
Ask HN: Do you find reading increasingly challenging? - readchallenged
I was a good reader throughout my childhood, youth and academic years. Lately, and after a couple of decades, it&#x27;s becoming increasingly challenging to focus, consume and finish books. I&#x27;m becoming the modern age illiterate. I&#x27;m usually squeezed for time - but even if I find some, I don&#x27;t pick up where I left.<p>Does anyone encountering the same challenge? Any ideas&#x2F;tips that could help overcome the cycle? Do you think it&#x27;s caused by modern information overload, distraction addiction, or perhaps dealing with short cryptographic lines of code?
======
d23
I'm worried about our attention spans as humans. Mine has certainly gone down.
When I was a kid and the internet was less popular and showy, I used to read
long-form articles and message boards and do actual _reading_. Now there's so
much content out there it seems to be genuinely hard to not just look for the
next "quick fix" in the form of a funny or insightful comment. Reading even a
20 minute article doesn't seem to be the norm anymore.

God only knows how bad this is going to be for kids that are now growing up
with youtube.

~~~
SilasX
I don't see what's wrong with the trend of encouraging people not to use 5000
words when 50 would do.

Not that these kinds of forums correct it: people will still link long
arguments that they are unable or unwilling to summarize in their own words.

~~~
sheepmullet
> I don't see what's wrong with the trend of encouraging people not to use
> 5000 words when 50 would do.

 _If_ 50 would do. That's rarely the case.

Most of the time short articles aren't the result of distilling hundreds of
hours of wisdom down to an easily digestible few hundred words.

Instead they are the result of dropping all consideration of context and
pushing a simplistic view. Or rushing junk out the door.

An article goes from:

"Given our specific set of circumstances (industry, team size, project size,
project makeup, technology stack, turnover, strategic direction, short term
goals etc) X is great. We considered alternatives Y and Z but discarded them
because of A, B, and C. We ran into issues D and E and were able to do F and G
to work around them. We later found we had missed risk H in our analysis but
we were lucky enough that it didn't come up.

To:

"X is great. We used it to increase our productivity by 10%."

~~~
SilasX
I think we're in agreement, in that I would love for articles to look like the
first example you gave. In practice, though, they're more like:

[long anecdote about someone using not-X that mixes in numerous other factors
and is vague on what caused what]

[long description about meeting with a subject of the story that painstakingly
details their hair, their clothing style, their mannerisms, and the general
appearance of the venues]

[much more confusing presentation of the paragraph you just gave]

Also, when people link the article or recommends it, they will tend to give
either no summary, or a clickbait(ier) version of your second example, like,
"The miracle of X".

~~~
cableshaft
I.e. just about every article on New Yorker that I've clicked the link for.
Ugh, I can't stand that writing style. Please just tell me the relevant
information. They should save their justification for all the money they spent
on creative writing classes for their short stories that no one will ever
read.

------
such_a_casual
I find that the kind of people who are "squeezed for time" are always
"squeezed for time". You make time for the things you need to make time for,
just like everyone else.

That nonsense aside, I was doing what you're doing until I learned an
important lesson. I found that I will not gain anything of value by reading
quickly and inattentively. If I am spending my time skimming articles, forum
posts, stack overflow, without doing something like taking notes, I'm just
teaching my brain that most information is useless to me. The sooner I learned
that lesson, the sooner I was back to reading books.

~~~
alexvy86
I agree with this and have been trying to put it in practice myself.

Like OP, I was an avid reader during my school years and noticed that I wasn't
doing it as much the past couple of years. I realized most of the time that I
could spend reading books I was spending reading articles from my RSS feeds,
but many times just to get a sense of completion (like an Inbox Zero for my
RSS feeds), which meant I didn't really let them sink in or wasn't doing any
thinking of my own about them.

Realizing that it provided very little value, if any, I decided that I had to
stop that and go back to reading only when I have the time to do so at my own
pace, and only things that I _really_ wanted to read, not that I felt I had to
read for bogus reasons.

Going back to OP's question, I do think that information overload is partly to
blame here. At least for me, it's taking a conscious effort to put this in
practice and ignore a lot of the information that comes my way.

------
sclangdon
I don't think it's because you're squeezed for time, but more that you're
sense of time has changed.

You're probably used to extracting information you want in a very short period
of time via sites like StackOverflow or Wikipedia or whatever. If you're like
me, when you encounter something that isn't going to give you the gold
quickly, you probably move on to something that will.

You're used to the quick turnaround, so when something takes longer it makes
you feel like you're squeezed for time.

For example, I have plenty of physical programming books. A lot of the time I
know that the answer I seek is in one of those books. Sometimes I even know
which book and the location in that book. But guess what? I still go to
StackOverflow first because it's quicker and someone will have already
summarized the book. I'm so used to getting information quickly, that actually
having to look for it is unthinkable. It _feels_ like I don't have enough time
to read the book myself, but that's really not true at all.

