Strike that. Reverse it… as Willy Wonka said.

Seriously though, how often do you find yourself up to your neck in piles of self-improvement, tech, excel shortcuts, Google Drive tips, food, health or myriad other to-get-to-later articles and listicles… that you’ll actually never get to.

Me too. Let’s resolve this, shall we?

OK, so I can’t offer a solution that’s sure to get you 100% caught up, I can offer a technique that will catch you up and hand back to you some of your life’s wasted time. My solution involves getting caught up on your reading during your work commute (without actually reading during your work commute) and a product that I thought was well-known to everyone (but apparently is not): Pocket.

I am not suggesting that you read while driving, so please do stay with me.

First, the tech. Pocket is both a phone app and a Chrome extension one can acquire in the Chrome web store. For this solution you’ll of course need both.

Next, you’ll need articles that you want to read later. Oh wait, we already have plenty of those… so on to the next step — putting those articles in Pocket. Do this by sharing them with Pocket on your phone, or via the Chrome extension from your desktop.

When you share articles with Pocket they become immediately available for offline reading within the Pocket app — which is primarily the point of Pocket, actually. I use this feature to catch up on reading on planes or in other locations without cell or WiFi service. Similarly, I also use this to download articles to read later so that I save even more money on cellphone data use on my already extremely inexpensive Google Project Fi service plan (keeping my bill even smaller). But back to the solution…

Pocket has a great feature that actually reads your articles to you. Out loud of course. OK yep, you see where I’m going at this point. In the event that you don’t, here’s the full math equation:

Pocket read aloud feature + saved articles + 30 work commute x 2 = 60 minutes of free reading time, back in your lap. Every. Day.

You’re welcome! And happy listening…

PS – Audible from Amazon is also a great alternative option if you’re not a huge fan of blogs/articles/online stuff. Podcasts are great too, but that’s a post for another day.