Rohan M
Computer Science, Machine Learning,
Computer Vision, Music, Philosophy,
Applied Math
How might we make people read 1000 books in their lifetimes?
I’m very fascinated by books. How have we found a device that can transfer knowledge over 100s of generations more sustainable than modern 21st century technology? Fascinated is probably an understatement. Despite this, I never considered myself a voracious reader. I read books here and there, have a long-ish “to read”list, finish around 5-6 books a year*, which I feel is fine. Will this rate of reading give me enough information so that I at least feel well-educated? Who knows. How much should I read to keep up with the world? Depends on what you mean by “keeping up” with the world, but again, who knows.
To answer this, I set off to Germany over the summer and joined the Digital Product School in Munich as an AI Engineer. People who know me know how much apathy I have towards calling myself an AI Engineer that and I tried asking them to let me change the name of my role to Philosopher Engineer :P. Regardless, the point of this program was to work in a team of designers, engineers and product managers to come up with a digital solution to a validated problem for a specific target group’s pain point. The first step for this was to find an area to explore, then find a pain point in that area, discover the target group most affected by the pain, conduct interviews with these people and dive deep into the problem, validate the problem, come up with a solution and iterate with its validation.
The exploration, in my mind, was very simple. To me, the area I wanted to explore was reading, and as a whole, knowledge gaining. The pain point to me was “am I getting enough knowledge, should I do more? and if yes, how?” and the target group was, well, me, along with everyone who has asked this question of themselves.
So towards this end, me along with an awesome group of talented people, started with the ideation, conducted many interviews, used a lot of Post-Its, and found out a few key learnings:
-
Every single person, without exception, sees the value in reading books.
-
On asking whether they read enough, most say “I can read more”. This did not vary if the person read 1 book in the last 3 years or if someone read 4 books in the last 3 weeks.
-
The response to why they don’t comes down to “I don’t have enough time” and “I’m not able to form reading as a habit”.
This more or less answered the two questions I began with:
-
Am I reading enough? - I can always read more.
-
Should I do more? - Yes.
The third question, “how?” is the most important one. And after the ideation-interview iterations and a Post-It apocalypse, we decided on creating an app, Bukdu, which would remind users to read daily, using content-aware notifications, so that they keep on reading in small chunks daily and keep on a reading streak.
The reason why we felt this was an appropriate solution can be explained by this simple diagram:
Out of the 24 hours in a day, a normal person spends 8 hours sleeping, 8 hours working, 2 hours commuting, 2 hours eating/cooking, 1 hour exercising(?). This leaves them with 3 hours of time for themselves, i.e, they have 6 chunks of 30 minutes every day to themselves.
If that same average person uses just 1 of those 6 chunks daily to read, in a year a person can read 31 books, in 10 years over 330 books and in 30 years you’ll read over a 1000 books**. And if you ask me, that is a serious amount of books.
Sidenote: I don’t actually pay much heed to reading to finish books, but it helps simplify the argument without misrepresenting the problem.
Hence, the solution to the “how?” question is to keep reading daily, even it is for just 30 minutes. The “every day” part of it is what’s important.
We feel other drivers, like gamification and social obligation are powerful drivers for maintaining such a habit, and hope to add these features to Bukdu soon.
Even though motivation is what gets you started in this journey, planning and consistency is what keeps you on the path towards the goal. Hence, we added content aware notifications as one of our key starting features, reminders that try to create an emotional connection between the reader and the book. So, on the days when you just aren’t feeling it, you feel pushed towards completing that daily goal of just 30 minutes, or 16% of your free time.
Think about how awesome it would feel to tell your grandkids that you’ve read over 1000 books, as opposed to them thinking you’ve barely read anything!
Do it! Try Bukdu! Spend 30 minutes of your day on something that you know is good!
Additional reading/viewing:
-
Ashir Manzoor on the design process of Bukdu.
-
BOOKSTORES: How to Read More Books in the Golden Age of Content.
