4 ms·

You would be surprised just how quickly you can re-learn the focus to enjoy long-form writing and novels. Much like exercise, don't let your ego get in the way.

You would be surprised just how quickly you can re-learn the focus to enjoy long-form writing and novels. Much like exercise, don't let your ego get in the way. Find something you enjoy, even if it's a bit trash, and just make it a habit. Like with everything you do regularly, your brain will get better at it, the habit will become more automatic, and you'll find yourself wanting to read more, and more often. It's very much not too late to turn the ship around on an individual level.

taeric 3mo ago
To add to this, it isn't "doing it bad" if you aren't out there reading deep texts. Just as it isn't "doing it badly" if you can't run a 4 minute mile. As you say, you get better at what you are doing. If you want to get faster, at anything, you don't really have the option of skipping the slow phase.
- eudamoniac 3mo ago
  But it's also important to realize that it is "doing it bad" if you are hoping to run a 4 minute mile but your only training is slowly walking around the block forever. At some point you have to seek out more substantial books. You can't just continually read pulp fiction and think you're going to improve at anything; you have to progress.
  - taeric 3mo ago
    Largely fair. This is one where the specific goals, I think, work against people. I know most coaches will attach "attainable" to goals, to combat that. To that end, if your goal is just to read more, there is no reason to worry about how substantial your books are. However, if you goal is to read more substantially, you should start by aiming a bit higher than where you are. Achieve that, then adjust target. Progress, then, can come either in more volume of reading where you are; or in more substantive reading. Either are valid, to me. To take this to the exercise. If your goal is to do a fast mile, agreed that just walking the dog is unlikely to help. If your goal is to be physically active, simple walks punch well above what people think they do.
  - chowells 3mo ago
    Improve at what? Pretentiousness? Book people really hate to hear it, but literary fiction follows Sturgeon's law just as much as Sturgeon's own genre. 90% of it isn't worth reading, and that includes 90% of what's fashionable at any given time. You're better off reading books you enjoy than suffering through garbage that you're told you're a bad person if you don't read. (Literary fiction isn't bad. But for the love of reading, skip anything new and fashionable until enough decades go by for the influnce of fashion to fade. And skip things that aren't enjoyable to actually read.)
    - eudamoniac 3mo ago
      Improve at the ability to read, understand, and digest higher literature. I am in complete agreement with you that 99% of books are crap. It's the 1% that you hopefully want to get around to reading, and those are typically not the easiest reads.
      - senordevnyc 3mo ago
        Eh, 99% of “literature” that I’ve read also wasn’t worth reading, and didn’t leave me with any lasting impact. Unfortunately that last 1% has been so impactful that it’s still worth seeking it out.
    - taeric 3mo ago
      To be fair, this is no different than any other thing people might want to do more of. Increasing the amount you can bench press, cycle, run, read, write, cook, whatever. Most will allow you to progress at something that most people don't care about. Nor, necessarily, should they. By far, the best thing to learn when learning to progress at something, is learning to be satisfied with your own progression.
    - xboxnolifes 3mo ago
      What's how you so upset about their comment? They just said if you want to be able to read harder books, you need to start reading harder books. It's a pretty obvious statement.
    - 3mo ago
  - msm_ 3mo ago
    I exclusively read fiction, mostly fantasy books (I used to also read programming books, but all my learning is online now). I enjoy them. I don't feel the need to "improve". Because of my job (and hobbies), I spend a lot of time thinking and straining my brain. After 14 hours of working I don't feel the urge to read Nietzsche or Plato. I admire people who do, but for me it's just a way to relax (and maybe escape from daily chores). Am I doing it bad?
Spartan-S63 3mo ago
I took a long break from reading for enjoyment after I graduated from college. I got burnt out from reading things I didn't enjoy in high school and undergrad. Now it's what I do to wind down my day before bed. It's a nice relaxing activity that allows my imagination to run a little.
birdsongs 3mo ago
Absolutely. I used to read constantly, from my teenage years through my early 30's, but stopped about 5 years ago? I guess life stress and short form social media taking my free time. But I managed to get free of all the apps, and I jumped back in by re-reading some books from my childhood (Sword of Shannara, some bad 60's/70's sci fi, etc), and really enjoyed them. It was enough to shake me out of my lull and now I have an active queue again. My commute and mornings are so much better than scrolling instagram on the train.
- wuliwong 3mo ago
  I never read Sword of Shannara but my brother did. It is a nostalgic title for me. :)
- johnnyanmac 3mo ago
  Like many joys in life, I simply had less time to enjoy it as I instead spend hours a day reading news, job apps, and technical documents. I read plenty, but not any fiction for recreation.
wuliwong 3mo ago
I did this in the last couple years, I used an 'atomic habits' kinda approach. I put a book on the back of the toilet and pledged to read 1 page before looking at my phone. It worked out nicely, I've read a bunch of books over the last year or so after kicking it off in that way. I am also not a lifelong reader, I didn't start reading until college. My girlfriend read a ton and the first Lord of the Rings movie was about to come out, I got caught up in the excitement and read all the books. Ever since then, I've read pretty steadily. Interesting though, it wasn't social media or anything that slowed my reading to a trickle, it was audiobooks. I freakin love them when the narrator is good. Anyway, that's how I got back to reading and now I haven't listened to an audiobook in a while. :)
- strix_varius 3mo ago
  Some of the statistics in the article included audiobooks as reading. It seems like they must trigger at least a subset of the qualities of reading (like maintaining an imagined environment, parsing sentences and paragraphs into meaning, etc)
analog8374 3mo ago
when you spend long times focusing your attention upon that whole reading process it tends to stick. Like a drug with long-term effects. Do you want those effects?
- smcg 3mo ago
  This is very difficult with our notification-based lifestyles. Either I allow myself to be interrupted or I come back to missed messages and calls.
  - Jtsummers 3mo ago
    > Either I allow myself to be interrupted or I come back to missed messages and calls. Given those two options, the reasonable one is the latter. Just miss a few messages and calls, control your own time.
  - amanaplanacanal 3mo ago
    Man... If the call is important, they can leave a message. And text messages are designed to be async. Anybody who thinks they own my time better be paying me big $$. I refuse to be a slave to a device in my pocket.
    - AngryData 3mo ago
      Yeah, I treat my phone like a landline phone. If I don't answer right away then you gotta leave a message and ill see it when I have a break to check it or not. Im not sure being available 24/7 365 by everybody for every reason is mentally healthy.
fridder 3mo ago
Royalroad has been a great place for me
ffsm8 3mo ago
What's also massively undervalued is medium high dosage of the amino acid creatine. If you take >10g/day you'll have a much easier time staying focused over long periods. It becomes noticeable only after consistent intake however, and only if you actually pay attention to it - as you won't feel any different. (And it's effect is also supposedly diminished with high Coffein intake)
saidmukhamad 3mo ago
Also it's not late for first time learners to get the love for reading and question things, just matter of a focus, will and discipline, as it's for any field human would want to tackle
etrautmann 3mo ago
Is this real? I spend plenty of time online but have no problem still reading books. I don’t know anyone else who stopped reading books either. I’m 41 so maybe this affects people who grew up with social media but I can’t quite tell how hyperbolic the descriptions of the problem are.
- specproc 3mo ago
  42 and frayed. Lifelong reader who really has to remind himself constantly to read. It's my greatest pleasure and a great source of pride, but God, do my electronic devices interfere.

