I wish I’d discovered this reading lifehack back at Uni!

I hit on a fantastic was of scheduling my reading time by working out how long it will take me to read a particular book. I wish I’d done this when I was at Uni, studying Eng Lit & Lang. Ploughing through Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen, Sterne, Joyce… Putting in the hours. 

So, you know how a DVD, Netflix or Amazon movie tells you exactly how much time is left? Well, for my last three books, I worked out roughly how many pages I can read in 30 minutes. I doubled it to get my hour rate. Okay, stay with me. 

Then I took the total pages in the book, and divided it by the hour number. The figure is roughly how long it will take me to read the book. It's also meant I can keep track of how long I have left, at any one point, by taking the pages left and dividing them by my hour figure. So simple!

 The results are: 

• Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan was a whopping great 17.5 hour read.
• Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 was a miniscule 2.5 hour read (well, he did write it in 9 hours).
• Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale took me around 7.7 hours over the past few days.

 
There you have it. Life changing, in a small but satisfying way. You can try it for free if you like!
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JRx