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I Learned to Read Again
- HumanEater 2mo agoScreen addiction is a thing for me, I'm addicted to my phone computer and tv and i don't know how to manage it. I know its just an escape mean for me, a tool to not be there but it stop me from doing other more interesting stuff
- wffurr 2mo agoSet small achievable goals and hold yourself accountable.
- Jtarii 2mo agoThe easiest way to counter it is just leave your phone at home and take a book and go to a public bench and read. You will quickly condition your brain to no longer need to constantly be looking at a screen to be happy. Your environment is your destiny, if your environment is littered with distractions you will be distracted.
- galleywest200 2mo agoEven when at home I try to keep my phone in my nightstand drawer. Sure I can go grab it, but that bookshelf is a lot closer to my lounge areas.
- Barrin92 2mo ago>Your environment is your destiny, if your environment is littered with distractions you will be distracted. I can't remember which author it was right now but they made the point about weight loss. You will hear countless of stories of people saying "I spent six months in this US city with great restaurants, man I gained 30 pounds", but you never hears someone trying to lose weight by moving to a place where people are thin. People spend tens of billions on individualized life hacks, diets, training programs, gyms and half the population is obese. In Japan barely anyone is obese and you ask the average person why they're thin and they just shrug, have never spend a buck on a personal trainer. If you ever plotted effort against outcomes from people who promote "individual willpower" as a solution to everything I don't think you could come up with a worse program. Surround yourself with the people and places you want to be like, that's all you need to do.
- nemomarx 2mo agoThe simplest version of this, which I did myself, is just to have less food in the house. Stop buying snacks, only get items you have a planned meal for, and you spend a lot less willpower resisting the temptation to grab stuff while you're already in the kitchen or etc. It's harder to modify what restaurants and online orders are available to you, but maybe you can work up to blocking or uninstalling those apps or something?
- SoftTalker 2mo agoA big thing that helped me was just to start cooking/preparing most of my meals myself. Restaurant portions are usually too big and they load up the food with sugar and sodium to make you eat more of it and still want dessert. It's easy to learn how to make an interesting variety of simple dishes with a relatively small number of staple ingredients. It doesn't end up taking more time than going out or waiting on DoorDash.
- JumpCrisscross 2mo agoRecapitulating an old comment. Start by quitting all algorithmic, ad-driven social media. Going cold turkey is never easy. If you're having trouble withdrawing, consider what I did over for Facebook over a decade ago: 1. Turn off notifications for the Facebook (read: your main social media) app on your phone; then 2. Turn off notifications for the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps (read: all other social media) on your phone; next 3. Delete the Facebook app from your phone; then 4. Delete the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps from your phone; and finally 5. Log out of Facebook on your desktop. It took me 2 years to go through from step 1 to step 5. It has made me happier and more productive. I still have a Facebook account. But the friction of grabbing my laptop and logging in forces me to consider "is this what I want to do? Or am I thoughtlessly reaching for the crack pipe?" (It's been about a decade since I've cared to log into Facebook. Last time I tried, it felt like trudging through spam in an old e-mail inbox more than anything compelling.)
- colechristensen 2mo agoObserve the sabbath. Not in a religious way, just have a no screens day every week, once a month, or just once. You can get by one day without texting, looking for directions, getting an answer from google, ordering takeout, etc. etc. etc. Set yourself a boundary, no phones unless there's a fire or somebody needs to go to the hospital and stick to it. Make a schedule.
- maipen 2mo agoScreen addiction is a funny term that made realize that it’s the perfect term for this. I remember in a recent city blackout, me and other people , that didn't have internet or comms, would instinctively pull out their phones and open apps knowingly that there is no connection. I wonder what’s this about??
