Did anyone else click through to the article and think: “okay, try not to skim the article about how bad skim-reading is!”?
I really like this article. It is aligning with very formless thoughts I have been having over the past year about the varying qualities of information and how it can affect your minds health. Much like a food diet, I have been thinking that it is wise to cultivate a healthy “information diet” in order to preserve good mental health.
Amid frustration with my degrading attention span last year, I swore off a lot of the social media things (Twitter, most of all) to see if I could regain the ability to actually get through some books. The results were quite astonishing in my case, I was able to crack through a few books and actually focus on side projects.
Unfortunately, I am not as optimistic as the writer here that we will be able to pull out of it. Much like modern society battles overweightness, diabetes and all kinds of ailments that stem from poor diet, I think we will suffer a similar fate when it comes to moderating our information intake.
I think it is not about your attention span degrading. It is a matter of adaptation to too many things competing for our attention, and the desire to consume all this information. (It is an interesting question as such as to actually why one has to consume all this)
There are advertorials, advertisements, tweets, news entries, status updates, articles, books, mailing lists, and everything in between.
Since there are too many things, one needs to prioritize. But to prioritize one has to understand the value: Is there anything new for me? Will it be entertaining? Will it be factual? Will it support my point of views? Will it challenge my point of views? Is it trustworthy? Is it plausible? Is there a hidden agenda? Is it propaganda? Whose points does it support? And so on.
And how to find out at least some of these without reading the entire text? Skim it!
Now, skimming usually gives enough information about the value. But when done deliberately, one can not only assess the value, but often get the main point(s) quickly too. (Call it "speed reading")
I've had (and still have) this same "problem", but I don't consider it a problem anymore. Skimming is good, but one has to be able to turn it off.
This is what I do: skim, for quick screening and early out to avoid wasting time. Then, if there's not much time available, speed read, do a 2nd and maybe 3rd pass of skimming.
If there's plenty of time and information seems worthwhile, then sit down and start reading as if there's nothing else you can do. Like you were stuck on a cottage without your phone/tablet and it rains outside -- reading is the only thing you can do without getting bored or going to sleep. (I don't know if you can relate to this idea, you can find your own memory with a similar idea)
Since I already know there is some value, it motivates me to go on.
Now, when it comes to fact books, I try not to read from cover to cover, but chapter to chapter and then re-evaluate. Fiction books are different, since it's usually for entertainment (and of course sometimes for interesting ideas).
So, I am optimistic that people will learn new strategies and not all hope is lost.
Why do you think your attention span is degrading? Think about it this way: if you are able to concentrate enough to watch a movie, there is nothing wrong with you and nothing is stopping you from deep reading, but maybe just too boring and uncompetitive text (uncompetitive with other content and other forms of content).
Most people find salad very boring and "uncompetitive" compared to ice cream or potato chips... but that's not the point. We need to keep our diets diverse and healthy, otherwise our lives degrade or end prematurely.
Hedonism is unsustainable... sometimes we simply need to do the healthy boring stuff. Do taxes, eat vegetables, exercise the mind and body. Ya know, adult 101.
Funny, while i can concentrate on reading, I don't have the patience to watch a Hollywood blockbuster without fast forwarding or multitasking any more. I'm guessing because they're so similar in mechanics (with different skins, which may distract you) that they're really not worth the time.
When you dumb things down, and shorten them you reach a larger audience.
Another factor to consider is that journalism is no longer attracting the quality of authors it used to, and that clickbait is the easiest way for online newspapers to make money.
There is some empirical research that our attention spans are degrading on average. I don't have any of it handy, but there's a great book I had to read back in high school called "The Shallows" by Nicholas Carr that goes into it.
I saw that after posting. Left it as is to see if people will skim it or not.
Also, I am not a native English speaker. So most times as I formulate something in my mind, the speed difference between mind and hand causes me to miss words.
I repeat with my kids about this very concept like a broken record hundred times.
'Mental obesity' is as real as 'physical obesity'
> Much like modern society battles overweightness, diabetes and all kinds of ailments that stem from poor diet, I think we will suffer a similar fate when it comes to moderating our information intake.
I actually noticed (and then embraced) a recalcitrant inclination in myself, to explicitly skim-read the article to see whether it was worth it. So now that I did, here's a tl;dr: we've changed the way we read to more often do skim-reading, and the effect might be that we less fully understand the text we're reading and are hence less able to be critical of it.
I really like this article. It is aligning with very formless thoughts I have been having over the past year about the varying qualities of information and how it can affect your minds health. Much like a food diet, I have been thinking that it is wise to cultivate a healthy “information diet” in order to preserve good mental health.
Amid frustration with my degrading attention span last year, I swore off a lot of the social media things (Twitter, most of all) to see if I could regain the ability to actually get through some books. The results were quite astonishing in my case, I was able to crack through a few books and actually focus on side projects.
Unfortunately, I am not as optimistic as the writer here that we will be able to pull out of it. Much like modern society battles overweightness, diabetes and all kinds of ailments that stem from poor diet, I think we will suffer a similar fate when it comes to moderating our information intake.