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I get this with games too. And shows. And end up just scrolling Lemmy instead of doing anything better with my time…
I am exactly the same; why are we like this?
two reasons:
- because we’re so drained by life that we don’t even have the energy to put forward to doing an activity that we know will enjoy.
- we’re so used to having to scrounge together any free time we can get that we struggle to commit to something that takes any amount of time.
There is another reason: the guilty feeling that something more productive could be done within that time. Or in the wise words of Retro Bird on YouTube, “I don’t deserve to Donkey Kong”
I have this WHILE reading. I’ll just start reading a page, and after the first words my mind wanders, but my eyes keep reading the words. Then when I reach the end of the page I realize that I have no idea what I just read.
I enjoy doing this. I’m usually thinking about the book I’m reading, so, while it might take me twice as long to finish a book, I also got to experience much more of the book, even if it was just my imagination.
Of course, it’s an absolute removed when it’s something I have to read within a certain time frame, like for school or something.
Then you have to go back and reread…it was a big reason why when I took tests back in the day I would do horribly on them. Math, science, and anything that was non literate I would do great on.
For me, I can usually get out of this by taking a walk. No headphones, just listening to my surroundings. Helps me to clear my head. Or a workout.
Was about to say “that’s just ADHD” but then I saw the community
It’s also not just ADHD. That happens to me a lot.
Wait
also fits depression
Well, not the sit still or focus issues, but the same result, an interest with no ability to act on it
ah, reading comprehension is not happening today apparently lol
yep, can confirm
Also, Gamer’s block. You want to play. You finally have the time to play. You have a pile of games that you’ve been wanting to get through, but you just can’t devote the time to it. It’s like a form of procrastination, except instead of procrastinating about chores/responsibilities, you’re procrastinating about your free time. In a way, some books/games kind of become a new “responsibility”, in that once you start them, you may feel obligated to continue. So then it becomes one more thing you “have” to do.
All first world problems, maybe not as high-stakes as Kanye’s problems, but problems nonetheless.
I feel this one hard.
In my mind, before I can play a game, I need to have lots of time, nothing else that I’m doing later, and the perfect amount of energy to really concentrate on it. Unfortunately, life has gotten busy, so I’m trying to get more comfortable playing for 20min here, 20min there instead of scrolling on my phone.
I partially solved this by getting a Steam Deck and playing on my commutes. I can’t say I’ve been plowing through my backlog, but I’m certainly making progress!
Audiobooks with video games that don’t have dialogue are what got me into books
I have a handful of “low focus” games for podcasts, audiobooks, youtube video essays, etc.
Vampire Survivors, or almost any “bullet heaven” type game works well. Old School Runescape also has a ton of ways to skill grind with minimal attention needed. Turn based RPGs with minimal story are great too.
Played through a handful of Pokemon randomizers and romhacks while binging King of the Hill.
But the king for me for a while was Elite: Dangerous. Hop in my cargo ship, use spansh road to riches to generate a trading route, and binge stuff while flying fron planet to planet in supercruise.
OSRS player here with 20 years under my belt for RuneScape as a whole and the amount of books I’ve read throughout those years is astronomical.
I need to try audiobooks. I generally struggle with auditory input, but that’s mostly if I’m trying to dedicate all my focus to it. Games + audiobooks might be my jam
Interesting idea. Which games did you like?
Binding of isaac and many rougelikes fit pretty well, a lot have vert good music but I like taking on a book more(also book recommendations would be the golgatha series for magical wild west, johannes cabal series that’s the adventures of a decent but unfriendly necromancer, john dies at the end is a cosmic horror comedy series, space team is stupid fun scifi, oh and the black company follows a fantasy mercenary group who are sine of the very best but also too threatening to not be betrayed by the employers that’s mostly told from the perspective of their medic
Sounds like some good book recommendations. I like black comedy and scifi. John Dies at the End is one that I’ve heard of before. Thanks!
It’s awful but I always come back to the mcdonalds part of john dies at the
when i really really want to read something ill usually pick up both the audiobook and the ebook so i can actually fucking focus on it.
