I made a commitment (or dream as I call it) that I will do 20-minutes of 0-distraction reading everyday for a month. I completed the dream, and I have more detailed updates about it below. I restricted this reading to only novels.

Tracking

• 01/06/2019 Read the book absolutely remarkable thing, wasn’t feeling that great. Completed it just for the sake of task. It was hard because I was feeling sleepy.
• 02/06/2019 Men of mathematics, reading chapter 1. Decent, some interesting insights.
• 03/06/2019 Men of mathematics, reading chapter 1. Decent, some interesting insights. Led me to write a blog post, triggered interesting thoughts.
• 04/06/2019 Men of mathematics, reading chapter 1 and two. Learning interesting ideas.
• 05/06/2019 Men of mathematics, reading chapter 2. Learning interesting ideas.
• 06/06/2019 Men of mathematics, completed chapter two, the life of Archemedis. It’s crazy how many things he invented back then. How can someone do so much in a lifetime; that too with no strong shoulder to raise on? Brilliant!
• 07/06/2019 Men of mathematics, chapter 3. Reading about Decartes. Interesting how his illness led him to have a different kind of childhood, how dreams inspired his contributions, how he spend lot of time working by himself, and the amount of time he spent meditating.
• 08/06/2019 Men of mathematics, chapter 3. Reading about Decartes. Gets less interesting. I’m looking for more insights into his routines, thought process for coming up with these inventions, etc. They’re not covered as much as I’d want.
• 09/06/2019 Men of mathematics, chapter 3. Reading about Decartes. Was skimming through fast, wasn’t very focused.
• 10/06/2019 Men of mathematics, chapter 3 and 4. Finshied reading about Decartes, started on Fermat.
• 11/06/2019 Reading Happy chapter 8
• 12/06/2019 Reading Compelling People
• 13/06/2019 Reading Feynman’s Genius. I find his story quite inspiring because I relate to it very closely.
• 14/06/2019 Reading The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, interesting specially with my recent studies in neuro.
• 15/06/2019 Reading The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, I can’t imagine how he’s the way he is. Quite an interesting guy.
• 16/06/2019 Reading The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, readinig about the man who doesn’t create new memories and forgets stuff in just a minute. Like the movie gajini, quite interesting experiements with him.
• 17/06/2019 Reading The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, interesting ideas.
• 18/06/2019 Reading Men of Mathematics, Ch4 on Fermat. He was a diplomat and still managed to spend a lot of his time doing math. It’s interesting that cutting social relationships helped him in the development of his math, but maybe it’s only for some people. A similar framework might not work for me. He probably would have spent many hours of deep work doing the math, impressive!
• 19/06/2019 Reading Compound Effect. Had interesting thoughts. It’s very simple to become world class at a skill, pick up the skill and do it for an hour every morning. It’s just a matter of time before you get to world class.
• 20/06/2019 Spent time reading atomic habits and digital minimalist for more than 2 hours.
• 21/06/2019 Read atomic habits, chapters that I found interesting and enjoyed it! What’s the thing that feels like work to most people but I enjoy? (i) Putting systems in place. (ii) Studying during holidays. Need to use these to my advantage.
• 22/06/2019 Read atomic habits again, the final chapters. Wonderful insights! Specially the ideas that routines get boring over time and the key is to stick to it thtough boredom. Staying bored is a very powerful idea. If you’re able to do that, you’ll be much more capable of stick to routines.
• 23/06/2019 Reading atomic habits, few more interesting ideas about behaviour change.
• 24/06/2019 Reading Tools of Titans, one point really struck me deeply: what would Richard Feynman do?; I wonder what would happen if I ask this question each time I am in doubt. And act based on it.
• 25/06/2019 Reading RF’s genius and surely you’re joking: so many valuable insights about his character and lots of ideas on the character traits that I can adopt from him
• 26/06/2019 Reading RF’s genius, got more insights into the kind of person he is. Trying to come up with new ideas and derive them from first principles (radiation resistance). Interesting guy!
• 27/06/2019 Continued reading RF’s genius. Quite interesting stories: when he did his first presentation to the great and Einstein kinda defended his work.
• 28/06/2019 Looking up best <100$ investements of verious people in tribe of mentors. Most of them aren’t useful for me; I liked the ideas of philips hue though; not going to get it yet, maybe during black friday.
• 29/06/2019 Reading about stoic philosophy in the book Happy. Thinking of ways that I can incorporate into my own life.
• 30/06/2019 Reading about stoic philosophy in the book Happy. Interesting ideas – do I have a problem right now? seek progress, never perfection.

I also tracked how much pleasure I had over time spending time read these books. The plot for the same is below.