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I have always been a voracious reader.  My mother taught me to read from an early age and my dad reinforced it. He was a teacher with an expansive library in our house so I read everything and then reread them.  Eventually I left physical books behind for digital ones.  Nevertheless my hunger for the written word didn’t skip a beat. However the way I absorb literature has changed in recent years for different reasons not sure if it was for the better.  One of the reasons became a lot more overpowering than the rest.   

I blame the web. I am the quintessential geek addicted to that soul sucking Internet drug.  Stands to reason that I am always online, and a being a voracious reader, I started reading lots more web articles than books.  Eventually I hardly read books and just stuck to articles.  I still buy kindle books from time to time mostly scifi and the occasional crime caper.  But another problem arose.  I began reading too many articles.  My RSS feeds got bloated and it cut much too deeply into my productive time. I was forced to face the truth. It was time for a paradigm shift. I needed a system where I still read but kept my hustle 100% proficient.  Luckily the pocket app gave me an out.

Pocket became my goto app for saving web things.  I started saving everything to pocket that I deemed interesting enough to want to read later.  And for awhile it solved the problem of web reading getting in the way of my productive time.  However I started reading less sometimes even forgetting articles I had saved. What was the point of saving stuff and never reading them. Like with every problem there’s always more than one solution.  Pocket did the trick again.  

The pocket mobile app has a listening feature.  Pretty much solved my problem.  I created a schedule to listen to articles.  First thing in the morning I listen for an hour or two before doing anything else.  That way I get to really absorb the articles I wanted to read in the first place.  I have observed it is better to just listen and not engage in any other web activity.  Trying to multitask defeats the purpose of setting aside time to enjoy any activity you love.