How to Read Books When You Have ADHD • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#71

Post by tgaj » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 9:57 AM UTC

RaceWon wrote: post #65

Pictograph instructions: that's the real SOB of ADHD. Reading novels is not a chore for me, depending. I typically find an author I like and then read the the hell out of his writing. Stephen King short stories are a pretty good place to start imo if you want to get into reading (again), though I started with Vonnegut myself. I am a famous re-reader of books btw. Its like slipping into a comfortable "another world" f…

I am not sure it problems with left-right or navigation are connected with ADHD. I have ADHD and never had problems like these. But I'm more ADD without Hyperactivity and some symptoms are different.

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#72

Post by neilshevlin » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 10:06 AM UTC

There have been only a few things I have done with frequency in my life. Playing musical instruments in one of them. I have never been deliberate in practice. I have never sat down and made a schedule to practice playing the guitar or piano. But having a guitar always in visible line of sight has meant that I've practiced consistently everyday for years at a time so long as I have a guitar in the room.

Books don't have the ease of re-use. There's too much friction involved with a book. So I read whatever I please and give up frequently. Reducing this friction, in every domain, but especially in the sciences would have big impacts on my contributions to the field. If you could visualise and make learning slippery, ADHD people would likely perform much better. But the diligence is still needed. My musical ability has benefited enormously from knowing what I'm playing and recording the things I do play. The same thing can apply with learning. Technology can really shine at doing all of the boring stuff that your irregularly dopamine-ized brain refuses to do. We just havent gotten around to doing it. But it is necessary if you want to do great work.

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#73

Post by tgaj » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 10:06 AM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #52

austincheney wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been reading more aloud to the child at night for about 20-30 minutes before bed. Sometimes the material is well received other times the child has snuck a book or device into bed and has no idea what was read. I haven’t determined how well the information is retained yet. On an unrelated note playing games with the child results in conditions that look like sleep deprivation. They cannot slow the game down wi…

One thing I learned tutoring fellow students in math while in high school / college was that trying to do hard unfamiliar things (or just something they didn’t choose to do) makes plenty of people who do not have ADHD feel overwhelmed/fearful/anxious/tired, especially when they are put on the spot. Some people have a “play dead” kind of response to stress, while others get angry and start fighting. It’s not clear to…

To be honest, inattention to details is one of typical symptoms of ADHD. So there are probably people with ADHD who do not have this problem, but I would say that most of the time they are probably misdiagnosed.

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#74

Post by tpaulin » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 10:17 AM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #14

bluedays wrote: post #3

That was pretty disappointing. I was hoping for more substance. Seems rather than giving strategies on how to read books with ADHD the article devolved into telling people with ADHD to embrace that they never finish any books.

Agreed. It wasn't so much 'how to read books' as 'how to get something out of books (without actually reading most of them)'. For people who want to actually get through books, I'd recommend this tool [1], which I created several years back. It has become fairly popular in the ADHD world and is recommended at top universities (Stanford/Yale/Dartmouth) to students with ADHD and dyslexia. It works with Kindle books as…

This looks like a neat idea! A couple of questions if you don't mind: 1. Does the pass apply to the Firefox version too? 2. When you say "It works with Kindle books..." what do you mean? On desktop only? (My) Kindle doesn't have colour.

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#75

Post by adrusi » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 10:26 AM UTC

My trick: get the audiobook version, and listen while doing something else, which prevents my mind from wandering too far from the text. Ideally not something I was going to do anyway, but something that I'm only doing to occupy myself while I listen. I find that driving or cleaning are OK, but the problem is that they're both often too brief to really get into the book, and that they both occasionally demand cognition, and during those times I lose track of what's going on in the book.

I've found that the ideal accompaniments to audiobook listening are taking a walk and playing Nuclear Throne, which is the only video game that I've both found to be endlessly engaging, and requires absolutely no cognition. It's $12, runs on windows/mac/linux, has DRM-free versions available, and would probably perform adequately on your toaster.

If anyone knows of other games that work in this niche, please share. As much as I love occupying my hands with Nuclear Throne, I wouldn't mind mixing things up.

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#76

Post by JackMorgan » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 10:27 AM UTC

RaceWon wrote: post #65

Pictograph instructions: that's the real SOB of ADHD. Reading novels is not a chore for me, depending. I typically find an author I like and then read the the hell out of his writing. Stephen King short stories are a pretty good place to start imo if you want to get into reading (again), though I started with Vonnegut myself. I am a famous re-reader of books btw. Its like slipping into a comfortable "another world" f…

I believe ADHD people are fully capable of training their minds to become extremely productive. Granted, most people don't want to train anything, much less their minds, so it doesn't manifest much in the wild.

But in those that do, it's like a superpower. I spent several years training my hyperfocus to the point where, barring externalities like lack of sleep or food, I can engage it at will.

For challenging or creative tasks, it's like a superpower. I can go at levels far past most people's ability to focus. My entire mind will be engaged and thriving at full blast. Presentations, writing, designing, and creating I can do as easily as breathing.

There are real downsides, but I wouldn't trade them for anything.

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#77

Post by diqwndwqiond » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 10:30 AM UTC

My solution:

I keep a bunch of books from all topic( kubernets, python, ML, Design, Investing, HTTP, Cooking) and since my interests fluctuate(one day I like investing the other programming etc) then if today I'm interested in investing, then I'll read a investing book, mark some parts of it to be made into flashcards, mark the boring parts with another color(so I can read later) and then(another day) I make de flashcards and read the boring parts.

I have also noticed that I get 'sick' of a book after reading for some time, then I need to either stop reading or go to read something new.

This is called incremental reading and has significantly increase the amount I read.

https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Incremental_reading

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#78

Post by nicolas_t » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 10:59 AM UTC

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 it's also been a source of problems more than once when I blew things off because I have a book to finish.

With non-fiction, it depends, if the subject interests me, I can become equally focused, if it doesn't, there's very little chances that I will finish it. But I also have weird interests, once I became obsessed with finding the best health insurance plan and read all the 100 of pages of terms and conditions of the different plans in a day (very dry material). I know that now that I'm no longer in the mood to do that, I would never be able to read a single page.

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#79

Post by throw4738 » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 11:06 AM UTC

adrusi wrote: post #75

My trick: get the audiobook version, and listen while doing something else, which prevents my mind from wandering too far from the text. Ideally not something I was going to do anyway, but something that I'm only doing to occupy myself while I listen. I find that driving or cleaning are OK, but the problem is that they're both often too brief to really get into the book, and that they both occasionally demand cogniti…

That will destroy your concentration over long term.

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#80

Post by F5-Chi90 » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 11:19 AM UTC

I have distressed because I often can't finish reading books, but this opinion changed my mind.

I thought of my personality, my interest shifting to various things as my shortcoming, but I will apply the concept of "One Thing" to my life and try to gather information what is useful to me from my daily life.