Edit: I should add that another optimization I got into this year has been to slowly ramp up the audio speed, which allows me to cover more content, albeit with some hit to comprehension, depending on book type. Currently listening to a non-fiction book at 1.6x.
It is overwhelming, particularly at first, but after a while you figure out is a marathon, not a sprint, and that an important part of being a good parent is self-care. Then it's just a matter of what constitutes self-care for you. Getting good sleep, eating healthy, getting exercise, socializing with friends, watching movies, having date night, and yes, reading books are just some of the activities that might be considered self-care. You figure put how much time you need to allocate to self-care to be a functional parent, and then you figure out how to carve it the time. All of that is hard a heck, but you figure it out eventually or you fail miserably at patenting.
In that context, reading books isn't much of a miracle or particularly impressive; it's just a choice of what works best for you.
I think the answer is: you have to decide what activity you want to trade for that.
Kids (also) learn by example, by imitating their parents doing their own things. So, not only self care, but also your things. Obviously, common sense, a toddler requires more attention than a teenager, won’t read nor play piano right away. Some things, like playing music, cooking (and for whatever reason, vacuuming) seems to have early impact :)
Your children are important part of your life, and you are important part of their life (especially in the early years). This has also an implication: Who actually is this person they get to know?
I don't have kids, but coincidentally discussed these kind of childhood memories with my spouse quite recently after someone made similar complaint. I probably hsve no idea of time commitments required of very small children. However, about at the age we were old enough not to be disruptive (if supplied with reading material when necessary), both our parents took us to their adult things: bird watcher society meetings, social events, art museums, bookshops, and seminars. It is probable our parents did their peronal own things less than they would have if we had not existed, but we agreed we did not suffer from it, and learned quite a deal.
There is anyway the peculiar something about way kids' experience thing and what of them remain when we grow anyway. Undoubtledly I have learned things much useful I don't remember much about, like how to walk. For me, the images I can call up are the odd, random, small ones. To a child many things are novel in this world, and one knows there is lots of things in adults' world to uncover. Yet because of that lack of perspective, various things may be treated as the normal. As an added complication, one's perspective on childhood memories changes and gains different color when one grows up.
Once, while visiting relatives on a road-trip, tthere was half a day long detour to see an exhibition of non-figurative sculptures whose details I don't recall. I do remember the calm, cool, air-conditioned atmosphere, the white bright walls, the smell of the museum, and the impression of uncanny puzzlement and imcomprehension left by the lone melancholy video installation in a small, separate darkened room in one of the exhibition halls. I was about 12 years old and quite bored. I surmise I was brought along mostly because father wanted to go, maybe because he wanted to give me educational experience about modern art, but most certainly there was any no other option suitable for preteen's inclinations given the circumstances of road trip, and as I said, he wanted to go. Nevertheless, despite the boredom, today the memory certainly is far more interesting than what I recall of the most of the kid-oriented activities I liked then better and also took lot of my parents' time.
It is difficult for me to judge the value of that museum experience -- is it because of the exhibition was remarkable or does it feel remarkable because I remember it? It might even be a partially constructed memory from several similar museum trips. And after all, the thing I remember especially well, much better and concretely than anything else, one of my earliest childhood memories (that I have photographied evidence of), is something utterly mundane, namely the large, black, late 80s mat we had on the living room. In retrospect, it was horrendously ugly on its own right as soon as the TRON aesthetic went out of style, but the reason I remember it was that it had this repeating, neon-colored rectangle pattern, rows and columns, one symmetrically after other. To my eternal dislike, the pattern repeated regularly until it did not: the final row of rectangles at one end were shorter than they should have been given the rest of the pattern. No matter how I counted or measured or tried to mentally rotate the damned thing in my head, there was no solution, no escape, the thing was always asymmetrical. (I amuse myself thinking this may have something to do with me deciding to study math and CS in university later.) Thus one of possibly life-defining experiences was the rug my parents bought years before I was born, and presumably thrown away while I was in primary school (it disappeared and I never inquired about it).
Of childrens' fiction authors, I think ones such as Roald Dahl, Dickens, Lemony Snicket, maybe Rowling (the very first chapters of Philosopher's Stone) capture something of this aspect to watching the world unfold.
