Instamojo boss is a bibliophile, reveals how a number trick helps him finish books in 6-7 hrs

Ask any CEO, entrepreneur or investor what’s one resolution that makes a recurring appearance on their New Year’s resolution list and they are bound to tell you “read more books”.

But carving out time for a good reading session is easier said than done, especially when you’re running a major company or trying to get a new start-up off the ground.

To buck this trend, Instamojo CEO, Sampad Swain, uses a very simple yet practical hack to double up on his reading – math.


A Numbers Game

“Before 2019, I hardly had the attention span enough to finish a book,” Swain wrote on LinkedIn. “So, I simply turned the challenge into some math.”

“The average book length is around 250 pages. Each page is around 250-300 words. My average reading speed is around 200 words a minute; so I was taking almost 1.5 minutes to finish reading every page. That amounts to 6-7 hours to finish each book every week, which is around 1 hour of reading your favourite content every day (almost like watching a Netflix series).”

Using this strategy, Swain managed to make reading a part of his daily routine and upped his intake to four books a month. His current reading list features a mix of economics, psychology, finance and history.