The Time You Waste on Social Media Can Be Used to Read 200 Books Every Year

An average person spends over 600 hours on social media per year and over a thousand hours watching TV. Whatever the benefits of social media may be, 600 hours— or over one and a half hour per day— is still a lot of time to waste scrolling through your newsfeed and or stalking that high school friend of yours that you used to have a crush on.

That time could be spent doing something a lot more productive! Theoretically, that is more than enough time to read 200 books a year. Sounds absurd, doesn’t it? In a post-fact world filled with fake news, I could be just another voice in a jumble of clickbait articles giving you hope of reading more books in a year than you have read in your whole life.

So, wait, let me prove it to you, statistically and in a factual manner.

1. What is Your Average Reading Speed?

An average person can read through 250-300 words per minute. Suppose you cut down your social media and TV-watching time and take out just 2 hours a day for reading.

Now, taking 250 words as your writing speed just for argument’s sake, you can read over 10 million words in one year while spending two hours a day reading.

Words in a year = Words per minute x Minutes spent reading per day x days in a year
= 250 x 120 x 365
= 10,950,000

2. How Many Books Can You Read per Year?

The average nonfiction book runs at around 50,000 words. Statistically, you can easily manage 200 books a year, even if you miss a few days.

Books per year = Words per year / Average length of book
= 10,950,000 / 50,000
= 219

Even if you spend just one hour daily, you can manage to go through 100 books annually.

Why SHOULD You Read 200 Books a Year?

Some of the most successful people in the world are known to be avid book readers. Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, encouraged people to read through his New Year Resolution for 2015— A Year of Books.

Warren Buffet, American business magnate and one of the richest and most successful people on the globe right now, said the key to success was through books.

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…

Books are the gateway to knowledge. Admittedly, just reading books at a good pace won’t make you a learned man or make you successful, but it would definitely open up your mind and open up new areas for you to explore.

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.
~ George R.R. Martin

Image Credit — HuffPost

The post The Time You Waste on Social Media Can Be Used to Read 200 Books Every Year appeared first on .