Nearly everyone who starts a year long reading plan in January is not reading it in March. The plan is rarely the problem. The sizing is.

Pick by question, not by length

A plan on anxiety, or grief, or starting over, will hold you longer than a plan that is simply thorough, because it is answering something you are already thinking about. Start where you actually are.

Size it for your worst day, not your best

Choose the length you could do on the day everything goes wrong. A plan you finish builds something a plan you abandon does not, no matter how much more ground the longer one covered on paper.

When you miss a day, do not go back

This is the rule that saves plans. Missing Tuesday is not a debt. If you try to read Tuesday and Wednesday on Wednesday, you will feel behind, and feeling behind is what ends plans. Read today's and keep going.

Finish the day, not the reading

Marking a day complete matters more than it sounds like it should. It closes the loop, and closed loops are what make a sequence of days feel like something you are doing rather than something you keep failing at.

Open today's plan