- teddyh 2mo agos/^/How /
- nylonstrung 2mo agoIt does feel like reading books is one of the best activities for reconditioning your brain in the wake of screen/dopamine addiction
- neuronic 2mo agoMy brain was already perfectly conditioned not to pay attention to screens 30 years ago. Now my JOB is to look at screens, I am confronted with screens in public and I am expected to be responsive on my mobile screen device both in social life and at work. Sure, I can employ all sorts of techniques to curb screen addiction but it is the same issue as all these weight loss programs. The Yo-Yo-Effect with screens is unavoidable no matter what state of mind you reach. I know people who take week long vacations in silent monasteries with immense benefit to their mental health. That benefit is curb stomped by modern society within days of their return to "normal" life!
- sixtyj 2mo agoPaul Graham recently: The people who still read won't just be better informed. They'll be (with a couple exceptions) the only ones who can think well. You can't think well without writing well, and you can't write well without reading well. https://x.com/paulg/status/2075980847228801132 https://x.com/paulg/status/2075980847228801132
- dnc 2mo ago> You can't think well without writing well, and you can't write well without reading well. I'd like this to be true, but Socrates immediately comes to mind as a perfect counter example of someone who was opposed to writing and was arguably one of the greatest thinkers ever.
- keiferski 2mo agoTechnically we don’t know what Socrates actually said, we just know what Plato has him saying. Very plausible that Socrates was rambling in person, and Plato cleaned up his thoughts in the process of writing them.
- pseudonymidy 2mo agoIs there value in identifying the difference between reading a longer article like this one and an actual book? Reading the news from the AP/Reuters and a book on history? I spend lots of time online, primarily on my phone, reading. I don’t watch videos and I don’t use social media aside from browsing the Reddit front page. I try to justify my online escapes because I’m reading a substack, a bit of news, an interesting HN link about someone’s project. I know I’m fooling myself. Closing the door on the internet and opening a page on an ereader or a physical book is absolutely a different activity. While the content of the book is important (and hopefully well written and captivating!) I regard it now with the added benefit of exercising my attention span. An interesting book I read called Peak Mind makes the simple point that your life consists of what you pay attention to. Since then I’ve been trying (and failing, and trying) to be more conscious of where I spend my attention and how I can strengthen it against the well researched and incredibly effective distraction engines in my daily life.
- bob_theslob646 2mo agoThis is a great question. I would love to know the answer to this as well. +1
- JumpCrisscross 2mo ago> Is there value in identifying the difference between reading a longer article like this one and an actual book? Almost every study that looks at this finds that there is. Between the time for deeper contemplation, cognitive load of sustained attention and greater potential information content of a larger body of text compared with a smaller one, someone who reads books is generally going to more competently understand things gestures generally than someone who gets everything from articles online.
- pseudonymidy 2mo agoI’m not familiar with the research but I will say that conclusion “feels” right to me. Have they found a modern day metric that we should all be hunting in our quest for reading health? A literary equivalent to the daily 10,000 steps? Maybe 10,000 words!
- MariusGjerd 2mo agoat work we started making a libary with books we want to read to keep us sane and adopting good and old practices in the world of ai. its very easy to get blind nowdays but reading have helped me alot
- justincarter 2mo agoIs reading morally superior? It seems like greater society (with the apps) is rapidly changing back to an oral culture which seems to be humanity’s default setting. Edit - via the visual boost of short form video
- JumpCrisscross 2mo ago> Is reading morally superior? No. Of course not. Someone who can't read due to mental disability isn't morally inferior to someone who can and does.
- BoingBoomTschak 2mo agoHe obviously meant "is choosing to spend your time reading morally superior", though.
- JumpCrisscross 2mo ago> He obviously meant "is choosing to spend your time reading morally superior", though Sure. I'm answering it by another measure. Killing is, ceteris paribus, morally inferior to not killing. I'd argue a psychopath is henceforth morally debilitated despite it not really being their "fault" that they're born without empathy. This, in turn, helps me conclude that a murderer is, in fact, doing wrong. Same here. Someone who can't read isn't inherently less morally capable than someone who can. What reading gives one is the capacity to gain a better understanding of ethics and morals. So I'd guess folks who read books are, on average, more intelligent and at least seeking to conduct themselves in a more moral fashion than someone who doesn't. But that doesn't make spending time reading morally superior to some other activity.
