
Ode to skimming: On reading and our attention spans - pseudolus
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/hildyard-ode-to-skimming/
======
lethologica
I skim because most non fiction books, especially those published in recent
years, simply aren't worth reading word for word. Most books I've found can be
condensed to a blog post at most.(Fiction can have similar issues. Epic
fantasies are the worst offenders of this which sometimes have entire BOOKS of
useless filler)

I also feel an internal pressure to make the absolute most out of my time
spent doing activity x. If I'm reading a book then every page, every paragraph
and every sentence should contribute something to broadening my understanding
of whichever topic I'm reading about.

Perhaps this is all a sign of a fractured attention span, but I've found that
since skimming books (as well as being able to simply put down a book that I'm
not enjoying and not feeling any guilt about it) that I not only spend more
time reading but seem to get more out of it.

~~~
rimliu

        "Good morning," said the little prince.
    
        "Good morning," said the merchant.
    
        This was a merchant who sold pills that had been invented
        to quench thirst. You need only swallow one pill a week,
        and you would feel no need of anything to drink.
    
        "Why are you selling those?" asked the little prince.
    
        "Because they save a tremendous amount of time," said the
         merchant. "Computations have been made by experts. With
         these pills, you save fifty-three minutes in every week."
    
        "And what do I do with those fifty-three minutes?"
    
        "Anything you like..."
    
        "As for me," said the little prince to himself, "if I had
         fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at
         my leisure toward a spring of fresh water."

------
rwnspace
I skim because nearly everything is bloated with useless crud and the latest
memetic faddery; because tech writers are always on the defensive vs pedants;
because people with multiple arts degrees actually seem to get worse at
writing, not better; because there are more things to see than ever, and less
time available for any one of them.

How else are we supposed to manage the explore/exploit trade-off in the face
of this galactic amount of information?

------
kylecazar
I absolutely recognize that I could have skimmed most non-fiction books I've
read recently and taken away everything valuable all the same (especially
since that's all that sticks for me 1, 3 or 5 years after reading it anyway).

I also find myself unable to do so. I feel as though I'm being lazy or
dishonest in some way, despite knowing how silly that is.

~~~
shantly
I had to train myself to read way slower to appreciate good books. Then I had
to train myself to read fast again to be able to keep reading less-good books.

Seriously.

------
CamelCaseName
Did anyone else find this article quite difficult to read? Perhaps ironically,
I gave up by paragraph four.

~~~
dredmorbius
Yes.

Part of it is TLS's web design, particularly on mobile/tablet. I find multi-
column layouts, especially where content fights with adverts and distractions
(even just on-site elements) for attention, to be grossly suboptimal.
Unfortunately, TLS fails _both_ Outline.com _and_ non-JS console browsers. I
ended up copying text to a console pager to read it.

The style and content also contributes -- the review itself is ... eminantly
skimmable.

------
magwa101
So many news articles start with "the big narrative"™. The authors seem like
burgeoning/frustrated writers who are just practicing on us. I skim to get the
details and toss all the narrative fluff. So many books are full of this
fluff, you have to skim or its boring. The "respect" for the novel is a past
time. When everyone can blog/cast/self publish people are not so impressed by
the existence of a book. It is taken as a starting point, not a be-all-end-
all.

This article is great.

~~~
dredmorbius
Background is good.

Filler "human interest" narrative ... I can very much do without.

The balance can be hard to balance, at times. Most often it's not, and the
obvious filler is obvious. And tedious.

Worst is when writers omit relevant background in favour of useless filler.
All too common.

------
sjustns
I rarely read long-form articles online these days. If it looks interesting,
I'll print it. I read a lot of non-fiction, cover to cover, and always in
physical form. I just enjoy sitting down with a book and marking it up. But
also, I avoid recently published non-fiction because most of it reads like
poorly edited blog posts. There are a few exceptions, but most of the new
stuff doesn't draw me in the same way that older books do.

That said, I feel like because I do so much skimming online, just for work and
whatnot, going from one physical page to the next while reading a book does
something great for my brain. When I read offline, if I have selected the
right book, I don't ever feel the need to skim. All of the time I spend
reading offline feels like a compensatory reaction to the cognitive twitching
that takes place in the browser all day.

See also: [https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/02/08/reading-in-
th...](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/02/08/reading-in-the-age-of-
constant-distraction/)

Because we're talking about reading and non-fiction, here's a shameless plug
for a non-fiction book club I'm putting together: [https://strangers-
club.com](https://strangers-club.com)

------
tempodox
Stop reading crap that forces you to skim. Start reading worthwhile things
instead.

~~~
soulofmischief
Do you read the documentation for every new tool/concept front-to-back before
jumping into it? Probably not.

~~~
tempodox
Documentation that bears reading is surprisingly hard to do well, so chances
are you'll either find me a skimmer or I won't read it at all.

------
dredmorbius
The concept here shares much (and probably pales next to) Mortimer Adler's
_How to Read a Book_ :

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book)

If you're going through a _lot_ of material, the ability to rapidly assess
quality vs. unrewarding content, and then rapidly extract as much value from
that quality content as possible, is extremely useful.

An HN perennial, FWIW:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?q="how%20to%20read%20a%20book"](https://hn.algolia.com/?q="how%20to%20read%20a%20book")
See particularly discussion here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12209446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12209446)

And yes, there's the notion of reading simply for pleasure, in which case, for
quality writing, time is its own reward.

------
wry_discontent
To counter what most people seem to be saying here, I definitely skim most
things I read because I have a short attention span. This is especially true
of online materials, which I'm fine with, but I don't like when I'm reading in
my spare time and find myself doing the same thing. I try to do the opposite
of a speed reader and ensure I have some subvocalization. It helps me remember
what I read.

------
Kaiyou
There's too much information available to read everything carefully.

------
hyperactive
The article was too long so I just skimmed it.

------
aszantu
Can't skim in german well

~~~
soulofmischief
Why is that?

~~~
dredmorbius
Words, sentences, and paragraphs tend to be far longer than in English, and
all the action parts at the end are.

English _tends_ to offer more readily graspable hooks to sense general
content. German not as much.

