Used to, but I’ve managed to keep it under control. For reference, I have ADHD, and due to my carreer and hobbies I spend most of the day in front of a screen. I’ve gotten the algorithms from sites and apps I use to favor media on the longer side and have no issues sticking to it, or reading for long periods of time. Since I started taking medication for ADHD, it’s gotten even better still. Though I won’t lie, when reading I often had to read the same thing twice or thrice because I didn’t really read it.
What’s stopping you from trying again? Treat it like working out: schedule 30 minutes per day in which you have to read the book, and you have to try honestly. It doesn’t matter if you get distracted and have to start over all the time, just keep trying. After a while, your habits will change and it will come naturally.
I feel this is the way to get better. I have recently tried to start “living in the moment” and not be on my phone all the time. It’s not bad. I feel a lot less stress trying to keep up with shit that don’t matter and it is something you need to practice to get better at. Just like most things in life.
It’s a brain plasticity thing. Like any exercise, you have to keep it trained or you will lose your endurance and muscle memory.
Gotta cultivate the habits you want to keep, or else habits will form on their own that you don’t necessarily want, not unlike weeds in an untended garden.
I kinda have this issue with a weird combination of what you just said, liek i like pysical books campared to e-books but i would rather do something on a computer or something thatn read also i find myself to get bored easily. hopefully this makes sense…
Maybe subscribe to some media that’s more about longer-form journalism? So you can read stuff that’s informative and interesting, but doesn’t require the commitment of a longer book. And it has the bonus of supporting proper journalism, rather than click-bait rage news. I’m finding The New Yorker really good for this. I signed up for a trial before the Reddit thing blew up, but I think I’ll be keeping it long-term now.
Almost everyone is affected to some degree, it’s a problem affecting the general population and it’s getting worse. It came with the popularity of social media and attention grabbing games on smartphones. Tiktok, Instagram, Candycrush, etc. It all aims to turn us into dopamine junkies with quick excitement and constant stimulation of the senses And these platforms are constantly getting better at it, Tiktok being the most recent example.
It’s so bad that even the typical instrumental intro to songs is shorter nowadays because people would drop the song if the intro was too long.
After a pause in my reading habit, it was similar for me but I just kept at it and now I read a lot quite easily. Although, with the bite sized content, my patience for media taking too long to get to the core message, is significantly reduced. If I don’t get what the image, text or video is about within the first 5 seconds, I move on. Especially with the reels of people talking some random stuff with just their face in the video. Absolutely loathe that.
I do fast forward through shows like you. Especially when they’re putting too much fluff before the conflict/resolution. No patience for that at all. And I watch k-dramas and anime, so it gets difficult sometimes haha.
