While many problems are new to 2013–what, exactly, is twerking?–most are quite old, like having a meaningful career or being able to do your best work. So if we want to be able to address our various ignorances, we need to hack our days to get more knowledge–which is another way of saying read a ton of books .

Ryan Holiday, the Fast Company contributor, best-selling author, controversial cat, and thoroughly well-read dude, sees this as a major motivator for unadulterated bookworming:

Human beings have been recording their knowledge in book form for more than 5,000 years. That means that whatever you’re working on right now, whatever problem you’re struggling with, is probably addressed in some book somewhere by someone a lot smarter than you. Save yourself the trouble of learning from trial and error. Find that point. Benefit from that perspective.

Yet it’s easy to feel as though we never have time to read. So here are a few ways to sculpt that time into our days.

Reading is work, “really important work,” says Farnham Street blogger Shane Parrish. Why? Because if we profess to be knowledge workers, we need to always be expanding our knowledge. Which requires having always having a knowledge-expanding read readily available.

How? Parrish gets religious about it:

Carry a book with you at all times. Every time you get a second, crack it open. Don’t install games on your phone–that’s time you could be reading. When you’re eating, read. When you’re on the train, in the waiting room, at the office, read. It’s work, really important work. Don’t let anyone ever let you feel like it’s not.

Research into user experience shows us that if people are going to use an app, their initial interaction with it has so be easy, intuitive, and gratifying or they won’t come back. So let’s make reading just as handy–apps like Pocket and Readability are only a couple that let you keep a knapsack of brainfood ready on your phone.

But doing your reading on a screen can cause eye strain (especially if you already have it from toiling at your computer all day).