5 ms·

I have mild ADD and can't read books very well. I read a book like I read Twitter, extracting little soundbites and quotes out of it to mull over later. With mo

• hirundo 4y ago
  Audiobook publisher GraphicAudio has cheesy tagline: "A Movie In Your Mind.". Well yeah, that's where all movies play. But there is a sense in which an audiobook is more movie than book. Especially with light reading while doing something else, like driving or gardening. Maybe that loophole will work for your ADD.
• tonguez 4y ago
  • smegsicle 4y ago
    it's the most active thread on the page yadingus
• srcreigh 4y ago
  Out of curiosity, how's your visual imaginative abilities? The aphantasia test: imagine a person rolling a ball across the table. What color was the person's hair? If it didn't occur to you, you may have aphantasia. (This ability, I assume, is key in reading books. It's like an ongoing movie in your head if you can do it. I can't.)
  • trentgreene 4y ago
    That’s not a good test for aphantasia, and will way over diagnose. Try googling test for aphantasia for much better examples
    • jaynetics 4y ago
      I agree. I have a vivid imagination (visual and otherwise) and like reading. When I imagined this scene, it was rich in detail (colors, textures, lighting etc.), but the person's hair wasn't a part of it, because I had "zoomed in" too close to the action.
  • GordonS 4y ago
    This test seems imperfect. I imagined what you said, but my thought was focused on the ball, and so the person was "unfocused", or "not as detailed" - I'm not even sure what gender they were. Oh, and I'm colour blind (which is relatively common), so probably don't think of colours in the same way as others.
  • bigyikes 4y ago
    When I was younger, I would always skip over those kinds of long, windy paragraphs full of visual descriptions. It’s like noise to me. I do have a sort of movie playing in my head, but it’s not really a visual or auditory experience. It’s more like a running list of bullet points; a stream of facts. Visual descriptions are chock full of these facts, but they’re all usually inconsequential to the plot so I tune them out. I find aphantasia very strange. I don’t lack a mind’s eye, but I do lack the ability to use it while conscious. My dreams are extremely visual and movie-like, but my conscious experience isn’t really visual at all. It wasn’t until recently that I learned “day dreams” are named that way because for most people they resemble dreams, but mine don’t at all.
  • schwartzworld 4y ago
    Sounds like pop science. I did as you asked and didn't imagine the person's hair, but I can imagine things visually and have been an avid reader since childhood.
• hzambo 4y ago
  One little trick that works for me: read and listen at the same time. I love books, I love reading, but my main struggle while reading was having to go back and read a few pages again and again when I caught myself lost in random thoughts. Sometimes it took quite a long time to finish a simple book because of this. Most books today have and audiobook version. So just try both at the same time. It's less likely you'll get distracted and if you do, you can just catch up to what you have been listening. But most important trick is to read things you like and that interest you. Don't force on books that aren't interesting just to say that you finished it. I hope this helps.
  • prpl 4y ago
    In college I would write what I read when that was happening, usually in math.
• deleted 4y ago
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