I have noticed my own decline in terms of attention spans, and (in)ability to read long-form text online or offline. This leaves me with a disaatsifaction and I would like to rebuild a good habit cycle.
Curious to know if any of you went through the same and managed to recover from this rot. What worked for you, and any thoughts and learnings you might want to share.
In my opinion it is enough to REMOVE distractions (mostly electronic devices) and force yourself into reading for > 20 Minutes until you get into a flow state (Deep Work). This will probably work better if you enjoyed, what you're reading.
If you have to use ebooks for a specific reason, use a dedicated device (ebook reader or tablet) with wifi disabled and do not disturb mode.
Do you drink alcohol? I once felt this way, and as COVID fell I decided to abstain.
Suddenly, I was open to trying healthier foods, I'd go on long walks, I shed about 50lb and learned a lot of things I'd struggled with back when I'd have a few beers and watch a movie before going to bed instead of a bowl and a salad.
If you're an intelligent person, you'll get bored with binge watching and find something engaging to do, and you sound intelligent OP. It doesn't have to be permanent (I'm actually having a nice scotch before I devour a succulent chinese meal)... but to get here I had to stop completely for a spell.
Try it.
I faced a similar thing at one point. The thing that fixed it for me was going back to fiction. Started with a fantasy series. Did a little sci-fi. Did some easy classics (e.g. Dracula). Eventually that joy of reading, long focused reading, and effortless comprehension all came back. Just took practice.
Much like advice for writer's block being often "just write!". The same goes for reading. Start with something easy breezy and eventually it'll all start flowing again IMO.
Yes! Just find any page-turner like The Name of the wind and have fun!
Or a nice biography on someone you find interesting.
Try this: never read without a pencil in your hand. Make it a point to not only orally or mentally restate but also rewrite by hand everything you read (on-screen and in real life) in your own words, and to make multiple drafts of each restatement until it is as succinct, orderly, and logical as possible.
This practice will probably help you:
* recognize and stop reading low-value material;
* read less on your phone;
* deeply understand what you're reading;
* identify errors in what you're reading;
* identify errors in your own understanding;
* improve your own writing (and possibly your handwriting!);
* recall what you've read and what it says and means; and
* build a record of your reading, reactions, and thinking.
And, of course, I think it should improve your ability to focus.
You can also make flashcards while you're at it (again, handwritten ones) and develop a spaced-repetition practice for the important information and skills.
--- Later Edit ---
You mention long-form text in particular. One of the most effective tactics to use while reading is to discern the writing's architecture/structure — at all levels, from the writing's genre, to its main components and their arrangement, to how each main part is composed, and so on. Doing so not only helps to understand and critique the author's ideas, but also becomes a fun game that keeps your attention directed.
And also keep in mind that > 99% of all writing is not only not great but also probably not worth reading in the first place. It's ok to use boredom as a guide: your mind may be indicating through boredom and distraction that what you're reading isn't worth the time and effort and attention it takes to do so. But if you have decided that you must read something, or that you want to read it and understand it, then I've found that there's no substitute for the handwriting technique. Check out the Mortimer Adler book How to Read a Book for further suggestions.
Maybe we could do this with just a voice recorder? writing stuff with a pencil seems unnecessarily laborious - unless the physical part is the point. you still get the mental exercise by trying to understand synopsize, and present the information
Well, physicality is part of the point: it slows the writer down and provides more engagement with text (with the text being read; and the text representing the reader's ideas about the text being read; and the text representing the reader's ideas about text representing the reader's (prior) ideas about the text being read). Furthermore, handling, pushing around, and organizing actual paper on an actual desktop has (in my experience) effects on the mind that are both different in kind and superior in degree to those achieved by merely thinking, speaking, or typing about something.
The availability and simplicity are part of the point too: pencils and paper are ubiquitous; and easily found and inexpensively purchased if not immediately available. Written jots and drafts of ideas, summaries, and reactions (of the kind we're talking about here) are easy and quick to make; they readily reveal their content; and they're easy and quick to view simultaneously, to rearrange, to stack, reorder, organize, store, and share.
Compare voice recorders: the devices are not ubiquitous and are costly; they break and are costly to repair or replace; they have many dependencies (batteries/charging/charging plugs; switches prone to failure; firmware; drivers; USB plugs or adapters that can become missing, damaged, or obsolete themselves); etc.