I could not get into audiobooks (even after years of listening to scientific talk podcasts) until I got hold of Origin by Dan Brown in an Audible trial, and ended up being gripped by the 20 hour book for two weeks straight. It has been 15+ audiobooks from various sources per year for me since then, which has really enriched my life. Retention is better since I finish the books that can be integrated with various activities not requiring verbal thinking way faster.
Generally podcasts are lighter than books. And generally fiction books are lighter than non fiction.
Unlike eBooks, where you can easily go back by scanning with your eyes, audiobooks can only provide you a way to quickly go back in time, not context (unless the context is directly related to time, like rewinding for 10 or 20 seconds, for example).
I’ve been thinking of listening to audiobooks while doing chores and not bothering about missing some words or sentences. But I’d have to choose a casual work so that I don’t regret missing anything.
Give it a shot! It’s maybe a bit like that Thinking Fast And Slow story about the kids who scored better on tests with blurry questions.
I don’t know if it’s related but I can think faster and I type at blazing speeds ever since I switched to faster speeds on audiobooks
No longer use a bike since I moved.
Now I'm prone to tuning out the stream of text the same way I (and presumably brightball) tune out the stream of speech from an audiobook. If I want to be sure not to miss something, I need to read aloud. :(
Scribd is the go to place for audiobooks, it is the only major subscription service I regularly pay.
Audible is horrible, their business model sucks, and what sucks even more is their scummy marketing.
Scribd is basically the Netflix for books, and I honestly love it and cannot recommend it enough.
I do think it has way more potential to become something if it integrated with other services even better, but I guess working with publishers is not easy...
Btw, Audio books for accessibility reasons are not new, 'Talking Books' have been in existence since 1930s through specialized record players, cassettes and mail-order libraries. Here is a nice video about[1] from TechMoan and article[2] at RNIB.
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiaMxU01Rrg
[2]https://www.rnib.org.uk/reading-services/celebrating-history...
For fiction, go for something with a professional narrator. Jim Dale's Harry Potter series is a good example. They can make it into a modern-day radio drama. But for non-fiction, I prefer if the author reads it. Authors imbibe an excitement to the reading of non-fiction; professionals often come across as monotone and I can't focus on them.
- Audible's "Cancel membership" flow is multiple pages long and makes you think you've canceled it when you actually have to keep progressing through additional "I want to cancel" clicks. I thought I canceled the free trial when I hadn't. When complaining to some friends of mine, they also made the same mistake.
- When you finally cancel your membership, you've only put in a request to cancel it. The actual cancellation will happen in 30 days. This means you're always billed one more time after cancellation (I couldn't believe this when I saw it).
- When your membership is finally canceled, you lose all of your tokens (you get one per month). So if you have 5 tokens saved up and you want to pause your membership for a couple months because your bank balance is low, too bad. (Note: I've since realized that Audible lets you pause your membership once per year for 1-3 months, but this is an unsatisfying solution and I only discovered it in their support forum. I didn't even see the option while canceling twice.)
- Because canceling your membership has a 30-day delay that charges you once more, you're basically buying one last token that's going to get immediately deleted. This means that if you're billed on the 1st of the month but you cancel (ahem, submit a cancel request) on the 2nd of the month, 29 days later you're going to be charged one last time and receive a token that is deleted within 24 hours.
I haven't used Libro.fm yet (have a sour taste in my mouth from Audible), but their tokens never expire and canceling ("pausing", in their language) membership doesn't delete tokens.
I want to write a blog post that makes these points more eloquently, with evidence, but I haven't had the energy.
"Wait, what if we charge people once more when they try to cancel our service?" is one of the most ridiculous experiences I've ever had. Even worse than that one time I had to cancel a cam-site subscription by uncommenting-out the <button>Cancel</button> in the html.
The world is only as good as the things we choose to tolerate.
Just remember to spend them first!
Audible's business decision to revoke credits on membership cancellation is one of those decisions that makes me wonder if they're actually leaving money on the table. Like, wouldn't having unspent credits in your account contribute to membership reactivations down the road? And enable marketing emails like "Don't you want to spend your 3 credits?"
Simply not true.
- Oct 25th: Copy and pasted from their email, "We’re just confirming that you’ve cancelled your Audible membership. You’ll continue to have access to your credits until November 25, 2020."
- Nov 4th: I'm charged once more and receive a token.