- legacynl 2mo agoThat reading gives the capacity to gain a better understanding, doesn't mean that all readers use it that way. The act of reading itself doesn't make the people more willing to be more understanding. Someone who cannot read could have the same desire for understanding and might choose to engage that desire by talking to people in person. The fact that the latter doesn't read, doesn't make him less morally superior. The only correlation that reading and intelligence have is that intelligent people find it easier to read, and therefore enjoy reading more, and therefore read more. It's not the other way around.
- hintymad 2mo ago[dead]
- buzzwords 2mo agoInteresting, I struggle to read. I always have. But I genuinely enjoyed it. Few years back I told a colleague that by the time I reach the end of paragraph I forget how it started. He told me sounds like a learning difficulty. So I did a test, thinking I was dyslexic. It turns out I have ADHD with particularly bad short term memory. Anyways my question for everyone here, how do you read with ADHD? How do you over come reading the same passage multiple time?
- colechristensen 2mo agoAudiobooks sped up to ~2x or so, but you usually have to build up to that speed. There are also exercises which help develop short term memory like n-back training for which there are many phone apps.
- buzzwords 2mo agoOh you don't zone out?
- colechristensen 2mo agoThe speed helps with that. Also doing something mindless helps. The dishes, the laundry, moderate exercise. I can't pay attention to most audiobooks at 1x, I get bored between words.
- confidantlake 2mo agoTry going for a walk when listening to an audiobook. When I do that I rarely zone out. When I don't I nearly always zone out.
- throw4847285 2mo agoI just speed ahead, and I always retained more than I thought I did. If I keep going, eventually I can reach a kind of flow. It doesn't matter if I missed bits here or there. Or, you could try the opposite, and slow down. It sounds like torture, but eventually, it will become habitual.
- loughnane 2mo ago> I hit my reading peak when I was eleven or twelve. This has long been the way. Mortimer Adler pointed out in the 70s (at the latest) that reading instruction (ie how to extract meaning from marks on a page) doesn’t really advance after 6th grade. After that we still give kids harder things to read, but scarcely provide them with strategies. His How to read a book was an attempt at filling in the gap. It’s one of my favorite books.
- colechristensen 2mo agoMy favorite part of How to Read a Book is how it classifies books into books worth skimming over, books worth reading each word exactly once, and books worith studying and actively engaging with in depth. How to Read a Book is definitely worth skimming, but it is quite repetitive and filled with unnecessary volume. It would get the job done at 1/10th the length.
- loughnane 2mo agoI’ve read it a few times both on my own and with my kids. I could maybe buy 50-60% of the length would be ideal, but not 10%. Ironically, one of the points made in the book—and close to your point—is that even in the greatest book of all time there are passages that are more and less worthwhile. The art of being a good reader is identifying the worthwhile and going over it slowly (maybe even rereading it) and identifying the less worthy and going over it quick. The nice thing about spending more time with HTRAB is it forces you to think about reading. That’s a worthwhile way to spend a few hours.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- alana314 2mo agoI found Amazon's Whispersync (audiobook + ebook synced) helpful for keeping me engaged in books in the smartphone era. This is a plug, but I made my own epub + text to speech reader for iOS for keeping myself engaged in reading, and have been reading/listening to classics such as Crime and Punishment this way: https://heard.quest/ https://heard.quest/
- Ostatnigrosh 2mo agoI deeply resonate with this. Even when I began reading, I felt myself wanting to jump away into my email or some other needless task. After getting through the premise, it felt almost like a challenge to read the entire blog. Very well done.
- sachinpkale 2mo ago"Reading a long, serious book—seemed like checking out, Scrolling was alright" - couldn't agree more on this paragraph.
