
Quantifying and Time Tracking My Reading - cflynnus
https://cflynn.us/posts/2020-03-27-quantifying-and-time-tracking-reading
======
lukevp
Maybe I’ll sound like an old fogey for saying this, but... I enjoy reading and
I feel like this level of analysis would take all the joy out of it. With
exercise you are competing against your past self to gain strength and
endurance. With reading, what is the goal to optimize against? I think it
would be more valuable to summarize and annotate thoughts as you read the book
rather than measuring your progress through it by page count.

~~~
akashtndn
I do find some value in quantification but I resonate with your thoughts. I am
curious about ways in which people summarize and take notes when reading
books. Do you have any specific quirks or methods for doing so?

~~~
cflynnus
I've somewhat shifted my focus from plain note taking to making spaced
repetition flashcards (using Anki). I find it to be a lot more effective in
aiding memory retention of details.

------
Oneiros512
I've always had a fascination with tracking things myself. I remember
daydreaming when I was younger about wishing I had some kind of way to see how
many of some particular food item I'd eaten over the course of my life, or how
many words I'd ever spoken. I never got too heavily into making my own
spreadsheets, but I got into tracking running and walking with apps like
runkeeper, using a site to track every movie I watched, tracking each video
game I owned and whether I had beaten it yet, and when I couldn't find a good
site for tracking the TV shows I'd watched I did make a very simple
spreadsheet for that.

Over time I've pulled away from the practice somewhat as I've started to think
the obsession with tracking my activities was detracting from the experience
somewhat. I'd end up thinking more about adding to my total miles walked on my
tracker than enjoying the walk itself. On a level as granular as tracking
10-page chunks of books you must be getting distracted on some level from the
actual content, I would think.

I still use that tracking site for movies and I do use Goodreads for books,
and I find them great resources for figuring out what to read/watch next, but
those are now more secondary to the actual enjoyment of the experience itself.

------
michalu
Good stuff. One thing you are missing though. I like to measure my reading by
quality too.

I simply keep a manual tally counter by my side while reading and every time I
catch myself reading mindlessly or my mind drifting away, I count one
distraction. Similar to some forms of meditation.

Ultimately, you want to bring up the quality by minimizing the number of
distractions per unit of time.

The good thing about it is that you actually build up your focus and
concentration "muscle" (in prefrontal cortex) as opposed to amping up the
volume alone.

I too got inspired by gym :)

~~~
cflynnus
That sounds like a good idea, currently when "zoning out" or getting
distracted I don't record it I just try to jump back. For quality, the best
thing I've come up with is making spaced-repetition flashcards w/ Anki. My
confidence is higher that I've actually retained the information.