~~~
saranormous
Agree that everyone's sense of time is changing. I struggle with this - I
can't keep myself from speed-reading/skimming longer form text.

I do think this is problematic, and not all good. A great deal of knowledge
still requires significant length of text to convey -- sure, the retrieval
cost for any individual limited concept on the internet is much lower, but
you're not going to develop a rich understanding of, as a hyperbolic example,
the history of China, from one article or from Wikipedia.

------
Shorel
Get a Kindle.

I started reading again when it became a lot more convenient, thanks to the
kindle.

I think I finished reading all the Wheel of Time books because of the
convenience of the kindle (it gets boring around book eight, before a well
deserved end).

Paper books are heavy and expensive.

It doesn't work for all books, as it is not a good PDF reader, but for
anything that's more text than graphics or layout, it's a huge improvement.

~~~
jszymborski
I read a lot of books I've previously put down (Anna Karenina, GoT Series, Ian
Banks' Culture Series) because I started reading on my phone (Nexus 5).

If you get the font size right, it's not bad. The advantage of the phone is
that it's always in my pocket, so if I've got a couple of minutes of waiting
time, I can just pull out my phone from my pocket.

~~~
AkshayD08
The problem with reading on phones is there is always some notification which
will find its way in to the phone. I tried it myself but not spend more than
15 mins getting back to the notifications.

I think kindle is a much better way to address the issue.

~~~
jszymborski
Phone is definitely not for everyone, but Androids (no idea about iOS) have a
Do Not Disturb function that silences notifs that aren't alarms for a certain
amount of time that's ideal for this use-case.

------
cpncrunch
No, I don't have any trouble reading (I'm 42).

I think your comment about "squeezed for time" probably explains it. You're
probably slightly stressed or burned out through working too long hours. All
the evidence suggests that working too many hours is detrimental to
productivity, and your inability to focus seems to be proof that your
productivity is suffering.

Try relaxing more and reducing your working hours.

------
stdbrouw
It is certainly possible that you have lost the ability to focus, but why not
try this much more straightforward explanation first: you didn't like the last
couple of books you've read, which is why had trouble finishing them. It is
absolutely not uncommon to go from "ugh, I'm not in the mood for this book" to
"hmm, this story just doesn't seem to be going anywhere" to "well I could've
written something twice as good as this" before hitting on a book that aligns
with what you're interested in reading at that very moment. Try to read
something different. Follow recommendations from other people. Don't read
something because you feel you have to.

~~~
knughit
The question is, why is OP finding books much less satisfying than when they
were younger while , say, my mother continues to enjoy books?

------
brudgers
My experience is that my motivation for consuming books is cyclic. Part of it
is due to other interests and commitments...I read almost nothing for pleasure
during grad school and then spent what felt like every non-working moment
reading for the next year. Then there have been two periods where I read _The
Economist_ cover to cover _every_ week. The first was two years the second was
one...well almost or maybe most of one.

That sort of hits on the other major reason for cyclic reading. My tastes and
interests change. Sometimes the right book comes along at the wrong time...and
sometimes the same right book comes along twice, by which I mean that one of
the interesting things about getting older is that rereading books is not
rereading the _same_ book. The greater narrative of which it is a part has
changed as I have changed.

