Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction • Hacker News Board

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#121

Post by weavie » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 10:06 AM UTC

LandR wrote: post #112

The thing I find is hardest about sitting and reading a book is the quietness and being essentially alone with my own thoughts. If I'm sitting watch a film / netflix etc, there is noise and that seems to distract my brain from going to dark places. It's like I'll be reading a page and then by the end of the page I've taken nothing in and my brain is forcing me to think about stuff I don't want to think about. Intrusi…

I would suggest that these are probably not thoughts you should be trying to ignore. What is at the root of your mind telling you that you suck as a person? Do you work with a therapist? It may help.. If you can face into these and change whatever it is you need to then maybe you can start reading and sleeping again, plus your life will be better in just about every way!

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#122

Post by dan00 » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 10:11 AM UTC

LandR wrote: post #112

The thing I find is hardest about sitting and reading a book is the quietness and being essentially alone with my own thoughts. If I'm sitting watch a film / netflix etc, there is noise and that seems to distract my brain from going to dark places. It's like I'll be reading a page and then by the end of the page I've taken nothing in and my brain is forcing me to think about stuff I don't want to think about. Intrusi…

Yes, this sucks. It can be quite hard to see and understand, that these thoughts are your own activity, you are enabling these thoughts.

You can't control if thoughts pop up, but you have control if you are following these thoughts, if you continue them.

It might be very difficult to see the difference between the pop up of a thought and its following, because if you always follow a thought you get used to it, it just automatically happens.

It can be quite hard to get rid of this habit, it takes time and energy, but the more you try to not automatically follow thoughts - but only if you really want to - the less thoughts will randomly pop up.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#123

Post by mapcars » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 10:17 AM UTC

Constant distraction happens only if you chose it. Chose it to not happen.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#124

Post by superqwert » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 10:25 AM UTC

Something I've found to be exceptionally good at helping with reading (I've been reading ~50 books a year for the past 5 years, on top of a full time job and family) is to use Goodreads - it gives you those short term endorphins when you can mark a book as read and can help it compete with all the other offerings of the world that reward you more hormonally.

Alternatively, if you don't want to use the tool, I would recommend getting a nice notepad to write in some short book reviews, which will give you your endorphins as you fill the book up more. And you get the additional benefit of being able to look back through your notes to see what you thought of various books and how your thought x time ago.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#125

Post by geolgau » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 10:49 AM UTC

LandR wrote: post #109

CharlesMerriam2 wrote: post #75

As I read this story, some moving advertisements start along the top and sides. After ten seconds, a floating bar covers the text. After a few more, a modal dialog. Then the 'share me now' buttons, obscuring the text. Then I leave. Too few websites offer an experience for someone to read the content, and so we will see "Reading Online Content in the Age of Constant Distraction" in HackerNews.

Firefox reader mode kills all of this.

this! x1000

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#126

Post by geolgau » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 10:50 AM UTC

CharlesMerriam2 wrote: post #75

As I read this story, some moving advertisements start along the top and sides. After ten seconds, a floating bar covers the text. After a few more, a modal dialog. Then the 'share me now' buttons, obscuring the text. Then I leave. Too few websites offer an experience for someone to read the content, and so we will see "Reading Online Content in the Age of Constant Distraction" in HackerNews.

How can you live in 2019 without an ad blocker? I'm on that page and never got any ads/intrusions.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#127

Post by wilsonnb3 » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 11:12 AM UTC

djohnston wrote: post #95

i think you can find "deep time" on the internet. the internet is just a medium, and its speed is only one of many factors that make using it distracting. i've read things blogs or wikis that have taken hours of intense focus to grok. my point is that the dichotomy of books and the internet doesn't seem particularly valuable, while "deep time" vs "shallow time" is.

I would argue that while you can find deep works on the internet, it’s still a medium that encourages shallower works than the printing press did.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#128

Post by barabba » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 11:19 AM UTC

burtonator wrote: post #28

I'm actually working on an app specifically to address this problem. https://getpolarized.io/ It builds on the idea of 'bookmarks' and we have a new take on them called 'pagemarks' which is basically a box that spans multiple pages. This way you can keep track of the parts of the book you've read and jump around. I like reading multiple textbooks, articles, etc and go back and forth often. This allows me to easily su…

Am I mistaken or there is no support for bookmarks / table of contents in the pdf reader? This makes reading a lot more difficult.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#129

Post by 2T1Qka0rEiPr » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 11:23 AM UTC

criddell wrote: post #73

chki wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've recently been shown a lot of ads for a service called "blinkist" where the idea is to provide short summaries of non-fiction books and I think your comment captures why that is a very bad idea. Reading and capturing an idea takes time; it can't be properly substituted by a few minutes of "listening to crucial insights from leading thinkers while you’re on the go." Their business model is in a way the complete op…

I don't think fiction can be shrunk down, but I think lots of non-fiction books can. I'm thinking specifically of some books that I've read in the past couple of years that include: * Deep Work * Influence * Thinking Fast and Slow * Predictably Irrational * Getting Things Done * How to Win Friends and Influence People I think all of these books suffer from the common pattern of present an idea then a bunch of example…

Agreed in principle, and clearly there's no binary rule as every book will have its own level of "padding" / laboring the point, but I think the (O)OPs comment about "internalizing" is interesting, and personally I don't think a "tl;dr" of the books above wouldn't have had the same effect on me.

Re: Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

#130

Post by rsanheim » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 11:31 AM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #117

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea what anything you wrote means. Can you explain in everyday language, assuming I'm your grandma? Why do you want to slice chapters from separate books together and insert 'textual content' inbetween them?

Books, sliced by chapter, in an RSS feed reader. So I can read, say, a NYT article, then chapter one of a book, then maybe a blog post, then chapter one of a different book, then a long-form article, then chapter two of the first book.

you are missing the point of reading anything long form