Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien

My friend Elmine, in her post Leer weer langzaam denken, passes on a piece of advice from Frank:

Belangrijk nog om te melden is de tip die ik van Frank kreeg: ook met vijftien minuten per dag kom je verder in een boek. Die tip heeft me in beweging gekregen om aan een eerste boek te beginnen. En wat gebeurd er vervolgens? Ongemerkt lees ik nu zo weer een uur of langer achter elkaar.

Or, machine-translated:

Another important thing to report is the tip I got from Frank: even with fifteen minutes a day you continue in a book. That tip got me moving to start a first book. And what happens next? Unnoticed, I now read for an hour or more in succession.

I’ve found that if I simply make an effort to scatter books around my home and office, I’ll be more likely to pick them up and read them.

And if I pick them up and read them I’m more likely to keep reading them, for far longer than I’d set out to.

This proves a far more effective “I should read more” strategy than trying to conjure up a perfect reading nook and booking out specific reading time.

Put another way: you can’t read a book that’s not in front of you.