[paulcole]

Professional - Investing 30 minutes to plan at the start of each work day. I follow this system:

https://www.workclean.com/

I use a remarkable e-ink tablet and have a template file I duplicate and complete at the start of each day. I didn’t complete it every day but I think on average I skipped doing it 1 day a month. Part of the success is that I’d feel like a moron if I had this $500 tablet gathering dust.

Personal - At the start of each month I set (what I think to be) an achievable goal for activity for the month. This year I focused on 60 minutes of some combination of running/walking/bicycling. I have a chart that I fill in with a blue square on the days I make my goal and a red square on the days I don’t. My biggest setbacks were ~10 days of inactivity due to COVID in April and then about a week I lost due to some hip pain in September. Other than that I missed about 1 day every other month usually due to depression or particularly bad weather. Resetting a new goal monthly helps and creates a fresh start in case I have a bad month.

I’ve also read 76 books so far this year. I had set a goal of 52 at the start of the year. Mostly that comes down to finding things I think sound interesting, spending a (relatively) large amount of money on books, and making reading a priority.

There’s no magic to any of this. I have pretty modest goals and putting 30 or so minutes towards each of them everyday leads to pretty big gains over time.

[nicbou]

How do you read more than a book per week? I meed longer even with a really good book and a fairly light schedule.

[paulcole]

1. I’ve always been a quick reader. I can usually get through a 350-450 page paperback novel in ~3-4 hours.

2. So if I aim to read at least 30 minutes a day on weekdays and then 2-3 hours a day on weekends, they go by pretty quick.

3. I had a week’s vacation back in May and ended up reading 6 books that week. So prioritizing reading when I have extra time helps.

4. If a book sounds interesting, I buy it without thinking about it too much. It shows up on my Kindle and then when it’s time to read I know I won’t waste too much time picking out and buying a new book.

[nicbou]

How do you manage to read so fast? I read about as fast as I speak, and it's often faster than my brain can make sense of some paragraphs.

[paulcole]

I’ve just always been that way since I was a kid. It’s not something I’ve ever practiced besides reading a lot throughout my life. But while I read faster than average, I bet I have average to below average retention.

Novels like detective stories or whatever, I just want to follow the plot and enjoy it — I really don’t care if I can remember it at all when I’m done. One benefit of this is that there are some books I’ll revisit every few years and really re-enjoy. Then there’s some books where I’ll be like “this sounds good” and then 1/2-way into it I realize I read it a decade ago.

For non-fiction books (particularly those I want to learn from) I make myself go slower and rely on highlights and notes to improve retention.

[soueuls]

You make reading your default choice to kill the time.

I read when in bed truing to sleep

I read if I am waiting for the friend or transportation

I read during boring meeting

I read 60 books this year, but this included Don Quichotte and Karamazov brothers.