I read so much in my youth, I could read cover to cover in one go thanks to the power of hyperfocus. Reading was fun and synergised greatly with my ADD-fueled daydreaming.
Unfortunately though high school came along and had to fuck up my intrinsic motivation by force feeding the boomer drivel that ‘everybody should have read in their lives’, and having to write book reports where you’d have to analyse those books to death. Assignments could vary from analysing all the different narrative arcs in the story to the relationship between each main character in the story and even more obscure stuff that I don’t even (want to) remember.
Anyway, this meant reading the ‘classic’ Dutch writers like Reve, Mullisch, Wolkers etc and then analysing a story you didn’t even care about. Fun fact: those writers seem to have an extremely limited repertoire: do you want to read about addiction, WWII, or sex? Ok ok, you had ‘het Gouden Ei’ by Krabbé, on which the movie ‘the Vanishing’ was based. Guess that was a breath of less stale air.
But in the end it sucked the enjoyment I felt when reading from my very soul and replaced it with the feeling that reading books is a chore. At times a slight shimmer of that old spark returns, but never for long. Depending on how often I feel like reading, getting through a book usually takes me months to years these days and rarely captures me like in the past. I’ll never forgive the sadistic bastards who came up with this part of our educational system.
Anyway, sorry for dumping this on you, turned out to be more of a rant than I initially intended. If anybody knows how to convince my brain to consider reading to be fun again, I welcome any insights.
You’re describing exactly what happened to me. In elementary school, I read so many books that I would win free books each semester. We had mandatory reading quizzes each month for books of our choice, and high scorers would select a few books to keep from a big spread. I would read larger, more complex books from the 3rd to 6th grades, as they would net me more reading points than simple books. Thus, my (competitive) book reading habit would feed into reading books I received for free, which in turn could be used to take extra quizzes to win more books.
Then, middle school happened. I was stuck reading books I didn’t care for, covering topics I was already familiar with, and writing analyses that I was already capable of forming within my head. This continued through high school, where I found that I was so disillusioned with narrative literature that I much preferred non-fiction and educational content. I fell out of love with reading, and I don’t think I’ve finished reading a book on my own time, out of enjoyment, in almost a decade (excluding textbooks and non-fiction).
I just can’t find the strength to read through any narratives, as all the busy work ruined reading for me. My least favorite portion of reading for school was being made to fill out entire tables of characters, with details on the mannerisms, presentations, quotes, etc. of each. It was all bullshit.
Because of the hyper focus thing, I had already read all the required reading books. The teachers believed me too, because they saw how many books I was tearing through every year. I would turn in a summary of the book, and then go read something that was “at my level,” such as The Divine Comedy, Canterbury Tales, War and Peace, or Dr. Zhivago. When I gave my analysis of those books, I at least tried to make them sound interesting, rather than ponderous.
The upshot was that when I got to University, I didn’t tell them I already read the books, I just breezed through the work.
I enjoyed reading this rant, I found it very relatable, even though it sounds like we have quite different academic backgrounds. Nowadays, I read a decent amount of non fiction for fun, but I still struggle with reader’s block if I don’t feel like I have a reason to read, like a sort of self-given assignment to be studying for. That’s probably school’s fault too
I resonate with this. To get back into the habit I had to find ways to engage multiple senses: https://smoores.gitlab.io/storyteller/
My mom would have to make me put books down to eat dinner. Then came along 5th grade. We had to read 50 books, each one representing a US state and the states were grouped up in different categories. The books had to be chosen from a pre approved list and the books were anywhere from 6th grade to 8th grade reading difficulty. Then we had to write a full page summary on the book. Which meant on average we were reading more than a book a week. That piled on top of all the other homework the other teachers piled on and it was fucking miserable. I spent almost every school night from the moment I got home to the moment I had to go to bed doing homework, also I had to get up early because I was the first bus stop so yay getting up at 5:30 AM to make the bus. Bonus was I was also the last stop so I got to spend over 2 hours a day on the bus. I usually had so much homework that I’d start doing it on the bus home. Oh and if you fell behind in reading you got punished by staying inside for 2nd recess to read more. By the time I left 5th grade I hated school, I hated reading, I hated teachers, and I hated learning. And I still do to this day. I feel like the education system failed me and I’m suffering for it now.
