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Comment by Swizec | Hacker News Reader

> but I find myself bookmarking great articles or writing down great books I heard about only to never really find the Time to go back and read them.

Try replacing “can’t find time” with “not a priority”. It means the same in practice and makes for a huge shift in perception and your own personal feekings towards stuff. Especially in the guilt department.

You have more important things to do and that’s okay. When you come across a book that’s important enough you will magically have time for it. Priorities are fun like that.

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Probably a lot of people just get lured in by social media, video games, Netflix, etc and then spend far more time on these things than they would actually like. I doubt many people are consciously prioritizing their web surfing or video game time, but it just turns out that way since these things are designed to be habit forming.

I agree and saying "not a priority" instead of "don't have time" helps with that too.

"Sorry reading books is not a priority"

Wait ... then what is a priority? Social media? Screw that!!

And it prompts you to [try to] do better with your time.

Remember when we used to read books a few pages at a time on the pooper instead of scrolling through twitter or hackernews? Good times.

Haha yeah, absolutely. I've limited my social media use to HN only for a while now (mainly because I feel it is one of the few sites left where you can just have a civil discussion without things getting too political) and I feel I'm significantly happier and more productive now than I was a few years ago. Of course many other things have changed in that timeframe, but I don't really ever see myself using Facebook or other popular social media again. Quitting all that is quite liberating.

One of my plans when I retire is to read a LOT of books. Yet one day I read a post by a HN contributor where he said, "But nothing's really stopping me from doing that NOW" and he then embarked on regularly walking to the park and reading. As a result I've been trying to do the same thing, because when you start computing numbers and realize you only enough time left in life to read a paltry number of books[1], you learn to prioritize really quickly.

[1] https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html

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