2 hrs
5 days
You spend 520 hours on YouTube this year.
That's 21.7 days — or 3.1 weeks — of waking life.
Per day
3.0 hrs
at 2.0× real time
Per week
15 hrs
a part-time job
Per year
780 hrs
5 full work-months
If you read instead
390 hrs
half the time

What you could read in that time:

  • 26 books — at 30 hours per average book
  • 1,560 articles — at 30 minutes each
  • 156 podcasts read as transcripts in 5 minutes each
  • ~520 hours back in your life if you switched 50% to reading

Read instead of watch.

RecapGPT turns YouTube videos into readable summaries, transcripts, and articles in under 30 seconds. The same ideas, half the time.

Try free →
How it works

The math, simplified.

This calculator multiplies your daily watch time by days per week (52 weeks) to estimate your yearly YouTube consumption. The "reading equivalent" is based on average reading speed (250 words/min) versus average speech speed (150 words/min) — meaning text contains the same information in roughly 60% of the time.

The honest caveat: Reading and watching aren't 1-to-1 swaps. Some content (visual demos, tutorials, performances) genuinely needs video. Most ideas-dense content (interviews, podcasts, lectures, video essays) reads faster and retains better. RecapGPT exists for the second category.

Average book reading time of 30 hours assumes a 70,000-word book at 250 wpm. Your mileage varies based on the book and your reading speed.

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