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Ask HN: Do you find reading increasingly challenging?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you find reading increasingly challenging?

#21

Post by 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.

Re: Ask HN: Do you find reading increasingly challenging?

#22

Post by sheepmullet »

SilasX wrote: post #8
d23 wrote: post #5

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…

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.

> 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%."

Re: Ask HN: Do you find reading increasingly challenging?

#23

Post by SilasX »

sheepmullet wrote: post #22
SilasX wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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 art…

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".

Re: Ask HN: Do you find reading increasingly challenging?

#25

Post by such_a_casual »

SilasX wrote: post #20
such_a_casual wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that it takes a lot less time to come up with 50 words. 50 words don't require the kind of organization that 5,000 words require in order to stay coherent. It takes an afternoon to write an article. It can take years to write a book. Through bare necessity, longer spans of text require more attention and quality.

Not true! As the saying goes, "I would have written a shorter letter, but I didn't have the time."[1] Writing a shorter post, especially one that summarizes what you'll get out of an article, typically takes more mental work since you have to pack more insight into fewer words. Writing an investigative article, of course, takes more time and thought but it's not because you're putting more words out; if anything, pad…

Counter-argument: Bad writers are bad writers. But a longer piece means the author can't hide the fact that they can't write.

Re: Ask HN: Do you find reading increasingly challenging?

#26

Post by 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.

Re: Ask HN: Do you find reading increasingly challenging?

#27

Post by AkshayD08 »

jszymborski wrote: post #12
Shorel wrote: post #11

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'…

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.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Do you find reading increasingly challenging?

#28

Post by sheepmullet »

SilasX wrote: post #23
sheepmullet wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 art…

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…

Totally agree. There have always been plenty of crappy articles and simply being long doesn't mean being on point.

Re: Ask HN: Do you find reading increasingly challenging?

#30

Post by knughit »

stdbrouw wrote: post #4

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…

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