This morning I pottered around the kitchen. I made toast and coffee, I washed the dishes, I sorted my groceries. I also read a lengthy article on AIDS in China at the same time. In fact, I’ve been reading more than ever now that I’ve given up on actually reading.

I don’t hide the fact that I want to learn everything. I have flashcards that I practice every day, I’m enrolled in more coursera courses than I can poke a stick at, and my most favourite thing in the world is to find someone with specialised knowledge and enthusiasm and talk to them about it in depth. Consequently, I do a lot of thinking about how to learn efficiently.

One thing which is very apparent to me is that I have limited resources when it comes to concentration. If I’m having a conversation, or writing an article, or hacking code, then that concentration slot is full; I can’t do anything else that requires much cognition at the same time. It’s concentration that’s my limited resource when it comes to learning and creating.

And yet, there are so many times each day when I’m not concentrating on something, and yet have the capacity to do so. Public transport, making breakfast, even sitting on the loo. Sometimes those times are used for serious thinking, but often they’re just filled with frivolous or even anxious thoughts.

I have a good solution to this. And for me, it’s been game-changing.

There’s a free app called Pocket. It takes articles, turns them into a format that looks great on mobile devices, and syncs them so you can read them anywhere. That’s nice; but by itself it still means I need to have my phone out to read.

The clincher is that Pocket for Android comes with built-in text-to-speech (TTS) capabilities. If you combine it with a TTS engine that doesn’t suck, and Ivona immediately springs to mind here, then you have a much easier way of “reading” articles.

The combination is so nice that I read articles almost exclusively via Pocket and Ivona now. I’m even adding exobrain capabilities where sending me an article on social media will automatically add it to my reading queues. Of course, all my writing on pjf.id.au sounds great in Pocket, too!

Alas, Pocket for iOS lacks the built-in TTS capabilities; I’ve been told iOS lacks an easy-to-use speech interface for developers. However many third-party apps seem to have sprung up to fill this niche. If you have any good experiences, I’d love to hear about them.