While reading the Bible is good and reading through the Bible every year is better, Studying goes beyond reading. You could read the Bible through at 10-15 minutes a day for a year, but you could not study it thoroughly in that amount of time. Study is a deeper examination of the text in order to gain an understanding of it. If you have ever read something that you did not understand you can see why it is important to do more than read. I know enough about French letters and pronunciation to read something that is written in French even though I may not pronounce each word correctly, but since I probably only know the meaning of 100 French words I wouldn't understand much of what I read and it would not be helpful to me at all. Sometimes we do this with the Bible as well.

Understanding depends on the meanings of each word and the connection between them as well as the context. If we don't understand the individual words we have difficulty making sense of the whole. Some words are more difficult than others and some writings are more difficult. A child's reader and a scientific journal are hardly on the same level and the Bible contains within its covers sections on a variety of different levels. The Bible itself refers to "milk" and "meat" of the word(1 Corinthians 3:2). There must be a progression in learning and understanding of the Bible just as in any other area of life. As we continue to study we continue to learn.

There are several different ways to study(by topic, by book, chronologically, by word, etc.), and different people have their own techniques (you have to find what works best for you), but allow me to offer some suggestions that may be helpful in any study. 

1) Get ready: Supplies - Bible, notebook and pen/pencil, a concordance, a good dictionary(preferably a Bible dictionary); get rid of outside distractions - find a quiet private place, turn off the phone, don't answer the door, turn off the TV/radio/Computer(unless you are using it in your study, but even then shut down any programs that are not used in your study); prepare mentally - choose what you will study and for how long(it is usually not very profitable to spend less than 30 minutes), pray and focus(meditate) on God's Word shutting out other thoughts; and prepare physically - be well-rested, get a drink of water, go to the bathroom, find a good place where you can be comfortable(but not too comfortable) with a surface for your materials. If you study regularly it would be good to keep your materials together near your study spot so they don't have to be gathered each time.

2) Don't be overly ambitious: If you only have 30 minutes you will not be able to study the whole Gospel of John or all of Paul's missionary journeys or the love of God. You may have to start on a larger topic or you may be able to finish a small study of one verse or one word that is only used a couple of times.

3) Read the verses that you are considering several times. Include the complete sentence(often a verse is only a phrase) and possibly even all the verses in a particular section. With the exception of some of the Proverbs, which are short phrases complete in themselves, it is rare to find a "stand alone" verse.

We will look at some more details in another article.

I am not a fast reader, but I can read 9-12 minutes per day and read through the Bible in a year. Here is the Balanced Reading I promised. It is Balanced in terms of the amount of text on the page and not the number of chapters or verses because they vary too much. In the Bible that I used each day's reading is approximately the front and back of one page and the front of another or that equivalent. The length may fluctuate a little depending on the difficulty of the text. There may be some breaks in what seems like an odd place, but that was done to keep it to a similar length. If you want to download it you may, or you can come here and view it as well.

I was somewhat frustrated recently with one of the Daily Bible Reading, Read the Bible in a Year programs because on one day it had 1 chapter with 3 verses and the next day it had 4 chapters with over 120 verses. Some are not that extreme, but many people have a set amount of time in their schedule for their daily Bible reading and fluctuations make it difficult to fit the reading in on some days. I say all that to introduce a new Balanced Daily Bible Reading to finish in a year. I am not finished with it, but should be in the next week or two. It will have some cliffhanger stops to keep the amount of reading consistent from day to day, but we all love those suspenseful endings on TV shows, right?