I recently bought a kindle and the fiction bug has bitten very hard. I am
highly akratic with my urge to complete a novel. Spend to all-nighters
finishing a novel that I just could not finish. Affecting my other goals
now.The same with TV series (thought not a problem right now).
So, I was wondering how to limit my kindle reading. Any ideas for automatic
data entry. Does anyone know of any kindle api(unofficial/hack) that can
give me number of pages read and integrate it with beeminder? Thoughts on a
postcard please
Ironically (I mean, non-ironically, but ironic that itâs me
suggesting it) I have a non-Beeminder answer. In the past when Iâve
gotten really sucked in by a book Iâve sometimes succeeded in
following this rule: I can only ever read the book when I couldnât
plausibly be getting other work done. So I could read while waiting in
line, on the bus, while brushing teeth, while walking down the street,
etc. If the book has you sucked in enough then youâll find a million
little snippets of time to read it. You just canât ever lay in bed
reading it or sit on the couch reading it. Possibly that defeats the
point but I thought it was cool how a whole book can end up read at
near-zero time-cost. And itâs a reasonably bright-line rule to follow.
That said, Iâm obviously very interested if anyone has
Beeminder-Kindle integration ideas!
PS: Beeminder answer: Creating an odometer goal and replying to the
bot with your current page number works pretty well too. You can even
use the odometer reset shortcut â faq â beeminder â so you
can keep beeminding with the same goal for sequential books. It only
works well if you read just one book at a time though.
On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 12:59 AM, Pankaj More(BlankVerse) pankajmore@gmail.com wrote:
Hello Akratics,
I recently bought a kindle and the fiction bug has bitten very hard. I am
highly akratic with my urge to complete a novel. Spend to all-nighters
finishing a novel that I just could not finish. Affecting my other goals
now.The same with TV series (thought not a problem right now).
So, I was wondering how to limit my kindle reading. Any ideas for automatic
data entry. Does anyone know of any kindle api(unofficial/hack) that can
give me number of pages read and integrate it with beeminder? Thoughts on a
postcard please
I have wanted to track my Kindle reading in this way as well. It is one of
the mysteries of the universe why the Kindle does not have an API to create
âreading analyticsâ â I know that Amazon collects this data and makes it
available to authors of books, but Amazon does not make the data available
to the Kindle users, that I am aware of.
They probably have a good thing going and âcreeping people outâ by showing
off all the data they are collecting, is not in their interests. Still
itâs unfortunate and I hope in the future this will change.
Hereâs an interesting page on Github if you are willing to jailbreak your
Kindle:
As for me I use my âread moreâ goal to spur me on and help me keep up my
âreading flowâ â 30 minutes a day, and I make amazingly far more progress
than I used to. I just time myself with a timer app on my iPhone and enter
the data manually. I try to keep all my Beeminder graphs green and it
helps me to have a more diverse life.
Good luck and please let the group know if you figure out a way to
automatically track reading time on a Kindle.
Thanks,
Kevin
Kevin Trowbridge
Software Developer
Lower Haight, SF
On Friday, August 9, 2013 12:59:30 AM UTC-7, Pankaj More(BlankVerse) wrote:
Hello Akratics,
I recently bought a kindle and the fiction bug has bitten very hard. I am
highly akratic with my urge to complete a novel. Spend to all-nighters
finishing a novel that I just could not finish. Affecting my other goals
now.The same with TV series (thought not a problem right now).
So, I was wondering how to limit my kindle reading. Any ideas for
automatic data entry. Does anyone know of any kindle api(unofficial/hack)
that can give me number of pages read and integrate it with beeminder?
Thoughts on a postcard please
PS: Beeminder answer: Creating an odometer goal and replying to the
bot with your current page number works pretty well too. You can even
use the odometer reset shortcut â faq â beeminder â so you
can keep beeminding with the same goal for sequential books. It only
works well if you read just one book at a time though.
Does odometer type goals also work for âSet a limitâ type?
Does odometer type goals also work for âSet a limitâ type?
