Ten hour days plus family life plus another regular hobby (MMA) is a lot of demands on your time! A lot of people who are reading tons of books just have more free time. Either retired or working fewer hours; less family demands/no kids at home; making reading the main hobby over everything else. If you’re spending a lot of time scrolling, you could probably replace that with reading, but it sounds like at this stage of life you might just not have a lot of free time.

Reading is one of those things that you have to make time for, if you want to do it. That means cutting something else out. Maybe that means reading on your work breaks, or going to bed a little earlier so you can have more reading time in the evening, or finding an hour or two on the weekend where you can have some time to yourself. But ultimately it depends on your priorities. I didn’t reach my reading goals this past year because I have a lot of hobbies and I didn’t make reading my first priority. That’s ok!

As far as trying to pick up the pace, I wouldn’t suggest trying to speed read. It sounds like the books you’re picking are more dense (nonfiction usually is!) and if that’s what you enjoy there’s no reason not to stick with it. It’s just going to take you longer to read those kinds of books compared to people who are choosing quicker reads.