Hi.

I’m Jake.

This is going to be short, but I have a problem… I’m a sucker for information.

How to increase productivity. Persuasive marketing techniques. Tipping point psychology. Startup knowledge. Long blog posts.

I’ll click on Hacker News posts I have no understanding of and read them anyways. I’ll dig through blog posts the WPCurve blog about their growth.

Tim Ferris blogs are a must.

I mean, who needs a made up story when real-life is interesting enough?

Reading on those subjects always leaves me walking away with a sense of empowerment & urgency. I would immediately start considering how I could implement actionable items that I took away. Consuming non-fiction books is a great way to learn, no doubt.

This is great, but not when I read them right before trying to fall asleep. My mind ends up racing on things I could be doing instead of things I SHOULD be doing, like sleeping.

I mean, sleep is so unproductive, right?

It was unproductive for me because it suffered. Another thing that suffered: my creative thought.

So, I’ve changed that. I hit up Half-Priced Books and filled my shopping bag with fiction books.

Since then I’ve tipped the scale from mostly non-fiction back to mostly fiction books and try to cut out all non-fiction/blog reading before bed.

I sleep better, my mind has regained some imagination, and my creativity has spiked because of it all.

Now my perfect reading schedule is something more like:

15-20 minutes of non-fiction reading in the morning (a book, blog posts, news, etc.)

20-45 minutes of fiction reading in the evening, ideally right before bed (science fiction is my go to!)

Reading non-fiction in the morning gets my analytical engine up & running, gets me motivated (usually!) to work, and satisfies my information appetite.

Reading fiction at night calms me down, spins up my imagination, and lets me get lost in another universe.

Do your imagination (and sleep) a favor. Pick up a juicy fiction book (I guess romance novels can count…) and get lost in another world right before bed.

Need a recommendation? Here is one of my favorite science fiction books, Ender’s Game.

What are you reading right now? Tell us @designlico