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jpulgarin comments on Suggestions on tech device/gear purchasing? - Less Wrong Discussion
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A kindle has finally allowed me to start reading one book per week, something I've been trying to do for quite a while now with little success. The ability to buy books instantly, and the fact that it's much easier to take along than an actual book, means I get a ton more reading done. The ability to highlight and have it automatically sync to Amazon servers makes Anki deck making A LOT easier.
You can also sell your gift card for ~80% of its value (just google "sell gift card").
A kindle has finally allowed me to stop reading several books per week.
For many years previously I've had: open bookshelves around the apartment, near 1000 books, some unread; whenever I walk by, a 30% chance to randomly take down a book, start reading, and come back to the real world several hours later, having missed work/appointment/dinner/sleeptime/chance to sit down.
Lots of procrastination, although it has given me a lot of broad, shallow knowledge on many interesting subjects.
Today: no printed books left, except for small cache of <100 important ones hidden on upper shelf of closet, which don't have ebook versions; one kindle. Because the Kindle is so bad at arranging and finding books (seriously, no folder support?) it takes around a minute to open a book not read recently. This time-cost alone is enough to prevent almost all of my reading-procrastination. I still read for fun during time pre-set aside for the purpose.
How exactly do you use this to make Anki decks?
I highlight things, mostly new ideas, that I want to memorize as I'm reading the book (the number of highlights is a good proxy to how good the book was). Then I login to Amazon, and for each highlight I make an Anki card.
This saves me from having to go through the book and find all the highlights, and also from copying the text into Anki (since I can just copy and paste).
An ebook reader (+ some other prize combination) has occurred to me. I almost bought an ebook reader when they were on sale around Christmas, but couldn't decide between the Nook and Kindle platforms. One thing that worries me is that I have such a hard time reading paper books at the moment; I wonder if an ebook reader only seems like it would improve productivity when in reality it would shortly due to novelty, but then it would wear off.
Some questions:
ETA: Thought of another question -- can you put your finger on what, exactly, allowed you to accomplish your goal vs. when you were reading paper?