Well, that takes ‘required reading’ to a whole new dystopian level. I’m sorry you had to go through that, that’s terrible and I just cannot see any other outcome than forging a severe resentment against reading. Hopefully you’ll one day find the motivation again, but I certainly wouldn’t blame you if you never want to read anything again after going through that.
It’s called Burnout.
Look at the sub you’re on
oops :)
Is there such a thing as ADHD burnout similar to Autistic burnout? Might be at least not as far of topic then :)
can’t relate, my reader’s block is that i could follow 100 stories with daily chapter releases and i’d still read them all in 5 minutes and then sit there crying because i’m bored out of my mind
I’m both. Somehow. I apparently switch between them.
Are there any resources on how to potentially improve this? I know audiobooks, but I do really want to actually read. I did talk to my therapist in the past about it but they were no help.
I have an e-ink ereader (Kobo Libra Colour) that makes it way less intimidating. Just turn it on any time and read just as much as you can whenever you find a moment.
I’ve got a Kindle that rarely leaves the bathroom anymore, for this reason. Captive audience with a few minutes to kill? Sure, I can get through a chapter…
I don’t know if this only makes a difference for me, but in case others find it useful: I use an e-reader and set it to have very large font size, resulting in a small amount of content per page. For some reason, when I spend too much time on a page, my mind starts to wander, but if I’m moving on to the next page quickly, I feel more engaged and stay with it more easily.
That actually did help me a lot, I think the feeling of finishing a page even though you technically didn’t helps keep up the satisfaction as you don’t feel like there is this monumental amount of reading left to do. I know with books sometimes I’ll be reading, stop, look at the amount I have left, and it discourages me to continue.
I second the ereader suggestion. Since buying one I’ve been reading at the same insane rate I used to when I was a bored kid. It’s a lower barrier to reading when there isn’t a massive pile of books infront of you.
Yeah I do have one and the other commenter idea of having it in the bathroom is a good idea. Though I do have a lot of physical books I want to reach that are psychology and programming related. So trying to more figure out those.
Though on my e-reader I right now have 3 books 33% finished 😂 (though two are anthologies of multiple books or stories so at least there is that)
Personally, I used to be pressured to finish books I’m halfway through but I’ve since learnt that it’s so much better to quit books you just don’t like. Good books (subjective to you) are ones where it doesn’t feel like work to read. That being said I torrent most of mine, I can see how it’s different if you bought em.
As for textbooks, I’ve found no satisfactory way to read them except on a pc.
Yeah I feel that, I also think there are some books where the friction is there enough that audiobooks are perfectly fine as a substitute. I think for textbooks maybe it’s more than I need a direct and tangible reason to use the knowledge but then it won’t feel I’m reading to learn but reading to do something else. It ain’t easy 😂
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That’s definitely too basic. I work on a screen all day and use my phone for communication as much as anything. I could block apps but that hasn’t changed my behaviors. Also we have a neurodivegence which inherently can’t distinguish the importance of stimuli so I just replace one distraction with another.
I remember a few years back, after I finished my university exams (which were online), I was desperate for a break from a screen, but all of the things I would do to chill out from exams (namely, spending time with friends) was mediated by a screen.
I know it can be really difficult to listen to the advice to “turn off all distractions” when I need to interact with technology in order to do most things besides my martial arts and spending time with my partner. I also rarely keep to a habit or just reducing something, I need to replace it with something that pushes me to do something else which isn’t easy.
Something that I’ve found useful is finding ways of leveraging inertia[1]. A big part of this is using separate devices for different things. Some people find it useful to have a clear divide between work devices and personal, but that’s never worked for me, I tend to separate contexts. I’m getting too abstract, so I’ll bring it back with a few concrete examples:
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If I decide to take a break and do something fun on my laptop, I might sit somewhere out of reach of my charger, which limits me to around 2 hours of battery life. If I have to get up to put my laptop on charge, I find it easier to change task back to working if I’m already up.
