one are you letting dry out?

💭 Quote of the day: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy

See you next time! 👋

References 📚

1. Chechik, G., Meilijson, I., & Ruppin, E. (1999). Neuronal Regulation: A Mechanism for Synaptic Pruning During Brain Maturation. Neural Computation, 11(8), 2061-2080. URL

2. Abitz, M., Nielsen, R. D., Jones, E. G., Laursen, H., Graem, N., & Pakkenberg, B. (2007). Excess of Neurons in the Human Newborn Mediodorsal Thalamus Compared with That of the Adult. Cerebral Cortex, 17(11), 2573-2578. URL