31–40 of 47 posts
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!
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.
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…
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.
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've found that crippling my tech is a nice workaround. Some examples:
Sticking to dead tree or kindle-like devices instead of PDF on a computer / tablet makes me concentrate, finish and think about the book I'm reading.
Playing in some dumbed down console allows me to enjoy a videogame and relax without distractions. I rarely play PC games to the end.
I reach my productivity peak with an OpenBSD netbook without internet connection and some spartan window manager like cwm or wmii. I'm also reading man files regularly now instead of compulsively asking my search engine of choice.
I still hate sitting still for 90 minutes in order to watch a movie though.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.