taeric 3mo ago

To add to this, it isn't "doing it bad" if you aren't out there reading deep texts. Just as it isn't "doing it badly" if you can't run a 4 minute mile. As you say, you get better at what you are doing. If you want to get faster, at anything, you don't really have the option of skipping the slow phase.

eudamoniac 3mo ago
But it's also important to realize that it is "doing it bad" if you are hoping to run a 4 minute mile but your only training is slowly walking around the block forever. At some point you have to seek out more substantial books. You can't just continually read pulp fiction and think you're going to improve at anything; you have to progress.
- taeric 3mo ago
  Largely fair. This is one where the specific goals, I think, work against people. I know most coaches will attach "attainable" to goals, to combat that. To that end, if your goal is just to read more, there is no reason to worry about how substantial your books are. However, if you goal is to read more substantially, you should start by aiming a bit higher than where you are. Achieve that, then adjust target. Progress, then, can come either in more volume of reading where you are; or in more substantive reading. Either are valid, to me. To take this to the exercise. If your goal is to do a fast mile, agreed that just walking the dog is unlikely to help. If your goal is to be physically active, simple walks punch well above what people think they do.
- chowells 3mo ago
  Improve at what? Pretentiousness? Book people really hate to hear it, but literary fiction follows Sturgeon's law just as much as Sturgeon's own genre. 90% of it isn't worth reading, and that includes 90% of what's fashionable at any given time. You're better off reading books you enjoy than suffering through garbage that you're told you're a bad person if you don't read. (Literary fiction isn't bad. But for the love of reading, skip anything new and fashionable until enough decades go by for the influnce of fashion to fade. And skip things that aren't enjoyable to actually read.)
  - eudamoniac 3mo ago
    Improve at the ability to read, understand, and digest higher literature. I am in complete agreement with you that 99% of books are crap. It's the 1% that you hopefully want to get around to reading, and those are typically not the easiest reads.
    - senordevnyc 3mo ago
      Eh, 99% of “literature” that I’ve read also wasn’t worth reading, and didn’t leave me with any lasting impact. Unfortunately that last 1% has been so impactful that it’s still worth seeking it out.
  - taeric 3mo ago
    To be fair, this is no different than any other thing people might want to do more of. Increasing the amount you can bench press, cycle, run, read, write, cook, whatever. Most will allow you to progress at something that most people don't care about. Nor, necessarily, should they. By far, the best thing to learn when learning to progress at something, is learning to be satisfied with your own progression.
  - xboxnolifes 3mo ago
    What's how you so upset about their comment? They just said if you want to be able to read harder books, you need to start reading harder books. It's a pretty obvious statement.
  - 3mo ago
- msm_ 3mo ago
  I exclusively read fiction, mostly fantasy books (I used to also read programming books, but all my learning is online now). I enjoy them. I don't feel the need to "improve". Because of my job (and hobbies), I spend a lot of time thinking and straining my brain. After 14 hours of working I don't feel the urge to read Nietzsche or Plato. I admire people who do, but for me it's just a way to relax (and maybe escape from daily chores). Am I doing it bad?

