“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn't read all the time -- none, zero. You'd be amazed at how much Warren reads--and at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I'm a book with a couple of legs sticking out.” -Charlie Munger
“Read 500 pages like this every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.” - Warren Buffett
Apologies for the rather sensational title - but I'm hoping to make you more productive reader - by actually making you a more efficient listener. Nonetheless, I hope the heavyweight quotes above reinforce the importance of reading.Simple thought experiment: if you did something for 1 minute every day over the course of a year - you would have devoted 6.5 hours to it.
Now let's invert: if you waste o minute every day for one year, you've wasted 6.5 hours of your life.
So let's do some quick math to calculate what I call "lost minutes," that is, times throughout the day during which we are completing a brainless task on autopilot.
Shower(s): 10 minutes
Morning/evening self-care (cleaning, getting ready, etc.): 10 minutes
Cooking, washing dishes, and other miscellaneous chores: 20 minutes
Exercise (hopefully?): 20 minutes
We're already at...wait for it...365 hours per year of mindless tasks. Of course, this should be tailored to your particular schedule, but I figure most of our days look at least something like this.
OK, so how does that translate to books? In my experience, the average audiobook is about 6-12 hours apiece. That means that you could easily read 30-60 books/year with the help of a Bluetooth shower radio and headset (or if you're cheap, simply the speaker on your phone or tablet).
To put that in perspective, you could finish the complete Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare - and still have time to spare for singing in the shower.
And what about if you commute? Let's say the average commute is 40 minutes each way. If you work 300 days/year, that's another 400 hours.
But wait, there's more.
If you can train yourself to listen at 2x speed at least, go ahead and double all those numbers above (which isn't that difficult considering that the average reading speed is 300 words per minute (WPM) while the average audiobook is read at 150-160 WPM).
So in sum:
400 + 365 hours = 765 hours/year.
Assuming, you read books at 2x speed, and most books are 6-12 hours apiece, that's 63-127 books per year.
Doesn't sound as impossible now, does it? I've been conservative with the "lost minutes," and I'm confident that most books can, with some training, even be sped up to 2.5x understandably.
One additional lifehack to recommend (not for everyone) is to listen to audiobooks as a prelude to an afternoon nap or when going to sleep at night. I think fiction likely serves this purpose better than nonfiction - but to each his own.
To clarify, I am not a fan of multi-tasking during activities that require concentration; it is better to do a wonderful job at one thing than to do a mediocre or sub-par job of two things done simultaneously. However, these half-tasks completed during the lost minutes leave room for the brain to chew on the thoughts of an author.
How many lost minutes can you reclaim? Feel free to comment with how many lost minutes you can find in your day.