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If I am gaming on my PC and want to wrap that up but am at risk of a “just 10 more minutes”, I might order takeout (if I remember to eat), because that’s another forced stop to my task and when I’m up, it’s much easier to honestly ask “is gaming what I want/need to be doing right now” than it is when I’m mid-game
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If a friend I want to reply to has messaged me when I need to work, I may make myself reply to them from my main computer at my desk, because I’m less likely to get stuck doomscrolling on my phone in bed in that world.
Inertia definition below, in case you or anyone else reading this are unfamiliar with it in this context: [1]: a term borrowed from physics, which means basically the same in the neurodivergent context as it does in physics: an object in rest tends to stay at rest, and an object in motion tends to stay in motion, UNLESS acted on by an outside force. In an ADHD sense, this captures some aspects of task switching; procrastination and task activation; hyper focusing and cycles where you do lots and then crash.
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This seems unnecessarily hostile. I think your original comment makes a good point, as does the person replying to you. If you don’t want to be a part of a discussion, then fair enough, but this is an oddly judgemental comment to be making.
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Is that really what you want, to be a part of perpetuating hostility? I legitimately don’t understand why the tone escalated so much: You said use screens less, someone replied to you with a few reasons why that might not be possible for some people, and in your reply to that, you just sort of blew up?
The reality is that most people are less patient than I am and will just downvote and move along. Maybe I should have too, but I thought that your original comment had the potential to seed an interesting discussion. I could say more here, but it’s not my job to convince you of the merits of not being an asshole in a world where that niche is already more than fulfilled. And who am I to talk, maybe negating discussion and getting downvotes are the results you want
You are literally telling a psychologist that you know better about how this works. Also I’m not unhappy with myself, I love myself. I also know there are things I can do to improve and am seeking advice from my community to do so. Your advice basically boils down to “just stop lol” which would not be helpful at all to anyone for anything.
I also specifically asked for resources, not your opinions, so do keep them to yourself in the future.
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You are literally talking in a group about a neurodivegence, a type of mental health issue which makes us function differently than others. This means there are behaviors we can’t easily change due to how our neurological functioning.
Do you truely believe you are in 100% in control of every little action you do? That no underlying cognitive barriers exist to make you do things or not? Are you some type of robot or a human being?
Also, do you even have ADHD? If you do, you must either be some evolved specimen above us mere mortals or you lack the empathy and self awareness to understand that people can sometimes struggle to change themselves.
I can both have struggles to change my behavior and not hate myself at the same time, it’s called accepting myself for who I am.
If it really were as simple as you make it out to be, we wouldn’t be here now, would we? What an asshole.
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It’s not even reading the book, it’s getting ready to read the book. Very frustrating
Don’t forget getting ready to get ready to read the book.
AUDIOBOOKS BABY
In 2020 I bought a new tablet just so I could get back to reading books.
99% of time I’ve used it for YouTube.
I’m getting back to reading more ebooks just now, OK?
(A local ebook store said it’s quitting this month. As I was transferring my EPUB purchases to Google Play Books, I realised I hadn’t actually used this app for ages. Despite, you know, it being one of the few ebook readers I like.)
You might try out FBReader. It has lots of options to customize it, and you can store your books in Calibre where it can access them via OPDS instead of getting locked into some online BS like Google.
Oh wow, FBReader was literally the first Android EPUB reader I used… In 2013 or so. I guess I need to see how it has improved since then.
Also, Calibre and I have a strong frenemies relationship. Once upon a time I wanted to meticulously download, de-DRM, catalog and locally archive all of my ebooks. But while Calibre has the technological chops to do it, usability is a bit quirky. I actually just installed Calibre at my current system and will bring over my old ebook library as soon as I dig up my old laptop. And also bring over about a decade of Kindle purchases (most unread, yeah).