Spartan-S63 3mo ago

I took a long break from reading for enjoyment after I graduated from college. I got burnt out from reading things I didn't enjoy in high school and undergrad. Now it's what I do to wind down my day before bed. It's a nice relaxing activity that allows my imagination to run a little.

birdsongs 3mo ago

Absolutely. I used to read constantly, from my teenage years through my early 30's, but stopped about 5 years ago? I guess life stress and short form social media taking my free time. But I managed to get free of all the apps, and I jumped back in by re-reading some books from my childhood (Sword of Shannara, some bad 60's/70's sci fi, etc), and really enjoyed them. It was enough to shake me out of my lull and now I have an active queue again. My commute and mornings are so much better than scrolling instagram on the train.

wuliwong 3mo ago
I never read Sword of Shannara but my brother did. It is a nostalgic title for me. :)
johnnyanmac 3mo ago
Like many joys in life, I simply had less time to enjoy it as I instead spend hours a day reading news, job apps, and technical documents. I read plenty, but not any fiction for recreation.

wuliwong 3mo ago

I did this in the last couple years, I used an 'atomic habits' kinda approach. I put a book on the back of the toilet and pledged to read 1 page before looking at my phone. It worked out nicely, I've read a bunch of books over the last year or so after kicking it off in that way. I am also not a lifelong reader, I didn't start reading until college. My girlfriend read a ton and the first Lord of the Rings movie was about to come out, I got caught up in the excitement and read all the books. Ever since then, I've read pretty steadily. Interesting though, it wasn't social media or anything that slowed my reading to a trickle, it was audiobooks. I freakin love them when the narrator is good. Anyway, that's how I got back to reading and now I haven't listened to an audiobook in a while. :)

strix_varius 3mo ago
Some of the statistics in the article included audiobooks as reading. It seems like they must trigger at least a subset of the qualities of reading (like maintaining an imagined environment, parsing sentences and paragraphs into meaning, etc)

analog8374 3mo ago

when you spend long times focusing your attention upon that whole reading process it tends to stick. Like a drug with long-term effects. Do you want those effects?

smcg 3mo ago
This is very difficult with our notification-based lifestyles. Either I allow myself to be interrupted or I come back to missed messages and calls.
- Jtsummers 3mo ago
  > Either I allow myself to be interrupted or I come back to missed messages and calls. Given those two options, the reasonable one is the latter. Just miss a few messages and calls, control your own time.
- amanaplanacanal 3mo ago
  Man... If the call is important, they can leave a message. And text messages are designed to be async. Anybody who thinks they own my time better be paying me big $$. I refuse to be a slave to a device in my pocket.
  - AngryData 3mo ago
    Yeah, I treat my phone like a landline phone. If I don't answer right away then you gotta leave a message and ill see it when I have a break to check it or not. Im not sure being available 24/7 365 by everybody for every reason is mentally healthy.

fridder 3mo ago

Royalroad has been a great place for me

ffsm8 3mo ago

What's also massively undervalued is medium high dosage of the amino acid creatine. If you take >10g/day you'll have a much easier time staying focused over long periods. It becomes noticeable only after consistent intake however, and only if you actually pay attention to it - as you won't feel any different. (And it's effect is also supposedly diminished with high Coffein intake)

saidmukhamad 3mo ago

Also it's not late for first time learners to get the love for reading and question things, just matter of a focus, will and discipline, as it's for any field human would want to tackle

etrautmann 3mo ago

Is this real? I spend plenty of time online but have no problem still reading books. I don’t know anyone else who stopped reading books either. I’m 41 so maybe this affects people who grew up with social media but I can’t quite tell how hyperbolic the descriptions of the problem are.

specproc 3mo ago
42 and frayed. Lifelong reader who really has to remind himself constantly to read. It's my greatest pleasure and a great source of pride, but God, do my electronic devices interfere.