A kindle has finally allowed me to start reading one book per week, something I’ve been trying to do for quite a while now with little success. The ability to buy books instantly, and the fact that it’s much easier to take along than an actual book, means I get a ton more reading done. The ability to highlight and have it automatically sync to Amazon servers makes Anki deck making A LOT easier.
You can also sell your gift card for ~80% of its value (just google “sell gift card”).
A kindle has finally allowed me to stop reading several books per week.
For many years previously I’ve had: open bookshelves around the apartment, near 1000 books, some unread; whenever I walk by, a 30% chance to randomly take down a book, start reading, and come back to the real world several hours later, having missed work/appointment/dinner/sleeptime/chance to sit down.
Lots of procrastination, although it has given me a lot of broad, shallow knowledge on many interesting subjects.
Today: no printed books left, except for small cache of <100 important ones hidden on upper shelf of closet, which don’t have ebook versions; one kindle. Because the Kindle is so bad at arranging and finding books (seriously, no folder support?) it takes around a minute to open a book not read recently. This time-cost alone is enough to prevent almost all of my reading-procrastination. I still read for fun during time pre-set aside for the purpose.
I highlight things, mostly new ideas, that I want to memorize as I’m reading the book (the number of highlights is a good proxy to how good the book was). Then I login to Amazon, and for each highlight I make an Anki card.
This saves me from having to go through the book and find all the highlights, and also from copying the text into Anki (since I can just copy and paste).
An ebook reader (+ some other prize combination) has occurred to me. I almost bought an ebook reader when they were on sale around Christmas, but couldn’t decide between the Nook and Kindle platforms. One thing that worries me is that I have such a hard time reading paper books at the moment; I wonder if an ebook reader only seems like it would improve productivity when in reality it would shortly due to novelty, but then it would wear off.
Some questions:
How long have you had it?
Did you notice any drop in reading time from initial ownership to present?
How many anki decks is realistic (I’m aware of anki and how it works but haven’t used it regularly)?
ETA: Thought of another question—can you put your finger on what, exactly, allowed you to accomplish your goal vs. when you were reading paper?
A kindle has finally allowed me to start reading one book per week, something I’ve been trying to do for quite a while now with little success. The ability to buy books instantly, and the fact that it’s much easier to take along than an actual book, means I get a ton more reading done. The ability to highlight and have it automatically sync to Amazon servers makes Anki deck making A LOT easier.
You can also sell your gift card for ~80% of its value (just google “sell gift card”).
A kindle has finally allowed me to stop reading several books per week.
For many years previously I’ve had: open bookshelves around the apartment, near 1000 books, some unread; whenever I walk by, a 30% chance to randomly take down a book, start reading, and come back to the real world several hours later, having missed work/appointment/dinner/sleeptime/chance to sit down.
Lots of procrastination, although it has given me a lot of broad, shallow knowledge on many interesting subjects.
Today: no printed books left, except for small cache of <100 important ones hidden on upper shelf of closet, which don’t have ebook versions; one kindle. Because the Kindle is so bad at arranging and finding books (seriously, no folder support?) it takes around a minute to open a book not read recently. This time-cost alone is enough to prevent almost all of my reading-procrastination. I still read for fun during time pre-set aside for the purpose.
How exactly do you use this to make Anki decks?
I highlight things, mostly new ideas, that I want to memorize as I’m reading the book (the number of highlights is a good proxy to how good the book was). Then I login to Amazon, and for each highlight I make an Anki card.
This saves me from having to go through the book and find all the highlights, and also from copying the text into Anki (since I can just copy and paste).
An ebook reader (+ some other prize combination) has occurred to me. I almost bought an ebook reader when they were on sale around Christmas, but couldn’t decide between the Nook and Kindle platforms. One thing that worries me is that I have such a hard time reading paper books at the moment; I wonder if an ebook reader only seems like it would improve productivity when in reality it would shortly due to novelty, but then it would wear off.
Some questions:
How long have you had it?
Did you notice any drop in reading time from initial ownership to present?
How many anki decks is realistic (I’m aware of anki and how it works but haven’t used it regularly)?
ETA: Thought of another question—can you put your finger on what, exactly, allowed you to accomplish your goal vs. when you were reading paper?