You know the pile. The books bought with good intentions. The one on the bedside table, bookmark stuck at chapter three. The reading goal you set in January.
The usual advice is to read more. Set a target, count the pages, track the books. Almost every reading app on your phone is built on that idea.
But reading more isn't training.
You were taught to read. But you've never been trained. That isn't on you. School taught you to decode the words, and then it stopped. Nobody ever showed you how to train.
The hole I dug myself
I don't read much fiction. As an adult in business, the little reading time I have goes to business books, because I love learning new things, generating ideas and working them through.
But my reading habits had been slipping for years, and I got so frustrated that I gave up on the page altogether and switched to audiobooks. I'd finish one and think, well, that was a good buy. A few days later I'd realise I remembered even less than I used to when I read. And I hadn't remembered much then.
I'd swapped one problem for a bigger one, and I was annoyed with myself for it.
The book that never left
So I went looking for the exception. Was there anything I'd read that had actually stayed?
There was. This Perfect Day, by Ira Levin, which I read as a very young man. Decades later, it's still with me. Not because I studied it, but because I got lost in it. I felt every scene. My imagination ran wild. I was in resonance with the author's words.
One dot led to the next. If that could happen once by accident, could it be trained? Could I teach myself to read with resonance at will, with any book, including the business books I actually choose to read?
That question became Stolen.
What training looks like
Stolen is a gym. The exercise is reading.
A Set takes about five minutes. You read three short Reps, each longer than the last: 30 words, then 75, then 200. In each one you settle into a pace that suits the passage, say what feeling it carries, then rebuild what you read from memory.
Every Set records your cadence, your tone and your recall, and how quickly each one came. Here, it's measured. When you improve, you can see it. When you have an off day, the record says so honestly.
It isn't speed reading, either. Racing far past your natural pace tends to cost attention, and attention was the thing I'd already lost. More on that in a later post.
Whether resonance is the right explanation for why reading sticks is a thesis, and I've set out the full argument, including what would prove it wrong, in the Stolen Manifesto. Either way, the training still happens, and the numbers are yours.
What happens next
Stolen opens to beta testers in November. I'm looking for people who keep meaning to read more and want something other than another goal and another counter.
If that's you, join the beta list, and you'll be among the first in when the doors open. Next week I'll write about who beta is for, what testers will actually do, and what you get for it.
James, Founder, Stolen.com