- sam1r 2mo ago>> He didn’t just mean that there would be a deluge of school reading, he meant that there would be so much going on around campus that reading for fun would be a kind of admission of social failure It’s very clear that op’s father doesn’t value education first nor does he care to provide that influence to his children. Such a sad situation.
- StefanBatory 2mo ago> It’s very clear that op’s father doesn’t value education first nor does he care to provide that influence to his children. Respectfully, I would disagree with you on this statement. I don't feel that it is implying your point, or certainly not to that extent.
- keiferski 2mo agoA few months ago I spent an entire Saturday reading a long book (Underworld by Don DeLillo) deliberately with my phone off. I walked around, went to a restaurant, sat on a bench in the park, all with just the book. It was one of the most “grounded” days I’ve had in years, and I felt like I noticed dozens of things about the place I live that I hadn’t noticed before. Ironically it was the exact day that the recent Iran war started. But I didn’t find out about it until late at night, when I turned my phone back on.
- RattlesnakeJake 2mo agoI dropped Twitter for Lent this year, just in time for the fighting to pick up. Being stuck with slow, oversimplified (and likely propagandistic) news coverage instead of the usual OSINT accounts, (likely fake) firsthand reports, and bad-but-fun hot takes was frustrating for a bit . (I still haven't gotten back on, and I'm much happier for it)
- frgturpwd 2mo agoI believe we should.. step back a bit, and agree on what we mean by "reading books", vs "other things on a screen"; you all mean the tension between reading cumulative attention-intensive material versus discontinuous context-resetting material, right?
- maipen 2mo agoMost people never really developed the habit of reading. They sure did consume the newspaper but that has now been replaced with social media. The medium changed but the habits did not. I think author is having an existential crisis instead of the world as he wrote. The addiction of these mediums is undeniable. But let’s not lie to ourselves; only a few people liked to read. Anything that requires deep concentration often needs incentives or real consequences to make it more compelling. The only way out of this is elimination of the medium itself. You wouldn’t want a cocaine addict to carry a bag of cocaine in his pocket. But this is what’s happening to us all.
- FinnLobsien 2mo agoI recently realized this when I started a 30 day „digital declutter“ and banned myself from social media, YouTube etc for 30 days. It’s interesting how ruling out those options of spending my time made me default to reading more. I also noticed I had a much better attention span for long-form movies (2+ hours used to be hard for paying attention to one thing).
- legacynl 2mo agoI feel for this author. Not because of his attention span, but rather that his whole life has been lived trying to conform to someone else's ideals. Can't read in middle or high school because of what peers would think. Couldn't read in college for what his dad said that he should be doing. Can't read in your professional life because it's 'childish'. Now he feels 'obligated' to read because it's part of Bourdieauian ideals? I think the author should take a long hard look at himself, and decide for himself what his ideals are that he wants to live by. Reading even though you don't like it isn't evidence of sophisitication, it is evidence of stupidity.
- shant_extry 2mo agoI think this presents an opportunity to explore balance in the type of information you want and the time it takes to consume it. I'll use podcasts as an example. I think podcasts became very popular because the host could sit with a guest for a long time and discuss important topics at depth. The problem, in my view, is that that medium locked itself into longer lengths of time that it always has to fill. I may want to hear a politician talk for 3 hours if they're running for office but I don't necessarily want to hear an actor's thoughts on life for that long (for the fifth time). Sometimes, a late night show's 5 minutes is sufficient for the latter. Does every Substack have to include an SEO-esque preamble before it gets to the ultimate point it's trying to make or perspective it's trying to explore? I think, in an ideal situation, the format (including length) of the article/book/etc. would match the reader's capacity and willingness to read it. One last note - just because I read it somewhere and it stuck with me - "Learning is an intelligent person's favorite form of procrastination." So if you're consuming whatever you're consuming and you feel like it's not just social media-like consumption in a different form, then more power to you.