Not every book you start reading will be finished. If you’re the average person, most of the books you read won’t be finished. American mathematician Jordan Ellenberg studied this phenomenon and discussed it in a 2014 Wall Street Journal article.

He named this measure the Hawking Index after famed physicist Stephen Hawking, whose book A Brief History of Time is often cited as the “most unread book of all time.” Based on the Hawking Index, only 6% of people who start reading A Brief History of Time finish it.

So you don’t have to feel bad about not completing a book because you’re not alone. You’d be better off abandoning certain books that you don’t enjoy. By reading less, you can move on to other books that you’ll enjoy more and complete more meaningful books.

This also means that you have a competitive advantage for completing books that others don’t. For example, I’m one of only about 6% of people who’ve completed David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. It’s a book many people start but few complete.