And compare the audio tapes or audio files: they don't really and fully reveal their content by glancing at them; they're hard to keep track of; and they're more difficult to change or reorganize.
All that said, I think voice recorders have a place and I use a dictaphone myself on occasion — but primarily to spit out several ideas quickly when time is of the essence, I'm afraid I'll lose the thoughts, or I can't find the words to describe them in writing but somehow can blab about the gist of them to create a sort of bookmark for later processing.
But then I have to remember to check to see if I have audio files of orally recorded thoughts to process and then either transfer the files to my computer for transcription and printing, or else listen to the audio files and write the thoughts down myself. <Inevitably: oops, I forgot I had these; oops, device isn't here or isn't charged when I need it; oops, Wi-Fi is on the fritz; oops, I want to reorder, reword, or cross out some of these thoughts but not others, and I can't remember or retain in working memory the whole of my spoken audio to restate it all from scratch; etc.>
In a way, doing it by hand avoids the same type of virtualization problems I experience when budgeting and spending and tracking money: doing it physically instead of by computer keeps or makes it "more real" to my mind, and I seem to make better decisions and fewer errors. That benefit alone more than makes up for any time supposedly lost in doing it by hand: slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.
Nice synopsis. I’d second How to Read a Book.
From 2017 "You are more likely to remember something if you read it out loud, a study has found." https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171201090940.h...
Practice. I've had a couple periods where I went from reading constantly to not reading at all, and the only way to read more in one sitting is to read more. At the start you may only be able to do 15 minutes or so before you have to get back to the feed, and that's ok. Later that day you can do another 15 minutes, and tomorrow you can bump that to 30 minutes at a time. You can jump-start that by reading things that keep you glued to your seat rather than things that you need to read, like fiction instead of, say, an O'Reilly manual, but those books that are in the "want to have read" category instead of the "want to read" group are always going to be harder
The problem is really that most texts are poorly written, not engaging, not emotional, just pure cold facts. Compare this to fiction, it has it all.
That's the real reason you don't like reading, you actually don't like poorly worded texts for aspergers.
I'm going through that process as well, as I switch my projects away from coding and back to academic reading and research, which I have not done in 30 years.
What is working for me is to take it slow. To get actual books, not e-books, sit down with them in a cozy reading corner I set up, and read what I can. To go to libraries, browse the stacks, take a few books to a table, and skim through them. Basically, to avoid middle grounds and go all the way back to how I used to read before the web took off. It is not fixing my attention overnight, but I am improving over time.
It also helps to have a focus. Reading for its own sake doesn't give me the endurance I used to have, but deliberate reading to further some research goals helps me get more done.
So I discovered the opposite. My reading was always tied to a goal of some sort. I started reading on a kindle and turning off progress indicators and suddenly I had my attention back. I wasn’t worried about improving or reading a certain amount per day or finishing a book by a certain date. I just read.
Read fiction for fun. You don't need to optimise your reading time to maximise learning.
Read a paragraph or a sentence. If you got it, move on, if you didn't, re-read it but sound it out in your head. If you still didn't get it, re-read it aloud. If you still didn't get it, get some more sleep and try again another time.
Weaning off of social media and other engagement traps would likely help with attention span too.
[random advice from the internet]
I don't know how old you are, but my experience is of phases when I read less and phases when I read more and all of it depends on my interests.
Deep learning™ changes our interests...but we are culturally conditioned to a positivist (line go up) model of learning. Anyway, the periods where I read less are generally periods where I learning by doing (and the doing-learning is not learning writing).
For me, reading gets supplanted by self-motivated creative work requiring physicality. No matter how many books a person reads about dancing, reading books about dancing is not dancing (even if it is something a dancer might do).
recover from this rot
Nobody cares how many books another person reads unless they are being paid (e.g. teachers) or are the person's parents. Although reading can be imaginative, it is not creative. Nobody cares how many books JS Bach read except grad students desperate for thesis topics -- hopefully their committee will steer them away from that dullness.
Or to put it another way, give yourself permission to grow beyond what you believed growth looked like when you were younger. Good luck.
One thing to keep in mind is that it takes practice. It won't be easy at first, even if your strategy is perfect. So don't be disheartened by bouncing off books or only being able to read ten minutes at a time to start with. Just keep trying, and over time it'll get easier.