Could a couch-to-5k for books get you back into reading?
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- A BBC novelist designed an 8-week, three-track 'couch-to-5k for reading' program — starting at 10 minutes on day one and building to 30 minutes daily — to help people rebuild reading habits displaced by smartphones.
- The author, who previously designed couch-to-5k for the running app Zombies, Run, launched the program on her Substack Whatever Works and reports participants noting reduced morning scrolling and calmer stress responses after one week, with teachers already asking how to introduce it in schools.
- A 2024 OECD report found literacy has declined or stagnated in most developed countries — a trend the author frames as a public-health intellectual crisis governments won't address because American technology companies are 'protected by Donald Trump.'
- James Marriott's forthcoming book 'The New Dark Ages' argues the literacy decline leaves people unable to follow complex arguments and more swayed by 'cartoonish figures with simple slogans,' comparing the smartphone's role to that of cheap mass-market cigarettes in the early 20th century.
Why it matters: The author anchors a personal-action remedy to an OECD-attested literacy decline and openly concedes political solutions are blocked by tech-firm lobbying — making the article both intervention and a manifesto for self-help while regulators stall. Early-week participant reports of calmer mornings and phone-free concentration suggest the format produces measurable behavioral change without any policy action.