One of the other features of getting older is that _not_ finishing a book
doesn't bother me anymore. I'm ok if a book doesn't speak to me or stops
speaking to me. I enjoy finishing books, but don't see not doing so as quite
the moral failing I once did. Maybe I'll come back. Maybe it wasn't that good.
Maybe it's overdue. Reading for pleasure is supposed to be pleasurable and the
suffering of a hard book or long book or a challenging book has to be worth
it, and making it worth it is the _author 's_ responsibility, not mine.

Anyway, not having time is the biggest constraint, e.g. currently the time
slot that I had been using to read is being used to journal. It's a tradeoff.

Good luck.

------
verganileonardo
I did two things: 1) Create (initially, force) a routine: everytime, read for
30~60 minutes before you sleep. Do that even if it is late and you're tired.

2) Try to use small moments of free time. As an example, if I have more than
30 minutes of free time, I read some pages of a book.

If you stop to think about it, you are probably going to remember recurring
moments in which you had 30~ minutes of free time. Instead of using it to read
Hacker News or browse Facebook, read something. Commuting is a great example.

------
sold
I set up an alarm clock for "detox" every day. I turn off my computer, silence
the mobile phone and do nothing but read for hour or two. Resist any
temptation to check email.

I've enjoyed this article that was recently on HN
[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/opinion/sunday/addicted-
to...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/opinion/sunday/addicted-to-
distraction.html)

------
ilamont
I am in the same boat as the OP. Loved reading when I was younger, everything
from newspapers to novels.

What I find myself doing now with most long-form Web or mobile content, as
well as printed magazines and newspapers, is skimming to get the basic facts
or quotes and then moving on. I just don't have the time or attention to stay
focused anymore.

As for books (fiction and nonfiction), I find myself skimming when I using the
Kindle. The Kindle Fire is even worse because of the easy access to other
distractions. For printed books I can focus but I have found my threshold for
abandoning a book is much lower. I did this recently with a novel by an author
I used to love; I just felt the characters in the new novel were wooden and I
noticed some basic editing errors. I returned the book to the library after
about 40 or 50 pages.

As for the reasons behind this: I am not a programmer so for me the issue is
not related to dealing with short lines of code. I think it is a combination
of information overload, easy access to screens, and training our minds
(through exposure to text messages, tweets, online updates, short video clips,
etc.) to prefer condensed communication.

The trend makes me uncomfortable, but on the other hand, I also see it as part
of the evolution of media and society. If we look back through history, we can
see how other new media had a similar impact. Newspapers, film, and television
changed styles of writing and peoples' preferences for reading materials and
storytelling. Then, as now, there was great discomfort in the way media and
storytelling evolved. A 1961 speech by the then-chairman of the FCC called
television a "vast wasteland." If you go further back, there was negative
reaction to the introduction of radio, the use of photos in newspapers, and
even opera, which was seen by 17th-century British intellectuals as "chromatic
torture." There has been a lot of thoughtful expository writing about this; if
you are interested (and can manage to read an entire book) I recommend
checking out Mitchell Stephens "The Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word"
(1) and Walter Ong's "Orality and Literacy" (2). They are somewhat dated now,
but I think they really documented important transitions from antiquity to the
end of the 20th century.

1\.
[https://www.nyu.edu/classes/stephens/rise%20of%20the%20image...](https://www.nyu.edu/classes/stephens/rise%20of%20the%20image%20page.htm)

2\. [http://www.amazon.com/Orality-Literacy-Anniversary-
Edition-A...](http://www.amazon.com/Orality-Literacy-Anniversary-Edition-
Accents/dp/0415538386)

------
Scarblac
This is the subject of Nicholas Carr's _The Shallows: what the Internet is
doing to our brains_.

In a nutshell, he argues that our brain gets better at things that we do a
lot, and worse at things we used to do a lot but now do a lot less. Reading is
not different from any other activity in that sense.

And many people nowadays don't read many long, hard books anymore, and instead
quickly skim short articles and then switch to the next.

So we get better at quickly getting bits of information from short articles,
and worse at staying focused for an hour on the same demanding text.

I find it hard to argue with.

------
akbarnama
I too had not read much in 2014; physical books. This year I decided to read
physical books and have been able to read quite a few.

I would suggest reading some books from 'A Very Short Introduction' series.
Each topic is written by an expert in that field; and is about 130-150 pages.
I have read books on Marx, Foucault, The History of Life. Next up is
Metaphysics; followed by Logic, Planets and Fractals. I am enjoying reading
these in a cafe!