- Nov 25th: I finally lose tokens and my membership transitions to the canceled state. I'm never charged again.
I've run this experiment a second time when my girlfriend canceled last month (I also wanted screenshots of the cancelation wizard for the blog post I want to write). She was charged once more between the "cancel request", the rebill date, and the actual cancel 30 days later.
What do you think is a more accurate, charitable description of these events? I think "cancelation has a 30-day delay" summarizes the post-cancel rebill much more charitably than it deserves.
My method: we got rid of our TV a few years ago. I know that is a well worn statement on HN, and probably comes across to some as a virtue signal. That's not my goal, just relating an anecdote. But no TV is strangely freeing. To those thinking about doing it, I'd say unplug it and put it in the closet for a few weeks and see what you think.
I can still watch football (soccer) matches by casting from my computer to the TV and we do have a Netflix account (which we don't even use that heavily) shared with a close friend but that's about it. I can confirm that the change for the best has been considerable.
If no TV is “too far” then limit it to 1 hour and only watch things you love, you will surprised how little that is. Dig in to the screen time metrics too, you can probably Twitter and Facebook less than you do, you can still see pictures of your mom’s dog but not lose hours to it.
No TV for us just meant playing games elsewhere (not complaining either, just a matter of preferences)
Also I have been renting kindle books from my library. Very easy to try books and continue reading only if I find it interesting!
Of course, it also helps that my employer will reimburse any book purchases I make.
I don't have strict rules, methods, or patterns. However, I follow common themes such as skimming (or speed-reading) boring/mundane sections, change books and come back later, read multiple books at a time.
Personally, I feel something missing if I totally skip something, so I tend to or try to finish what I read. I was known to be that kid who read Newspapers top to bottom of all pages, so that is that.
My tricks;
- Don't drive, get an Uber and read. I have finished so many books inside an Uber car. I'm in India and is cheap to get a private driver, the monthly cost pays off with the amount of things you can do in the back of your car, reading books is one.
- If I'm flying, I finish about 2 typical books per leg of the flight.
- Always have your Kindle or a Book with you. Read instead of looking at your phone. ;-)
- If you have kids, read (physical books) to show them that you read, they will follow.
Counterpoint: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.kin...
You can get a lot of reading done on a long subway commute. But there's no reason not to do it on the phone you carry with you anyway.
My phone (iPhone 11 Pro that will likely last for 2+ more years) is just a really good camera, that has some phone function with the usual calendar, maps, etc. I avoid phone calls as much as I can.
By this I mean: if you read a book very rapidly (which I assume you have to do if you tend to finish two books per leg of flight), how can you mentally "chew" the substance enough to build full comprehension of the topic?
May just be I'm a slow reader & tend to read books in English (which is not my mother tongue), but this has always tripped me with trying speed reading.
During my normal reading speed, if things don't "click", I go back and play back what I read. I don't speed read all the time.
For flights, I like picking up much smaller physical books (200-ish page). You start reading while waiting to board, in the flight, and all the other commute before your destination. I usually give the books to random people, or leave it at places so people can pick it up. For the really good ones, I bring them home for my library. This means, I have also read quite a lot of cheesy, lousy books.
English is also not my mother tongue but is now a primary language. I come from a region in India where for every few square kilometer, one can find a different language and/or dialect. So, we ended up being taught in English, speak in English for more complex words, etc.
I also realized, I used to sit for an hour two days a week just waiting for my daughter with her private tuition. That finishes off quite a lot of books. :-)
Do you, or did you at some point, make a conscious effort to read faster? Or did speed just come with practice over time?
I won't do this for books I want to enjoy such as fantasy and sci fi (although sometimes through the more monotonous parts). I will use a few of these for articles/papers until I get to a part which is more technical. Good luck!
I still do speed-reading when I stumble on part of the book that are not interesting to me or I have read very similar concepts before (most non-fiction books in the same genre).
For context, I used to hit 60-70 books per year when I was counting. This year, due to the Pandemic (last time I checked) I have read over 70+ books as picked up by Goodread from Kindle. So, I will likely be hitting about 100 in total this year.
But yes, I will slow down and try to be more picky ahead.
It was only for 6 months, and I was going from London out to a small town every morning, so nine times out of ten, I'd be alone in the carriage.
