Hacker News Reader

Comment by ziofill | Hacker News Reader

When I was living in Paris I had a 20 min ride from home to work each day. I picked up the habit to read during those 40 total minutes and I was going through books like I had never been able to, because while 40 min is not a lot, it’s about 150h per year. One easily underestimates the power of consistency.

View on HN

I read many books a year by reading for 20-30 minutes per night before sleeping. A habit with multiple benefits (winding down and reading or commuting and reading) is very powerful for getting the most value out of your time.

Until the book gets really good and you have to keep reading past your bedtime to learn what happens (or maybe that's just me)

It's not just you, I hear this often, but I am always suprised people can read for so long in bed. No matter how interesting a book is, I can rarely read more than 20-30 minutes before the urge to fall asleep becomes too strong.

But I can sometimes code until like 4AM. Weird.

Reading is usually more passive than coding. I'm often never sleepy if I'm actively coding something late at night but reading a book (no matter how engaging) or watching a tv show can very easily make me sleepy. That said, everyone's brains work very differently.

This is just so weird. In general coding won't let me fall asleep but a book 100% will never let me sleep until I finish.

I also find the idea of "forcing" yourself to read rather peculiar, but we're all different people. I wonder if there's genuinely something different in how the brain reacts.

Well you are sitting in front of a relatively bright lamp when coding.

Anything true crime keeps me up. Same with many genre's like you said, but for some reason true crime always hooks me.

I read the Zodiac book by Robert Graysmith in less than two days over break in college. Could not put it down.

This happens to me about once a year. I’m much more likely to stay up later than planned while doing other activities such as watching tv, coding, talking, social media, or spending time with my partner.

To offer a counterargument: I would strongly recommend aspiring and avid readers to not make reading in bed your primary / only mode of reading. It will make your brain associate books with sleep and thus make you turn drowsy the moment you have turned a few pages.

I wore out the elbows of quite a few shirts lying on my side in bed reading. This was during the time I would go to the local science fiction bookstore every Saturday and buy three or four books, ocassionally finishing them by Monday.

I stopped because I would feel sleepy and also feel like I didn’t get what I was reading and would forget the book. I suppose that’s something of a champagne problem.

I also used to read my commute but stopped it after I finished "for whom the bell tolls". I was so moved that I ended up crying in the bus and I would have liked to experience that feeling in the privacy of my home rather in the morning bus with 9 hours still on the clock.

I used to religiously read The New Yorker (magazine) on my commute. I remember crying while reading about the copper mine rescue in Chile.

I read the road by Cormac McCarthy on the train. That was a mistake.

I commute to the office 1-3 times a week, it's about 30 minutes on the train + some walking.

I've gone through so many books it's crazy :)

With audiobooks I can start listening the second I step out of the door and stop while I take my jacket off in the office. With e-books I usually just read on the train.

Most books aren't that long, around 5 hours a week of reading just during your commutes is quite a bit.

For one year I read every free moment averaged a book every 3 days mostly biographies many on wrestling. The year I got an e-reader (alura tech). Stopped after the screen broke.

The book that stood out the most. Sugar Barons.

I do the same with language learning. Makes me actually enjoy commuting to work since I find it hard to study at home. I just pop in the headphones, take a seat, and sit for 40 mins twice a day. Sometimes I even intentionally take the non-rapid so I can study a bit more (plus the train is less packed so I'm always guaranteed a seat)

how can you read in 20 minutes, for me 20 minutes is only good enough to stare out the windows and ... zip zip 20 minutes are gone

i need a couple of hours to do any technical reading

20 minutes, maybe, maybe .. good enough if i am reading fiction or something

> how can you read in 20 minutes

> good enough if i am reading fiction or something

Looks like you got there in the end.

Just do as you do when you are doing technical reading for a couple of hours, but stop after 20 minutes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com