I use a stochastic time tracking system to track, among other things, the amount of time I spend reading non-fiction (defined as “Any book, essay or paper which is neither fictional nor about a fictional work”. Comments, social media, documentation and contracts are explicitly excluded). I thought it might be interesting to actually note down what I’m reading when it pings. I thought the results were interesting, so I’m going to share them here.
Warning: This is literally a random sampling, weighted only by time. These are only recommendations in that they’re the things that I found worth spending long enough to get a ping on, but that has high variability – some of these I only really read for 5 minutes but that happened to be when tagtime pinged.
Also, note: I changed the units from 0.5 hours to 0.4 hours yesterday, so some of these are funny multiples compared to others.
- 2 stochastic hours reading Crossing the Chasm
- 1.5 stochastic hour reading Finite Markov Chains and Algorithmic Applications
- 0.8 stochastic hours reading the problem of subjective facts
- 0.8 stochastic hours reading militant anti fascism
- 0.5 stochastic hours reading The Immortality Upgrade (it’s about Mormon Transhumanists)
- 0.5 stochastic hours reading What “viable search competition” really looks like
- 0.5 stochastic hours reading performance measurement and management for engineers
- 0.5 stochastic hours reading democratic authority: a philosophical framework
- 0.5 stochastic hours reading Peter Hintjens’ last hack
- 0.5 stochastic hours reading Slate Star Codex’s review of Albion’s seed
- 0.5 stochastic hours rereading the credibility code
- 0.5 stochastic hour reading what it’s really like to test games for a living
So that’s 5.3 stochastic hours reading books and 3.8 reading essays/blog posts/whatever.