My tips? Make a goal of reading a single book for 30 minutes somewhere quiet. If you have a smartphone and/or smartwatch, put them in a different room. Now resolve to read an interesting book for 30 minutes.

If you are looking for engaging recommendations, check out Replay by Ken Grimwood[1]. Try not to read too much about the plot before reading it. If you're a younger person, the book will serve as a warning. If you're an older person, it will hit hard.

1. https://www.amazon.com/Replay-Ken-Grimwood/dp/068816112X

It varies from year to year, month to month, and even week to week. But for quite some time now I've been really focused on doing a lot of "deep dive" backgrounding on various AI topics. During this period I've read probably 30'ish books (it's been 2+ years now).

For the most part, I carve out time to study very specifically. I'd say a normal week is reading/studying for 3-5 hours on Friday evening after work, then putting in 8 or 9 hours on Saturday, and then probably 3-4 hours on Sunday (during football season) and maybe 6-7 hours on Sunday (non football season). Then maybe another aggregate total of 3-5 hours throughout the rest of the work-week. And then mix in maybe another hour or two a week for reading fiction (that's more sporadic though, so don't take this bit too literally).

Totaling it all up, that's something like 20-30'ish hours as week. Keep in mind, most of this stuff is textbooks which are pretty dense and don't read real fast. I used to read a lot of novels, but I've largely fallen off on the fiction reading lately since I've been so research focused. I think I've read maybe 4 novels this year and am working on the 5th now (Book One of the "Bobiverse" series).

I feel that it's important to build the habit of reading books to improve my cognitive skills. Are there any tips for me please?

Hard to say. I've been an avid reader for basically my entire life, so it comes very naturally to me. The one thing I will observe though, is that over the past 5+ years I've noticed that I find it harder and harder to stay focused on one thing when it comes to video content. I can't watch a movie or tv show without constantly stopping to check Twitter, Facebook, HN, email, news.google.com, etc. But when I sit down with a book, I can just "lock in" and read for hours at a time mostly uninterrupted. My experience may not generalize, but if you try to make yourself read a bit, you may find that reading (paper books) might help you have similar periods of focus? That is, assuming such a thing is important to you.

In either case, read if you enjoy it and derive value from it. But don't read just because you feel like other people are telling you ought to read. "To thine own self be true" and all that jazz...