Grew up before feeds, is the long and short of it.
I find audiobooks help a lot for being able to finish books nowadays
When I was a kid I could just devour books if I was interested in them otherwise it’s was a struggle. Straight up to the point of forgetting to eat and whatnot.
Audiobooks though allow me to do things while listening which is cool.
I only got diagnosed with ADHD about 6 months ago as an adult so getting those good habits is still a struggle but way easier with meds as long as I don’t get distracted before they kick in.
I’m not officially diagnosed with ADHD or anything but I do struggle to focus on a singular task, I have a sneaking suspicion that I do have something like that. Anyways, I can’t read books because I just can’t focus on them, same with long articles or any long block of text really. I also would recommend audio books, I’ve “read” tons of great books out there that I otherwise would have never touched. I also use TTS to “read” articles I find online.
Find something that interests you! I struggle to read full books, even when I love the setting. However, I can read shorter stories online without a problem
I think the world has been trending toward short-form content for a very long time now.
We’ve gone from reading books, to skimming articles, to skimming article comments. We’ve gone from TV, to YouTube videos, to TikTok style shorts. We’ve gone from playing video games to watching other people play them in the background.
I noticed that I personally feel happiest when I invest my attention into longer form content. So I have been trying my best to cut out the digital sugar.
- I read books.
- I set a side large chunks of time to immerse myself into video games.
- I subscribe to RSS feeds and read the full articles minus the comments.
I found that these changes have greatly improved my feelings of wellbeing. I’m sure that my SSRI had nothing to do with it.
How do you stop yourself from sliding back into scrolling again?
I disconnect from feeds when I encounter negativity. Also asking questions that don’t get answered well pushes me off of devices now. I like Lemmy, but this place is still somewhat limited in obscure technical capacity at any given moment. I don’t use google or fruit services at all and only use a phone for anything social, so I have no way to get lost in corporate social media black holes. I’m mostly in this position because I climbed out of that situation. They hire the best and brightest to put you into situations where you stay on platform in the first place. I am not in that elite social club. So my only choice is to obstain from contending with them in the first place.
YT through libretube/piped/newpipe functions better for searches and content discovery now if you do not use an account or limit subscriptions by subjects. Like I’m playing with AI stuff now. If I subscribe to a few channels in this space, I can clearly see my search results pool diminish into an echo chamber. If I delete all of my subscriptions in this space, or limit them to a few with proven academic credentials, it alters the quality of my search results substantially. The lack of a large block of videos I find peripherally interesting means I shift onto topics I am motivated to try, test, or take action on quickly. Also, watching an engineer talk math or white paper review content is much more likely to get me to just put down the device and try stuff myself.
Create a reading space, no tech allowed. Then every time you want to go read (could set alarms for that), you set everything aside, go to your space and read.
Understimulating environment. I just go to my car where I can read but not much else. My laptop doesn’t really fit between me and the steering wheel, internet is only on my phone, I don’t have a TV or gaming consoles there…
1 chapter before bed. I used to try to read in big marathons, but it would burn me our for a while, I would almost never find the time, and I wouldn’t make as much progress as I should have