------
Mz
I am sometimes genuinely busy and have trouble finishing articles and what not
that I would like to finish because of that. But a lot of the trouble I had
with reading was health related. I have serious respiratory problems and
reading paper anything causes me problems. I now do almost all my reading
online and I expect to go the kindle route for books at some point in the
future. I am healthier these days and I can occasionally pick up a paper book
and read it, but I do better using an electronic device.

You might look into taking a few supplements or improving the quality of your
diet. We tend to become deficient in certain things as we get older and this
can reduce our ability to focus. Reversing the deficiencies I suffered has
helped me get my brain back, at least somewhat. It's not like I can calculate
math problems faster than you can type them into a calculator these days like
I once could, but I do function better than I did when I was really ill.

Walk more, eat better, consider switching to a kindle reader. Perhaps it is
health related, as it largely was for me.

Best of luck.

------
ddw
I made a conscious decision a few months ago to decrease the number of online
articles I read. I realized that I wasn't finishing most of them (and most
people don't) and if I wasn't learning any relevant to me then they were
basically trivia.

I've concentrated more on slimming down my book shelves by getting to all of
those books that I always wanted to. I'm finding them more illuminating and
enjoyable than any short article. I find them more likely to change my
viewpoint than any catchy article could because someone dedicated months, if
not years, to put their work out there.

As far as finding time, unless you're busy from when you wake up into when
your head is back on the pillow you can find time for what you feel is
important enough. For me I've cut scrolling through articles and social media
for something more substantial.

~~~
stevesearer
Regarding slimming down the personal library, the method I developed was to
get rid of anything I wouldn't recommend to someone else. That really helped
me separate the wheat from the chaff.

For finding time to read, I go through lulls when I try to read before I go to
bed since I almost never can finish a chapter before falling asleep. Instead,
I started carving out time in the afternoons on weekends when I often have a
couple open hours.

------
oxplot
I never liked reading books cover to cover and still don't. But I find that
_new_ (or different to the usual) quiet environments make it a lot easier to
concentrate. For me the public library is one of those places. I put my phone
on silent and can read for few hours at a time. I can even read more when I
sit in the bathroom, than I do on my regular chair at my desk.

It works the same for me with sleeping. Whenever I start being uncomfortable
on my bed, I switch to sofa for a while.

------
t3ra
So it would not be a good idea to wait for someone to just summerize this on
medium?

Jokes apart ; attention span going down is certainly a concern but do you
think we all are getting way more lazier? Shortcuts, one line stack overflow
answers, instant results and 2 min quick fix tutorials are not just killing
attention spans but also making us lazy and bad developers.

------
mydpy
Also, it's frustrating in any leisure activity where I'm actively 'consuming'
media, I find myself 'project managing' that consumption - what I mean is, for
video games, I can only play 3 games at any given time and I can't add any
from my queue into the rotation until I've finished one.

------
CM30
Kind of, though in my case it's more that the internet and video games simply
grab my attention more than books. I mean, if I have nothing else to do, I can
read fine, but if it's between that and say, Super Smash Bros... well, I'm
probably not gonna be able to focus on the book.

------
thelogicbar
I am 24 and became like this from age 18 until recently. I felt like an old
man. In my case it was caused by undiagnosed Celiac Disease. You may get value
from looking into CD, Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity, or other food
intolerances or allergies.

------
vinceyuan
Did you spend too much time on your phone? When many people have nothing to
do, they just check cell phones. It's not good.

If you want to read, read paper books or read on kindle. Don't read on your
phone.

------
carsongross
Yes.

I have a hard time finishing articles and, even, comments.

It's a very bad situation.

------
edoceo
No, I still by paper books and then share them with network. I block time for
reading. I don't read stories. Biz books, code books only.

------
mydpy
I spend my leisure time on other things - mostly if not exclusively gaming -
because I do so much reading professionally.

------
dkraft
I only skimmed through these responses. same.

------
forgottenacc56
Yes definitely. I am become deliterised.

------
aprdm
Yes because of Netflix :(

------
EGreg
No.