-
Alan Kay on How Many Books You Can Read in a Lifetime
*books I read for non-academic/non-professional purposes.
**On average a book takes 6 hours to be read to completion.
Computer Vision, Music, Philosophy,
Applied Math
How might we make people read 1000 books in their lifetimes?
I’m very fascinated by books. How have we found a device that can transfer knowledge over 100s of generations more sustainable than modern 21st century technology? Fascinated is probably an understatement. Despite this, I never considered myself a voracious reader. I read books here and there, have a long-ish “to read”list, finish around 5-6 books a year*, which I feel is fine. Will this rate of reading give me enough information so that I at least feel well-educated? Who knows. How much should I read to keep up with the world? Depends on what you mean by “keeping up” with the world, but again, who knows.
To answer this, I set off to Germany over the summer and joined the Digital Product School in Munich as an AI Engineer. People who know me know how much apathy I have towards calling myself an AI Engineer that and I tried asking them to let me change the name of my role to Philosopher Engineer :P. Regardless, the point of this program was to work in a team of designers, engineers and product managers to come up with a digital solution to a validated problem for a specific target group’s pain point. The first step for this was to find an area to explore, then find a pain point in that area, discover the target group most affected by the pain, conduct interviews with these people and dive deep into the problem, validate the problem, come up with a solution and iterate with its validation.
The exploration, in my mind, was very simple. To me, the area I wanted to explore was reading, and as a whole, knowledge gaining. The pain point to me was “am I getting enough knowledge, should I do more? and if yes, how?” and the target group was, well, me, along with everyone who has asked this question of themselves.
So towards this end, me along with an awesome group of talented people, started with the ideation, conducted many interviews, used a lot of Post-Its, and found out a few key learnings:
-
Every single person, without exception, sees the value in reading books.
-
On asking whether they read enough, most say “I can read more”. This did not vary if the person read 1 book in the last 3 years or if someone read 4 books in the last 3 weeks.
-
The response to why they don’t comes down to “I don’t have enough time” and “I’m not able to form reading as a habit”.
This more or less answered the two questions I began with:
-
Am I reading enough? - I can always read more.
-
Should I do more? - Yes.
The third question, “how?” is the most important one. And after the ideation-interview iterations and a Post-It apocalypse, we decided on creating an app, Bukdu, which would remind users to read daily, using content-aware notifications, so that they keep on reading in small chunks daily and keep on a reading streak.
The reason why we felt this was an appropriate solution can be explained by this simple diagram:
Out of the 24 hours in a day, a normal person spends 8 hours sleeping, 8 hours working, 2 hours commuting, 2 hours eating/cooking, 1 hour exercising(?). This leaves them with 3 hours of time for themselves, i.e, they have 6 chunks of 30 minutes every day to themselves.
If that same average person uses just 1 of those 6 chunks daily to read, in a year a person can read 31 books, in 10 years over 330 books and in 30 years you’ll read over a 1000 books**. And if you ask me, that is a serious amount of books.
Sidenote: I don’t actually pay much heed to reading to finish books, but it helps simplify the argument without misrepresenting the problem.
Hence, the solution to the “how?” question is to keep reading daily, even it is for just 30 minutes. The “every day” part of it is what’s important.
We feel other drivers, like gamification and social obligation are powerful drivers for maintaining such a habit, and hope to add these features to Bukdu soon.
Even though motivation is what gets you started in this journey, planning and consistency is what keeps you on the path towards the goal. Hence, we added content aware notifications as one of our key starting features, reminders that try to create an emotional connection between the reader and the book. So, on the days when you just aren’t feeling it, you feel pushed towards completing that daily goal of just 30 minutes, or 16% of your free time.
Think about how awesome it would feel to tell your grandkids that you’ve read over 1000 books, as opposed to them thinking you’ve barely read anything!
Do it! Try Bukdu! Spend 30 minutes of your day on something that you know is good!
Additional reading/viewing:
-
Ashir Manzoor on the design process of Bukdu.
