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How to read more books

scotto.me

51–60 of 310 posts

Re: How to read more books

#51

Love this blog, appreciate the author. > This is probably the most difficult part. I had to remove all social media and streaming apps from my iPhone. I removed Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, etc. When I started, I found myself picking up the phone and immediately noticing that something was missing, since the only things left to do were check the weather, read boring emails, or see my bank account. These past few mon…

An easy trick nowadays is to simply log out of the accounts. Most social media websites really want you to log in so they become unusable when you log out. Its a good defense in depth strategy.

Re: How to read more books

#52

I have an almost-four year old child and not a lot of downtime. I used to listen to podcasts when I was doing dishes, cleaning the house, walking the dog, etc. I've mostly abandoned podcasts in favor of audiobooks. It didn't feel like they were benefiting me in any meaningful way—almost like they were just empty calories for my ears. I finally made it all the way through The Power Broker recently, which I've wanted t…

Audiobooks are just a different medium. I don't think people should pretend that an audiobook is a book. You process the two in completely different ways. This doesn't imply one is better than the other either.

For me I don't like audiobooks because its very slow and spoken stories should have a different cadence, velocity, set of dynamics, and diction than a book should (check out "the moth" to see what I'm talking about). I hold nothing against people who don't like to read or people who like audiobooks, or people who like slow things - Suum cuique.

Re: How to read more books

#53

Love this blog, appreciate the author. > This is probably the most difficult part. I had to remove all social media and streaming apps from my iPhone. I removed Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, etc. When I started, I found myself picking up the phone and immediately noticing that something was missing, since the only things left to do were check the weather, read boring emails, or see my bank account. These past few mon…

How do you trust anything written after 2023 or so to not be slop? Or even trust the claims that it was written before 2023?

Why does it matter whether the writing is AI generated or not?

You should always be critical of everything you read. I have stopped reading plenty of books after a few chapters when I realized there was little value in it for me.

Re: How to read more books

#54

Love this blog, appreciate the author. > This is probably the most difficult part. I had to remove all social media and streaming apps from my iPhone. I removed Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, etc. When I started, I found myself picking up the phone and immediately noticing that something was missing, since the only things left to do were check the weather, read boring emails, or see my bank account. These past few mon…

How do you trust anything written after 2023 or so to not be slop? Or even trust the claims that it was written before 2023?

I wouldn't blindly trust a brand new author in 2026, but it's very easy to trust an author that has put out good writing in years past. Not hard to find, there has been plenty of great books written after 2023.

New authors however will certainly have to earn trust for a few years now I think.

It's similar with music, if someone puts out their first album in 2026 and has no singles or EPs, no YouTube presence, etc., it's probably slop. If they have a body of work that goes back a few years, easy to trust.

Re: How to read more books

#55
I have an old iPad, which doesn't seem to run anything other than the default apps, hence it is distraction free in a sense. The only thing I use it for is to read, works quite well and I have managed to accomplish reading quite a few books.

Re: How to read more books

#56
Good article! I want to share my story about how I improved my reading, even though I used to dislike reading long passages.

Back then, whenever I read a book, it felt like I was just moving through the words and lines. Nothing happened in my mind. I had no reaction, no reflection, nothing. Because of that, I avoided learning from books and mostly watched videos instead.

While watching videos, I always read the comments. Reading comments from real people felt different. I reacted to them, reflected on them, and stayed engaged. I think it was because comments are short, simple, and easy to read.

After that, I discovered Reddit, forums, and especially Hacker News. In my opinion, Hacker News is one of the best forums on the internet because it's almost entirely text. Reading those discussions helped me get used to longer and more thoughtful writing.

Over time, my reading improved a lot. I can now read long-form, detailed writing with much better focus and reflection. I still want to improve, but I'm in a much better place than before, when I barely read at all.

Final personal note:

Reading should feel reactive and reflective in your brain. When you read short comments on social media, you can feel the full range of emotions, from happiness to anger to sadness. A good book can create the same experience. It's like highly precise commentary that makes you think, reflect, and react.

Re: How to read more books

#57
post #11

I have a checklist to go _back_ to reading 30-odd books a year, and right now the top 5 items are: 1. Stop messing about with AI 2. Stop doomscrolling/interacting on social networks (HN is within my 15m allocation) 3. Stop watching _any_ Youtube video that doesn't teach me anything 4. Gloss over my 200 RSS feeds, don't be a completionist 5. Put on classical music, not indie or radio It almost works. Almost.

> Stop messing about with AI

I see a few comments about wasting time with AI. I'm curious what the gist of those conversations is about?

I've found AI to be incredibly useful as a tool to nurture intellectual curiosity.

It even improves my book reading experience. Before, when I didn't fully understand a technical detail the author had glossed over, I usually had to skip it, hoping it wasn't critical for understanding later topics. Now, I can get precise explanations for anything I didn't understand in whatever level or detail I require.

Re: How to read more books

#59
I used to read a lot when I was small but then fell out of the habit. Rekindled it with my first child. With them I spent a lot of time walking around at all hours of the day to get them to sleep. That were perfect reading opportunities, and I have continued to always carry a book. As TFA says, that is key.

Re: How to read more books

#60
I've found my reading picked dramatically since I started using LLMs for programming. Waiting for a prompt to finish is a great time to read.
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