What is the best way to build a reading habit again?
Reduce the friction and the ambition simultaneously. Keep a physical book where you already sit, since competing with a phone in the same hand rarely goes well. Start at ten minutes rather than an hour, and attach it to an existing cue — after dinner, before bed, during a commute. Allow yourself to abandon books you are not enjoying; the obligation to finish is one of the main reasons people stop reading entirely. Reading before bed also serves double duty as a wind-down that displaces screen time, which is usually the habit it is competing against.
Answers
Displacing screen time rather than adding a new activity is the framing that made it work for me.
Permission to abandon books was the unlock. I had been stuck on the same one for eight months.