Scripture reading motivators?

When I was a child, we were encouraged to memorize a verse every week for Sunday school. If you recited your verse correctly, your reward was candy. There was a large goldfish bowl filled with Tootsie Rolls and you could put your greedy little hand in the bowl and grab the reward. Looking back on it, I wonder about that sort of incentive. It seems to appeal to the baser instinct of greed in all of us to try and grab as much candy as possible. Isn't learning the Word a reward in itself?

Another incentive that was tried was offering a prize to whoever read the most chapters. I won. The prize was a nice pink leather wallet. But did I really read what I read? Probably not. From an early age, I could speed read so it was a piece of cake to read as much as I could.

Today, I don't have the incentive of candy and neither is a prize being offered but there is something more intangible and just as bad, if not worse. It's pride. I started out the year with the desire to follow the ESV reading plan. I quickly fell behind. In order to catch up, I found myself reading but not really reading the verses. It became more important to follow the plan than to read the Word itself. It became an issue of pride, of wanting to say "I successfully completed the ESV reading plan. " as I humbly pat myself on the back.

I've given up on the plan but I'm not giving up on the Word. I'm still going to read OT, NT, and Psalms everyday but at a pace where I can actually read what I'm reading. It's too easy for me to read quickly so I have to deliberately make myself slow down. The Word of God is too precious to skim through.