I Learned to Read Again

This is purely my experience but the difference between reading a good book vs consuming any other kind of media has been night vs day. I don't think any long article has thoroughly altered my perception about something important in my life. Certainly no Instagram reel has. Short form has been mostly useless, long form has sometimes been useful. But multiple books have had a life-changing impact on me over the course of my life.

I read a lot of books in my 20s. Many were forgettable, but a couple totally realigned my view of reality and what was possible and I went off to create a highly unconventional life because of them.

I then stopped reading books in my 30s - that time mostly got spent reading web articles and social media instead. This was a stagnant period of my life in many ways.

In my 40s I started to wonder if there might be a connection and I started making a conscious effort to start reading books again. Surprise surprise, a few years later I'm experiencing one of the most creative and productive periods of my life.

A great book will take a big idea and expound on it from multiple angles. It'll build both a logical and an emotional case for looking at the world differently. For me at least this type of shift in thinking takes reading multiple chapters worth of good arguments get it fully embedded in my brain.

Remember, the author of a great book may spend _years_ researching it before he even gets started on the writing part. The best books are next level stuff and I feel no other medium compares.

There will of course be many books that don't have this impact and end up being throwaways. I will buy them and if they aren't hooking me I simply don't finish them.

I think this all applies equally to fiction and non-fiction.

I think there might be some people out there who've experienced this degree of personal change from interacting with certain online communities. That's the only analogue I can think of. For me though it's books.

Fix your ADHD. It certainly comes with constant fatigue. It becomes clear that ADHD, like autism, is related to a lack of energy for the brain, and disappears when enough energy is available. If you feel too tired to focus, if you think you might need to sleep more than others, have the need for naps and so on, go consult a sleep clinic, get tested for all kinds of conditions, and find and fix the root cause. Ritalin won't fix the root cause and depending on how tired you are, will rather deplete your energy levels than improve your status in the long run. Ritalin gives you an illusion, not a remedy. Causes of fatigue can be a chronic inflammatory state, some immune reactions triggered too often...

Do you have allergies? Rashes when you eat some food? Trembling hands? Some skin problems? Hearing loss or tinnitus? Are you abnormally tired after sports? Do you have abnormal cramps after sports or drinking alcohol, or when not sleeping enough? Regular teeth health issues? Do you have a sensitive vague nerve? Did you faint more than other people in the course of your life? Does your body need more time to heal? Do you feel dizziness when standing up? Have you always had the impression that you actually aren't that stable on your feet, even while actually practising a lot of sports? What about headaches and migraines? When you work, have you specialised in some tasks that are/feel quite systematic for you? Are social interactions or other tasks that require new analysis exhausting for you? These are signs that you optimise your energy expenditure by focusing on tasks that barely require you to think with much energy.

Lack of energy is a very good reason for the brain to avoid using energy for its executive function, the function that is actually impaired in people with ADHD. It's normal, and trying to fix that feels exhausting, which is why people with ADHD avoid spending that energy.

The executive function is preliminary to focusing with other parts of the brain. If it's impaired, the brain won't even try to focus with other parts for the actual work. Two problems solved at once. Twice the energy spared.

Find the root cause of your ADHD (which often is just a symptom) and fix it.

I believe we should.. step back a bit, and agree on what we mean by "reading books", vs "other things on a screen"; you all mean the tension between reading cumulative attention-intensive material versus discontinuous context-resetting material, right?

Screen addiction is a funny term that made realize that it’s the perfect term for this.

I remember in a recent city blackout, me and other people , that didn't have internet or comms, would instinctively pull out their phones and open apps knowingly that there is no connection.

I wonder what’s this about??

I recently realized this when I started a 30 day „digital declutter“ and banned myself from social media, YouTube etc for 30 days.

It’s interesting how ruling out those options of spending my time made me default to reading more.

I also noticed I had a much better attention span for long-form movies (2+ hours used to be hard for paying attention to one thing).