Ah, no, the only way to do that now is with a custom goal (which needs
a premium plan) where you set it to not auto-sum and set the good side
to be below the road. We can do that sort of thing for people on a
case-by-case basis too if you email support and mention youâre on
Akratics Anonymous. Please donât feel youâre being a pest by asking
such things; it tends to be quite illuminating for us!
Ah, no, the only way to do that now is with a custom goal (which needs
a premium plan) where you set it to not auto-sum and set the good side
to be below the road.
Ha, took me so much time to realize what custom goals were about!
We can do that sort of thing for people on a
case-by-case basis too if you email support and mention youâre on
Akratics Anonymous. Please donât feel youâre being a pest by asking
such things; it tends to be quite illuminating for us
Ironically (I mean, non-ironically, but ironic that itâs me
suggesting it) I have a non-Beeminder answer. In the past when Iâve
gotten really sucked in by a book Iâve sometimes succeeded in
following this rule: I can only ever read the book when I couldnât
plausibly be getting other work done. So I could read while waiting in
line, on the bus, while brushing teeth, while walking down the street,
etc. If the book has you sucked in enough then youâll find a million
little snippets of time to read it. You just canât ever lay in bed
reading it or sit on the couch reading it. Possibly that defeats the
point but I thought it was cool how a whole book can end up read at
near-zero time-cost. And itâs a reasonably bright-line rule to follow.
So, were you never akratic about following this rule? Are you suggesting
that you had enough willpower to stop reading as and when you want (by
using motivation/grit/self-discipline?)
When I think of why I fail to stop myself, I think its the same addiction
behavior like anything else(dopamine release from the story line) and habit
formation. Its the same as with watching a TV series. I can complete a full
season in 1 night I am not fully sure why I have such an insatiable urge
to complete such things but not my project related goals. If only I
completed only a few of all the unfinished projects(I have lying around),
it would have been so rewarding. But working on a project doesnât give me
those insatiable urges to finish! Its not a matter of can-do, its about
want-to. Since I can so easily work âhardâ to finish some things, I wonder
how to hack âotherâ things to work equally hard on?
PS: I guess the solution is to apply the Procrastination Equation to
unfinished projects and change my motivation level? But then, I forget to
apply it because it requires âhard effortâ and I am lazzyyyâŚ
So, were you never akratic about following this rule? Are you suggesting
that you had enough willpower to stop reading as and when you want (by using
motivation/grit/self-discipline?)
Yes, itâs strange that that would work with someone as extremely
akratic as myself. In fact it only worked when everything was aligned
just right. Some kind of motivational perfect storm. It was a Harry
Potter book (this was years ago, before HPMoR, and before Beeminder or
even Kibotzer) which I felt a little embarrassed to be spending time
on, and I thought of that rule and then happened to have some success
with it so was then motivated to see if I could get through the entire
book using only other-unusable scraps of time. I also made up various
rules to avoid slippery slopes, like the book had to be shut as I
walked in the front door.
Motivation was a precarious thing in the pre-Beeminder era!
This might be a round about way. But it might work. Lots of people including myself use good reads to track progress of the books. I update my progress regularly in good reads. May be good reads has an api that we can read into. I know this is not automatic and not ideal as the user still has to enter their progress in good reads. But it is one way.
My non-Beeminder way of tracking reading: Kindle has a âFreeTime Libraryâ feature intended for parents to set a few books for their children to read on Kindle.
Itâs even password protected so that the child only has access to the books and not be able to access other books or the web on the experimental browser.
Anyway, the interesting part of this is that you can set a daily goal for reading which you can see at the footer of the book in the form of âX minutes left to reach your daily goalâ messages (after you reach the limit the messages turn into âYou reached your daily goal X minutes agoâ)
You also have some records for reading consistently (e.g. how many times you read for 7 days straight or 30-days straight)
So I have this feature on and itâs mostly working. Iâve read as many books in the last 2 years as I have in the previous 20
To top it off, I have a â15â readingâ task in my checklist of daily tasks (which is Beeminded, so this is not 100% not-Beeminded after all)
