Does anyone have general tips to get back into reading instead of using my phone? I've tried willpowering it but it never works..
🌧️ candycanearter [✍️ short and simple]
May 06 · 5 months ago · 👍 krash, magnusmww
27 Comments ↓
You need to give your brain time to get used to not staring at your phone constantly. It'll feel difficult at first.
Maybe just give yourself increasing amounts of time each day where your phone is either turned off or placed out of the way? Start at 30 minutes (or 15 or 10 or whatever you can do comfortably) and work your way up. Once your brain calms down a bit, reading may start to be more appealing again!
Willpower is not an option.
Just let your phone in silence in a drawer and sit in your reading desk (if it's a place you don't use with your phone or computer, better) and try to read there for 20 minutes without go to the drawer.
will be difficult to pay attention at start, but the attention it's a muscle you need to train!
I bought a dumb phone. keep the smartphone on the charger wifi only.
I think Covid may have rotted my brain. I haven't enjoyed a book since before. Barely managed to hobble my way through a couple. Can't blame it on social media or the phone -- not doing any social media except right here.
Have kids and read to them.
Mine are 10 and I read long novels to them doing about 30-40 minutes per night.
🌲 Half_Elf_Monk · May 06 at 20:13:
Kudos to the options presented by Nexy and gritty. Double kudos to what pista said. There's a lot of people racing to the base of your brainstem, and they've got a headstart on you. But you can accomplish self-discipline step by step. Apply the willpower intelligently, in little bits, with reasonable metrics. I've found it really helpful to put my phone in another room and leave it there, while I go... somewhere else. The phrase goes: "Out of sight, out of mind."
🚀 RubyMaelstrom · May 07 at 03:50:
Since you already have a reflex to reach for your phone when you have downtime, you could also start reading books on your phone. Put your reading app on your main screen and encourage yourself to open it and read instead of whatever else you may be looking at on there.Remember that when you're reading a book on your phone, you're making progress on something, while the other apps are just timewasters.
🌧️ candycanearter [OP, ✍️] · May 07 at 12:31:
alright, thanks. i think my library has a digital borrowing system
I updated my Kindle to another brand of ereader, I carry that and use an eink phone to... "Limit" my doomscrolling.
Try "Dungeon Crawler Carl"
🍄 magnusmww · May 12 at 07:54:
I struggle with this too sometimes. What I do is to try to make a scheduled slot for reading, or set some small goal like 10 pages a day or something. For me, it's always starting that is the issue. Once I get going, I can usually keep it up and enjoy it again. Not sure if it is the same for you.
👻 nightliife · May 13 at 03:56:
Find a book that is about something interesting to you, and practice active reading: set an intention of why the book drew your attention and what you want to get out of it, then keep a notebook to record interesting quotes/passages, to take notes, to reflect on any ideas that come to mind while reading or other reflections on what you've read in that sitting. I have found that taking a more active and intentional approach to reading, and recording those thoughts down, makes the experience feel like a more valuable use of time. And as the pages of your notebook fill, you will feel the deep satisfaction of the accumulation of your thoughts, which will encourage you to do even more.
I saw a silly toot the other day with something like "Just read for six minutes, see how you feel after" and that helped me pick up the novel I'm trying to get through
I have found that gamifying or publicly showing off your activies has helped for me. I posted when I read books on my mastodon feed and I created a capsule page that tracked all my books, by date, with a graph. You could also use something like bookwyrm to publish when you read stuff.
After the first month or two and you see your progress you'll want to beat yourself the next month, the next year.
@pista
How can i start to read?
I will attest that having kids does not help reading, except for good night moon and such. Decades later, kids still consume most of my meatspace time. It also bothers me when reading is performative. A public log? Why? If you want ro discuss a book, great. If you have a list of favorites, why not. But turning reading into a competitive, influencer-wannabe 'social media' activity to collect likes and followers? bah. 📡 DoubleHelix · Jul 31 at 22:48: Try reading some other genre. Manga, psychology, neurobiology, US army manuals... Something I thought of today that I have not yet tried is reading short books. Pick something thin, and read it cover-to-cover. If my thinking is correct, having finished a book in one go at least once will be very satisfying. Also, consider talking to some fellow bookworms about it. I would normally recommend something friendly, but an ever-so-slightly toxic community could potentially provide some peer pressure, which could be helpful. This second paragraph is probably bad advice, but it makes sense to me. If reading itself doesn't provide enough endorphins, maybe reading is not a good fit for now. I go in waves, and sometimes don't read much or at all for long periods. It's not a competitive sport, and stress can make it not enjoyable for me. I like to have stretches of time so I can immerse and enjoy Last time I was in the habit it started with reading before bed. I got a kindle with the backlight turned way down to read in the dark so I could pass out while reading. It's a really comfy habit, and if you're trying to learn something from the book you end up thinking about it while you're asleep sometimes. It's not for everybody though, and sometimes you end up having to read the same thing twice I think my reading habit was broken by purchasing an e-reader. At first I was excited about having a few hundred books on it, and traveling with it for a few months with it seemed like I was finally in the future... But then it started annoying me -- i could not easily jump back to see something, and switching books -- I always enjoyed reading two or three books at the same time -- was really cumbersome. I felt handicapped, hands tied behind my back. And having 700 books that I did not personally select turned out to be yet another burden. Almost a job, sorting through them, mostly books I did not want. Unlike physical books, where you can leaf through them and read a few random paragraphs.... And finally, I hate pdf manuals. With printed manuals I will use a dozen bookmarks and sticky notes, and have them worn to open exactly where I want. No such luck with e-readers. I lost interest in my Kobe, and have no idea what happened to it. But my reading habit was destroyed in the process.,. 🌧️ candycanearter [OP, ✍️] · Aug 05 at 22:14: @bl0rt i may try that? What worked for me is reading a physical book while listening to the audiobook at the same time. It didn't take more than a page or two before I would get bored and frustrated by how slow the audio was and turn it off. Essentially, I used my own poor attention against itself. @Aeolus, many audiobook players can alter reading speed. Many audiobooks are read by horrible readers, and I can't listen to a lot of them due to weird accents or affectations of speach. But yeah, I find it hard to read, listen, or do anything these days. After 3 rounds of COVID and 4 vaccinations, my brain is totally blown. @stack Oh yeah, I wasn't saying to do it with everything you read. That's not feasible. It's just a crutch to get back into reading. Like I said, I shut the audio off within a page or two. By the time I finished the first book I tried it on, I didn't need to do it anymore. So you don't need to deal with weird accents or whatever. All you need is a single audiobook you do enjoy. I am not the type to adjust audio speed on videos and such, I would find it aesthetically displeasing to get audio anywhere near my actual reading speed, but I can see how my strategy wouldn't work for people who do that. @Aeolus I am the same way with slow audio. when i do audio books i typically run them at 3x. 2x feels like normal talking speed but slower than i read so i speed it up. I accidentally turned on a weird skip silence feature upon installing my audiobook player and it made it incredibly awful. Took me a few days to realize why everything sounded like crap
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