Edit: Wikipedia on FBReader:
In 2015 the software for all platforms became closed-source: the old open-source code hasn’t been updated since. The Android app was split into Free and Premium versions,
Awwwww crap. Hope there’s an actually maintained open source fork.
I use Book Reader (it’s on F-Droid) for my phone, which works well enough… don’t know how it performs on a tablet or if it has the features you’re looking for.
I would wholeheartedly recommend a dedicated e-reader with E-Ink display for more ‘serious’ reading (I have a Tolino for the evenings/bed. Depending on where you are located you could also look into PocketBooks or Kobos… just make sure they’re not chaining you to a closed ecosystem like Kindles).
I really love calibre, but agree it can be a bit quirky. Like many ADHD people, I’m my own worst enemy sometimes, when I attempt to do a big import of books and then it’s too much work and my library gets messy. Something I did that helped was I had different tags for different levels of processed. Newly imported books would be auto-tagged “new”. Then I’d batch process them and remove the tag if I fully completed it. Often I’d burn out when I’d discover a book that still had DRM, or was missing OCR (ability to select text within pdf), so I’d add “DRM” or “NoOCR” tags. My workflow works pretty well for me now, because I’ve made it easier to do half a job
True! One of the big things that really put me off from reading ebooks was that I used to buy book bundles (e.g. from HumbleBundle) and then just dumped them in my library. I really should have been cataloging each new book bundle, but I didn’t, somehow. I just saw a giant big mess of my own doing in the ebook library and went “nope” and that just became another Big Pile of Stuff I Need To Deal With Later.
Book bundles make things messy, yeah.
Something that I’ve really struggled with is that I wish it were easier to make notes of where you’ve gotten a recommendation from. Like let’s say I’m learning Python and there’s a dizzying amount of books available for that. Someone I personally know and respect gives a glowing recommendation of a book, so I download it and process it’s metadata in calibre or similar. Then a Reddit thread has a dump of free books. I download and import those. Then a blogger I really like recommends a few books, so I retrieve any of those I haven’t got yet and import them. Time passes, and I go looking in my library for a book to learn Python with, and I get overwhelmed by choices and I can’t remember which of them were good and for what reasons.
I have a similar problem with bookmarks, because sure you can add tags, but tags are best when you’ve got a limited vocabulary, to maximise reusability. What if I just want to write a brief note about why I deem this worthy of saving, so that I’m not confused when I’m skimming over bookmarks months or years later.
Yah, FBreader is all closed source now AFAIK. But it’s still free, though you can get premium, I’ve never bothered.
As for Calibre, I’ve used the DRM once upon a time and I think it’s still there. I find it easier to use Openbooks to get the DRM free versions from Usenet of anything I’ve bought rather than dink around in Calibre.
I have a docker-compose.yml that stands up a Guacamole-enabled Calibre server, CalibreWeb and Openbooks if you’re interested. IDK how it would work on Windows docker if that’s your thing, but I run it on a rPi with docker and it’s fine.
Got the A-1 iPad mini for reading and never installed Youtube on it. It is my dedicated reading tablet and I love it. Usually I wouldn’t buy Apple products, but the new processor had me feeling a bit excited. The Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Fire 13" both had glaring issues and reading the internet’s negative views on android tablets left me feeling meh. The better kindle e-readers are really expensive too so I thought to just buy a fully functional high quality tablet instead.
I just gave up on reading. It simply does not provide enough brain stimulation for the time it takes.
There are some books I want to read but I wont, and thats fine I guess.
Try audiobooks. It got me out of that kid of block. Can listen during showers, commutes, doing chores. It’s great!
Part of it is forcing yourself to read the books you haven’t finished instead of browsing the internet during downtime. Doesn’t always work, but it works sometimes.
Having a book club where you can talk about what you’ve read with your friends (and wine, a lot of wine) also helps.
This is the same reason why watching a movie on TV with ads is easier than pulling it up on whatever service you use.
Once you choose the movie, you’re committed to it.
