The Unexpected Benefit of Consuming Articles Offline

A while ago, I wrote about my shift in reading most articles on a paper as opposed to on a screen.

I also wrote about consuming articles via podcast SW.

In the first case, I switched to reading on paper. In the second, I consumed via audio in my car.

After doing this for a while, I noticed a shift in my reading habits.

Instead of articles, I started reading more books.

Over the years I had bought books, hoping to read them one day, but struggling to make time to do so. It got to the point where I actively avoided book sales because adding to the unread pile at home added to my mental stress. I promised I wouldn’t buy more until I had either read the pending books, or disposed of them. I broke that promise all too often.

The funny thing about consuming articles offline is it changes your mental context. I would print my articles, put them in a small inbox, and take one from time to time to read. It wasn’t long before I would become aware of the other content I could also be reading: That pile of books. Both are in print, on physical paper. Reading one makes you aware of the other.

Surely, if I have time to read articles, I definitely had time to read books.

So I started reading them instead of my articles.

Shifting contexts is powerful. When sitting on my PC, staring at an article via a web browser, the only things distracting me are other entities on my computer - mostly email, programming, and other tabs in my browser.

When I’m offline, the things distracting me from printed articles are … other physical things. I’m suddenly acutely aware of that pile of books.

The same phenomenon occurred after listening to articles for a while via podcast SW. Instead of listening to this, what else could I listen to? The answers were: Radio stations, songs, other podcasts, or … audio books.

I had never given audio books a chance. I tried once years ago, and I must have picked the wrong book because it distracted me too much from driving. So I tried again.

And oh wow - audio books are awesome. An engaging storyteller lets me listen to and concentrate on a story more than I would have if I were reading it.

Since these realizations, I’ve read (and listened to) a lot of books. It took less than a year for me to clear that backlog of books that had been accumulating for over a decade.

Finding time to read was easy. I always had that time. I was “wasting” it on articles, blogs, etc. What it took was a change of environment: Just stop doing things via a web browser! [1]

I still print articles and/or convert them to podcasts, but I consume far, far fewer. Books are simply better written, and I enjoy them more. In a sense, articles/blog posts are a bit like junk food. Addictive, and of low quality. I suppose they’re like magazine articles from the days of yore. You would read them to entertain yourself and pass the time, but you’d generally get more value from books.

Don’t underestimate the power of the format (web/screen vs paper vs audio), and how much the context around them can influence your behavior.

I was a voracious reader once. Now that I’m back to reading, I lament the negative impact the web has had on me.