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How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

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Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#91

Post by interleave »

nicolas_t wrote: post #78

I have the opposite problem. My problem with ADHD is that if I start a novel and the novel is decent, I will not stop reading until I finish the book or series of book. No matter what work I need to do, I'll even forget to eat and will not go to sleep until I'm either finished or I'm so tired that I need reread the same sentence multiple times before I understand it. It's great in that I've read a lot of books, but i…

I very much agree and share a similar experience.

Struggling with ADHD is not a matter of not being able to focus. Part of the issue is directing and keeping attention on non-pleasant tasks that are stacked up against a brain chronically low on dopamine and norepinephrine transmission.

As someone with diagnosed and treated ADHD, these articles are misleading. In my opinion it's dangerous to claim "Do this ONE behavioural thing and your ADHD goes away (or gets easier.)"

After struggling with ADHD for 25+ years I can tell you: These life-hacks don't work. Please, consult with a medical professional instead. It'll save you years of agony and disappointment.

Again, if you have – or suspect – ADHD, work with a psychiatrist to discuss diagnosis and treatment options. Period.

Quoting Dr. Russell Barkeley "ADHD is one, if not the best-understood psychiatric conditions. We understand it for several decades now - it's also called the diabetes of psychiatry because there's treatment"[^1].

So, we know what it is and have known how to treat it. It's a neuro-genetic disease, and we have had working medications for – I think – 50 years including the obvious methylphenidate and dexamphetamines.

After reading the article and so many like it, I feel frustrated because I think they're predatory. They're targeting neuro-divergent people like myself. And boy, did I fall into those traps over and over again until I enrolled in actual medical treatment.

I'll assume that Jacqueline writes and published this in good faith to a point. My smell-test says otherwise - but please correct me if I'm wrong: The article smells like a classic "authority" post that's designed to generate leads for her mailing-list via the "free"-for-email ebook "YOUR ADHD STRENGTHS" just below. Once singed up I imagine I'll... [conjecture!] get an email drip campaign for a week providing "value" to join her community to eventually be offered an intro offer for $37 with an upsell for $197 etc.

[^1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCAGc-rkIfo

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#92

Post by ghaff »

jarenmf wrote: post #63
she11c0de wrote: post #24

I don't have ADHD but often find it hard to finish books too. I honestly think that there's a lot of books that are simply not worth reading. Reading a book is quite a commitment (may take up to a month for me). I often lose interest once I realize that whole book is a single idea that could be summed up in a blog post but stretched to fit 300 pages.

Exactly. Most books are bloated. No one would publish a 20 pages book, if something is going on a book format it needs to hit a certain size.

Yes. There are a lot of books, say "business" books, that properly fleshed out with examples and context are longer than any magazine is going to publish. (Lots of the oft-quoted concepts like Crossing the Chasm fit into this category.) But they could easily fit in something like 20 to 75 pages. However, publishing economics--which still broadly apply--dictate something like a 250-300 page work.

With my last book, I expanded on a couple areas in a new edition and I feel better about the overall information density. But in the original, I definitely felt I was padding here and there to hit a page target.

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#93

Post by toxik »

nicbou wrote: post #84

I really dislike this sort of blog. Every article feels like it was written for their affiliates and for search engines, and rarely for the readers. It's certainly not written for people with ADHD. Here's the only useful paragraph in the article: > This idea came from Megan, a guest on Hal Elrod’s podcast. Megan explained she keeps track of all the books she reads in a spreadsheet. Each time she finishes a book she a…

It reads like it was generated by GPT3 or something. Words without meaning, entire paragraphs that don't really convey information.

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#94

Post by nicbou »

teekert wrote: post #64
yigitcakar wrote: post #48

The article lacked substance but I am glad that we are talking about reading with ADHD here. I don't feel guilty about not finishing books because most of the times if I force myself to finish a book that I don't find interesting enough, I don't remember the information in the book anyway. Over time I have learned to trust my brain, and figured that it will remember the important parts I read. If the book bores me th…

I don't have the diagnosis but certainly recognize add elements in how I navigate the world. My conclusion was that there are actually quite a lot of books that just start out great and objectively become worse as the page count goes up (like The subtle art of not giving a F. You really start feeling "yeah, ok, I get it." There are also books that are the other way around (like Atlas shrugged) where you struggle thro…

> The subtle art of not giving a F*

This is a great example. I liked this book, but it could have been a blog article, or hell, even a single sentence: Konmari can also apply to obligations.

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#95

Post by Leparamour »

yigitcakar wrote: post #48

The article lacked substance but I am glad that we are talking about reading with ADHD here. I don't feel guilty about not finishing books because most of the times if I force myself to finish a book that I don't find interesting enough, I don't remember the information in the book anyway. Over time I have learned to trust my brain, and figured that it will remember the important parts I read. If the book bores me th…

Do you follow a certain system for taking notes for non-fiction books?

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#96

Post by timw4mail »

arkitaip wrote: post #46
gcatalfamo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you so much. They make articles for people with ADHD then make it unreadable for them.

Articles on procrastination have a similar problem and I would tell you exactly what that problem was but I never finish reading the articles...

Is this recursive irony?

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#97

Post by JoeCianflone »

No. ADHD does not work this way for me, or people like me who are inattentive . This article is the equivalent of the time my primary care physician said, “just use a calendar”. You want me to maintain a set of documents? Buddy, without meds I can’t remember to brush my fucking teeth. I’m not exaggerating. ADHD is a spectrum, articles like this paint everyone with the same brush, which furthers many people to feel like complete failures.

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#98

Post by kjleitz »

toxik wrote: post #93
nicbou wrote: post #84

I really dislike this sort of blog. Every article feels like it was written for their affiliates and for search engines, and rarely for the readers. It's certainly not written for people with ADHD. Here's the only useful paragraph in the article: > This idea came from Megan, a guest on Hal Elrod’s podcast. Megan explained she keeps track of all the books she reads in a spreadsheet. Each time she finishes a book she a…

It reads like it was generated by GPT3 or something. Words without meaning, entire paragraphs that don't really convey information.

I agree. It reads like those GPT-3-generated articles from a while back that were spread on HN as an experiment[1]. They also tended to be (IIRC) self-help style blog posts, and we're about as substantive as this one.

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2020/8/16/21371049/gpt...

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#100

Post by nicbou »

gcatalfamo wrote: post #37
qart wrote: post #32

For the benefit of people like me, I'm quoting the part of the article that should have been at the top. > 1. Create a Word or Google document to track your books if spreadsheets fill you with fear. > 2. You don’t need to read the whole book. Write down your ONE thing from the part of the book you did read. > 3. Review the document weekly, to keep the ideas fresh in your mind. > 4. If you find that you stopped implem…

Thank you so much. They make articles for people with ADHD then make it unreadable for them.

I believe that those articles are unreadable for everyone. They are written for search engines.

I built a whole business around giving straightforward answers. I remove superfluous text, and I use formatting to make my content easier to skim. There's no clickbait, no cookie notice, no newsletter prompt, no author bio and no sidebar content. There's just you and the answer you came for, and it loads in under 500 milliseconds.

This is working so well that it makes me wonder why other websites go out of their way to hide their answers. When I have simple gardening questions ("how much sun does [plant] need?", I have to click 3-4 results and scroll a few pages to get the answer. Even with a finely tuned ad blocker, the experience is infuriating.

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