Something I’ve noticed recently about my reading habits, since I started using my Kindle again: It’s had the effect of gamifying my reading habits. For relatively-light readers like myself, I notice that I’ve been paying attention to the percentage-status bar at the bottom of the page a lot more as I read. So I do the quick math now, if I’ve read 20% of a book in a night, I’ll be done in 5 nights.
Playing to my self-competive side, I’d love to have that percentage change per night be ever larger, and read ever faster. It’s not something you consciously think about perhaps, but, like the progress bar on a computer, you always want it to move to the end as fast as possible. And, of course, that helps Amazon’s bottom line.
This isn’t new, you could do this with a paper book with dog-eared pages and bookmarks, but not as easily or precisely. Having that little number there, within sight as you’re reading, is akin to whispering, “Hey, you’re not done yet, you want to finish this task, don’t you?” which is incentive enough for task-oriented people.