I also I have a huge backlog of tech books that I should work on because this career kinda requires it.
I tell both my kids "don't stay up too late" just before I go to bed (usually around 11pm). Beyond a certain age you can't force them anymore and they have to learn their limits themselves.
The unvarnished truth is that the answer to your question ("how do you stop your wife and/or kids interrupting you every 30 seconds?") for many people is "I don't". They don't stop them, that is. Because they don't have to. Because they didn't marry someone who interrupts them every 30 seconds and then have kids with them and then raise those kids to be the kinds of kids who interrupts them every 30 seconds.
Read 10 pages per day? That's 10 books that year.
I read a little less than 1 page per minute (depends on book), but the way I look at it is minutes per day = books in year. Read 30 minutes every day that's 30 books that year.
The days when I keep my ereader nearby so I look at that instead I am much happier.
Audiobooks while driving. I easily do over ten a year this way.
Ultimately I find time for both. I completed 30 books in 2024. 2-3 of them were audiobooks I think. They count in my opinion.
It likely won't work for all kinds of books. I don't think I'd want to listen to an audio book of Thinking, Fast and Slow for example.
But for fiction and certain non-fiction, it can be a great experience. In fact, for fiction it is now my preferred mode of consumption. There are books (e.g. Ancillary Justice) that I know I would have not finished if I were reading the book directly (for various reasons). But the audio book narration was so good I stuck to it.
It really depends on what your goals for reading are. If you're reading a heavy nonfiction book where you want to annotate, etc, then obviously it won't work.
If you're simply trying to absorb a story or gain information, it works as well as a regular book. You will likely rewind often, though. It sounds a lot worse than it is, but you get used to it quickly.
The amount of "spare time" most people have, time they're doing random things that don't require full focus, is enormous, at least it is for me. Arranging breakfast for the kids before the school day, doing dishes, walking to and from places, working out at the gym, etc - all of those times become moments to listen to whatever you're reading.
I've never was a literary person (despite everyone else in my family reading a lot), but ever since this discovery I've been catching up on a lot of fiction, philosophy, psychology book, and pretty much anything that doesn't have code or equations. Highly recommended.
See here for screenshots: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem...
I was surprised just how much you can read with this amount of time investment. I read 12 books during that year; with 600 pages on average. It’s much quicker than you’d think!
Put the book(s) on the bedside table so that it is right there staring at you.
If a book isn't interesting even after first 50 pages, dump and move on to a new one. Borrow books from library so that there is a forcing function of the due date.
30 mins a day is plenty to get through 10-20 books a year easily. Read only easy/fun/interesting books until the stamina to get into tougher reads arrives.
How do you, as a techie, find time to read most of the books? Any tips or hacks? Ryan Holiday once mentioned that he managed to read extensively by always keeping books with him, allowing him to read whenever he found some spare time.