-
BOOKSTORES: How to Read More Books in the Golden Age of Content.
-
Alan Kay on How Many Books You Can Read in a Lifetime
*books I read for non-academic/non-professional purposes.
**On average a book takes 6 hours to be read to completion.
How might we make people read 1000 books in their lifetimes?
I’m very fascinated by books. How have we found a device that can transfer knowledge over 100s of generations more sustainable than modern 21st century technology? Fascinated is probably an understatement. Despite this, I never considered myself a voracious reader. I read books here and there, have a long-ish “to read”list, finish around 5-6 books a year*, which I feel is fine. Will this rate of reading give me enough information so that I at least feel well-educated? Who knows. How much should I read to keep up with the world? Depends on what you mean by “keeping up” with the world, but again, who knows.
To answer this, I set off to Germany over the summer and joined the Digital Product School in Munich as an AI Engineer. People who know me know how much apathy I have towards calling myself an AI Engineer that and I tried asking them to let me change the name of my role to Philosopher Engineer :P. Regardless, the point of this program was to work in a team of designers, engineers and product managers to come up with a digital solution to a validated problem for a specific target group’s pain point. The first step for this was to find an area to explore, then find a pain point in that area, discover the target group most affected by the pain, conduct interviews with these people and dive deep into the problem, validate the problem, come up with a solution and iterate with its validation.
The exploration, in my mind, was very simple. To me, the area I wanted to explore was reading, and as a whole, knowledge gaining. The pain point to me was “am I getting enough knowledge, should I do more? and if yes, how?” and the target group was, well, me, along with everyone who has asked this question of themselves.
So towards this end, me along with an awesome group of talented people, started with the ideation, conducted many interviews, used a lot of Post-Its, and found out a few key learnings:
- Every single person, without exception, sees the value in reading books.
- On asking whether they read enough, most say “I can read more”. This did not vary if the person read 1 book in the last 3 years or if someone read 4 books in the last 3 weeks.
- The response to why they don’t comes down to “I don’t have enough time” and “I’m not able to form reading as a habit”.
This more or less answered the two questions I began with:
- Am I reading enough? - I can always read more.
- Should I do more? - Yes.
The reason why we felt this was an appropriate solution can be explained by this simple diagram:
Out of the 24 hours in a day, a normal person spends 8 hours sleeping, 8 hours working, 2 hours commuting, 2 hours eating/cooking, 1 hour exercising(?). This leaves them with 3 hours of time for themselves, i.e, they have 6 chunks of 30 minutes every day to themselves.
If that same average person uses just 1 of those 6 chunks daily to read, in a year a person can read 31 books, in 10 years over 330 books and in 30 years you’ll read over a 1000 books**. And if you ask me, that is a serious amount of books.
Sidenote: I don’t actually pay much heed to reading to finish books, but it helps simplify the argument without misrepresenting the problem.
Hence, the solution to the “how?” question is to keep reading daily, even it is for just 30 minutes. The “every day” part of it is what’s important.
We feel other drivers, like gamification and social obligation are powerful drivers for maintaining such a habit, and hope to add these features to Bukdu soon.
Even though motivation is what gets you started in this journey, planning and consistency is what keeps you on the path towards the goal. Hence, we added content aware notifications as one of our key starting features, reminders that try to create an emotional connection between the reader and the book. So, on the days when you just aren’t feeling it, you feel pushed towards completing that daily goal of just 30 minutes, or 16% of your free time.
Think about how awesome it would feel to tell your grandkids that you’ve read over 1000 books, as opposed to them thinking you’ve barely read anything!
Do it! Try Bukdu! Spend 30 minutes of your day on something that you know is good!
Additional reading/viewing:
- Ashir Manzoor on the design process of Bukdu.
- BOOKSTORES: How to Read More Books in the Golden Age of Content.
- Alan Kay on How Many Books You Can Read in a Lifetime
*books I read for non-academic/non-professional purposes.
**On average a book takes 6 hours to be read to completion.