The biggest consumer of time is undoubtedly other people, in large measure because talking to other people is so fun that you don’t notice time going by. By keeping yourself away from other people (living alone is a good start), you free up an enormous amount of time for reading. I find this is particularly useful in reading books, since books can usually substitute for human company...
How sad, especially coming from someone whose opinion I respect so much.
I love reading books, programming, sports, good food and drink, and a whole bunch of other things. But none of those things is an end unto itself. I do all of them as part of building a better life. Why? To share it with other people!
No matter how many cool things are on my list, sharing my life with others is always #1. If I find myself alone, then sure, I'll pick up a good book or project. But avoiding other people in order to have more time alone for books? Except for extreme circumstances, that just doesn't make sense to me.
Every forum, every social media site, every community participation vehicle rewards one thing above all: time.
Do I have time to make 4 or 5 burner accounts to enforce my votes? No. I have things to do.
Do I have time to post ad nauseum about any given topic to make my point? No. I have things to do.
And I'm sure you have things to do as well, so do a lot of people. But those that don't, have the thing we lack: time. And there's often reasons they have all that time. Often good reasons. And it's not because they're pleasant people.
Because it's not actually about "optimizing time," it's about a feeling. A lot of people find themselves in a pattern where they binge-watch a show they don't really even like to fill time. Likewise with social media, at some point you're not sure why you're even doing it. Likewise for people who cut back on video games.
It's the behavior, not the medium, that gives this uneasy feeling all of your time is going to a thing that you didn't mean to spend it on.
On the other hand, if you find yourself sucked into a book for a weekend, odds are it's because you can't put it down and will regret nothing. Nobody binge-reads bad books.
I think it's that idea that everyone has a great book/project in them if they only had TIME, free from distraction. But the reality is that they probably don't, even if given the opportunity! Slightly depressing TBH. Shows motivation and will is ultimately more important and things like the internet are just a comforting excuse.
No offense to OP (of this thread) but a lot of people who have an obscure but intellectually stimulating hobby wonder why other people spend so much time watching Netflix yet passing judgement on others as having 'way too much spare time'. Is it really that alien to you to find this use of time justified? Have you considered that they might be able to do this efficiently in balance with the rest of their life?
you can still rank ways to spend your time. try it. some pass times are more fulfilling than others. reddit and tv, i imagine, are at the bottom of the list for most people.
meanwhile, i know for myself that i almost never regret time spent reading. can’t say the same for the spent on hn/netflix.
so i don’t think it does much good to equate ways to spend time except as a coping mechanism for time poorly spent.
Few of us particularly like how much time we spend on HN/Reddit or go “yeah really glad I’m spending my precious time in this way!” yet we do tend to feel fulfillment from activities like reading a novel or trying to write one or many of the activities we pretend are just the same as playing World or Warcraft and watching Netflix.
If it is honestly true that you simply don't have enough time because there are too many tasks with higher priority no including just leisuring time on Facebook or HN, then to me it sounds like you are a person with outright great time management abilities. For me, I spend 90 % of my free time doing completely useless stuff like browsing HN many times a day, hanging out in IRC, chatting on Skype etc. and it feels that I can't get things done which I should, and even would want to. This includes reading some books which interest me, programming and general tinkering with things which once used to be the most interesting thing for me.
My point being, for someone who can manage their time almost perfectly, perhaps reading a book is just about managing the time, but for us who can't... It's not so simple. :(
I think I didn't expressed exactly what I meant, so to respond to all comments under the parent post:
I do love spending time with people. I'd say, I like to do it too much sometimes. However, I also found it to be a super-effective way of escaping from harder problems, not only my-job-sucks related, but general my-life-sucks related. What I meant to say in previous comment is that (for me) it has similar 'signature' as escaping problems by reading / discussing on HN. It's not a waste of time, but I know for myself that I could spend here much more time that I should. Ditto for socializing. Sometimes you actually want to solve your problems instead of complaining about them to other people.
100% agree. Typically lack of time is prioritizing it to other distractions that could be removed. Doing some self examination of how one spends their time makes you realize how much time you spend doing other things that could be eliminated if you really want to read instead.
Time is a gift. Free time doubly so. We are wired as humans to find something productive to do with our time. There's only so much margaritas on the beach and Netflix-and-chill we can do. There has to be some higher goal, otherwise, what's the point?
Welcome to the eternal dilemma of geeks everywhere. When there's so much to do how do we find time to do anything else.
The answer probably is we don't.
You're just going to have to find your priority and stick with it whatever it is.
And haven't we already partially cashed it? We have so much free time on our hands, we need Netflix and countless other things to fill it. #NotAll, of course, but if the average can spend 3 hours per day watching TV & Netflix, and an additional 2.5 hours on social media, then they must have that time.
Rather than making absolute statements, let's say that's true if you have a lot of responsibilities and other hobbies.
Some friends of mine say they had huge amounts of time to read and do stuff before they had kids, but took it for granted and managed to complain about having no time.
Lots of people spend huge amounts of their time on their phones or computers passively browsing, or watching Netflix or whatever. Reducing that time and reading instead is very achievable.
This is not true for everyone, others really do still have responsibilities and hobbies that take up too much time to be able to read a book a week. Others read slowly and cannot improve. No advice about free time is one size fits all.
why take a risk on a book club when you can shitpost online? and watch netflix at the same time?
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