I’m an avid reader. I have many books going at any given time. I’m also interested in reading articles and blog posts online. But when I spend my time reading articles, I sometimes have this thought at the back of my mind about using the same reading time for books instead. Do you have any tips and tricks on how you’ve build a balance in this?
Ask HN: How do you balance reading books vs. articles
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Re: Ask HN: How do you balance reading books vs. articles
#2I am reading articles during my way to work (short period) and books before sleep (long period).
Re: Ask HN: How do you balance reading books vs. articles
#3I read for one hour every day in a book and one hour online articles. Most of the time, however, I invest less time in articles because I read most of them only roughly.
Re: Ask HN: How do you balance reading books vs. articles
#4I use Pocket to postpone reading articles during the work week. I then go through the list over morning coffee on weekends on my e-reader. Once I removed that impulse to read articles immediately as I stumble upon them, I found out that I simply delete like 50-60% of collected links without consuming them.
I read books either after work / later on weekends / before bed.
Re: Ask HN: How do you balance reading books vs. articles
#5I use Pocket to postpone reading articles during the work week. I then go through the list over morning coffee on weekends on my e-reader. Once I removed that impulse to read articles immediately as I stumble upon them, I found out that I simply delete like 50-60% of collected links without consuming them. I read books either after work / later on weekends / before bed.
> I found out that I simply delete like 50-60% of collected links without consuming them.
This is an interesting result! Why do you suppose this is?
Re: Ask HN: How do you balance reading books vs. articles
#6Prefer books over articles generally since the information density is often higher and the quality of information for published books is going to be more consistent. Books often contain leads for more information which can be contained in either more books or articles, of high quality, for good reasons.
Articles are often more contemporary in topic matter and so should be fit to your current purpose, rather than acting as your primary means of exploring topics (which is their most common use when reading feeds, if we call "filling up time due to boredom" a form of foraging). Books are better for both exploration and depth when it comes to understanding important and long-lasting ideas.
Re: Ask HN: How do you balance reading books vs. articles
#7I keep my reading time at two hours daily, with that i am supposed to read about two or three books a month and everything that falls into my kindle. At this point i’ve gotten very good at skim reading light articles and aggressively deleting uninteresting or bad ones.
Re: Ask HN: How do you balance reading books vs. articles
#8I balance the two by reading longform articles that convey a single idea well, rather than books that take too long to read and clickbait articles that provide instant-gratification but nothing of lasting value. (I highly recommend the Thinking About Things newsletter [0] and LongReads [1] for finding these kinds of articles.)
Re: Ask HN: How do you balance reading books vs. articles
#9I balance the two by reading longform articles that convey a single idea well, rather than books that take too long to read and clickbait articles that provide instant-gratification but nothing of lasting value. (I highly recommend the Thinking About Things newsletter [0] and LongReads [1] for finding these kinds of articles.) [0] https://twitter.com/ThinkingAboutT6 [1] https://longreads.com/
Great piece of advice, thanks - and for the links too.
Re: Ask HN: How do you balance reading books vs. articles
#10I use Pocket to postpone reading articles during the work week. I then go through the list over morning coffee on weekends on my e-reader. Once I removed that impulse to read articles immediately as I stumble upon them, I found out that I simply delete like 50-60% of collected links without consuming them. I read books either after work / later on weekends / before bed.
> I found out that I simply delete like 50-60% of collected links without consuming them. This is an interesting result! Why do you suppose this is?
I read an interesting article the other day.
"I am always amazed by what happens: no matter how stringent I was in the original collecting, no matter how certain I was that this thing was worthwhile, I regularly eliminate 1/3 of my list before reading. The post that looked SO INTERESTING when compared to that one task I’d been procrastinating on, in retrospect isn’t even something I care about.
What I’m essentially doing is creating a buffer. Instead of pushing a new piece of info through from intake to processing to consumption without any scrutiny, I’m creating a pool of options drawn from a longer time period, which allows me to make decisions from a higher perspective, where those decisions are much better aligned with what truly matters to me."
https://medium.com/praxis-blog/the-secret-power-of-read-it-l...