Started by reading to my kid before bed. Even at a really young age when the book didn't mean anything, it still seemed to calm them. It allowed me the opportunity to A) read anything I wanted, B) build a foundational hobby over time, and C) spend time with my child. They now bring me books (usually whatever story we're reading at the time, but occasionally a short kids book) and I make a point to take a break and read to them. Because of that and other events this year, I've been able to complete dozens of books.
Edit: more seriously, by age 3.5 or 4 kids can understand a huge variety of material, and there are tons of books that are fun for the whole family to read aloud together.
Set aside 30 minutes to lie in bed and read before going to sleep. This also feels as if it has the effect of helping me to get to sleep faster.
This is my target, which I only reach occasionally. The hardest part is consciously de-prioritising whatever it is I'm doing at 30-minutes to sleep time.
I read/listen at anywhere between 2x to 3.5x speed, depending on the book and the narrator. If it's nonfiction, it's usually on the higher end, and if it's fiction, usually on the lower end, but again, it depends on the narrator themself.
In addition, I read when doing everything. Exercise? Reading a book. Washing dishes? Reading a book. Commuting to work? Reading a book.
A regular-sized book is between 10-20 hours of listening time. If you listen at 2.5x speed, that's around 7.5-12.5 hours-ish. If you commute 30 minutes a day each way, and only listen in your commute, that's already a book almost every week. Add in doing chores, exercise, etc, and you're getting a lot of reading time.
(For the record: 2 kids ages 2 and 4, and I read about 90-100 books a year, ranging from short books to long epic fantasies. But I also listen to podcasts quite a bit so that cuts down "reading" time as well.)
I wake up at 6AM and spend a while reading on the sofa, before our child wakes up. On an average day, pre-covid19, I'd spend time doing the morning routine (eating breakfast, getting dressed, taking the child to daycare), then I'd sit on a tram/bus for 30 minutes to head to the office. That time would be spent reading.
Lunchtime I'd usually read a book while eating a sandwich, then again reading on the bus/tram back to the house.
Before sleeping I'd read for 30-60 minutes too, unless I was watching a film with my wife, going to the pub, or doing something else.
But even on very busy days I'd always have around and hour of commute time, on public-transport, to read a book.
The Goodreads reading goal used to help too, especially planning to write a small review with notes to myself forced me to read more actively. The pandemic lockdown has broken that though, I've lost all will to sit down and write.
If your goal is to just finish a book, you can listen to an audiobook at 3.5x speed.
Some books are easy, some books are hard. If you pick easy books you can go through them much faster
You have to pick your goals and priorities about what you want from the book.
I mostly read non-fiction books that are not heavy in academics. So most of them are not written to be lean if you know what I mean
Being able to tell people I've read 100 books was pretty cool but it was just a vanity metric to boost ego. It's pretty dumb to be honest. Theres better ways to consume a huge amount of information.
This doesnt apply to domains that require deep knowledge/learning ie: programming, engineering, sciences, math, algorithms, hobbies, etc.
Also things you learn from books are not a rule of law, which Ive noticed that is something people tend to forget.
The reality is that the majority of non fiction books are written by authors with perverse incentives - as a writer you can mostly make money by writing a complete book, whether or not you have a books worth of things to say about the topic. My approach has been to try and read 1 or two books a year but make sure they matter. The few books I do read, I remember most of their good parts and find them valuable and rewarding. Almost all of my friends and colleagues who are self proclaimed voracious readers never seem the wiser from it, not like they can recount any specific instance of a book affecting their life or decisions in any way at least.
All of this is about non fiction of course, fiction books are a whole another animal!
And I agree with the fiction part, I know and have witnessed people who have been reading fiction throughout their whole life. As an adult, they enjoy and can easily finish a fiction book in one day. But most of them cannot do the same with non-fiction books. I am at the opposite. I can go through a non-fiction really fast, but would take forever and rarely enjoy reading fiction.
I do notice that too, that some books have really valuable insights and can kinda stand the test of time. Some are just like iterations of multiple books out there thats just retold in a different way
At the same time, I'm too exhausted to do anything productive (actively learning new stuff or coding for-fun projects), and I'm finding media and games much less satisfying than before.
As a result, I often spend my evenings reading (fiction, mostly). I'm probably now reading more than ever before.