If We Eliminated Social Media, We Could Read 200 Books Per Year

I just e-filed an appellate brief. Current time is 9:38 p.m. Yes, it was one of those days. Yes, I need a shower. And, yes, it will take a while to come down from this coffee. But I want to keep a commitment I made to myself to blog every weekday. And here is what I have.

During breaks for lunch and dinner today, I listened to a little bit of the podcast, This Week in Tech. At about minute 33:00, Mike Elgan claims that if you quit social media, you would for yourself enough time to read approximately 200 books per year. I wondered where he was getting this claim, and I found the reference. The opening of the piece struck me:

Somebody once asked Warren Buffett about his secret to success. Buffett pointed to a stack of books and said,

Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will…

The average American spends 608 hours on social media and 1642 hours on television. It would take about 417 hours to knock out 200 50,000-word books. The 417 hours of book reading would likely be more valuable than spending those 417 hours on social media.

How does Mike Elgan get his news? He subscribes to a right-leaning publication and a left-leaning publication. Then he takes what he learns from reading long-form journalism and shares it to others on social media. He is a producer and not a consumer on social media. He is not at risk to get taken in by fake news.

For today, I was in my basement home office finishing up an appellate brief. So I neither watched television, consumed social media, nor read any books. I read statutes, caselaw, transcripts, and my own writing until my eyes went all blurry. Tomorrow, I have a good book waiting.