Comment by Brajeshwar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Brajeshwar | Hacker News Reader

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I have two daughters (4, 12). Here is how I do, copied verbatim from a previous discussion on HN[1]

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.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25357932

> Always have your Kindle or a Book with you. Read instead of looking at your phone.

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.

The counterpoint is that it’s unlikely you’ll switch to replying to poorly thought out comments on hackernews, for an example, when you’re on a dedicated reading device than when you’re on just another app on your internet connected attention thief of a device.

That is a reasonable concern, but it varies based on the person. I'm not worried that I'll suddenly start browsing the internet while reading on the subway. It's not at all unlikely that I'll suddenly interrupt my reading if I'm messaged while I'm on the subway, but that's something I consider desirable, not something to be avoided.

Cool. I do have it on my iPad (tablet) to read when I forgot my kindle. It hasn't happen in 3+ years. However, I forgotten my iPad a lot of times and not my Kindle. :-)

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.

Sounds like you may be a much more talented reader than myself, but a question: how does speed reading not conflict with "text assimilation"?

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.

Well, this does not work with fiction where it is more fun following minute details of the stories. However, for non-fiction, when you are in a vicinity of the genre one typically read, you can practically pick up and glide along with the text. For instance, I read a lot about Entrepreneurship, Startups, Philosophy, etc. Quite a bit of the context overlap more than one can imagine. There are times when it goes in my head, "yeah! now it will be that, this, but does this have anything different."

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. :-)

I read rather slowly. I've been setting meager book goals for myself the past couple years, hoping to up my goals over time. But I feel my reading speed hasn't improved much.

Do you, or did you at some point, make a conscious effort to read faster? Or did speed just come with practice over time?

Speed does help. I read up and practice speed-reading for quite a while. I'm no longer interested in the number of books read per year but I'm more picky these days, digesting the best I can of the lesser number of quality books that I read.

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.

There are a couple of super easy techniques you can implement. I got mine from the Tim Ferriss book 4 hour work week. I think this blog by him provides a good summary: https://tim.blog/2009/07/30/speed-reading-and-accelerated-le...

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!

Wish I could do this. I'm a slow reader and I get motion sick while I'm cars.

The time in my life when I read most was when I had a 45 minute rail commute.

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.

Maybe you can try audiobooks?

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