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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 bitch 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!
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/
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.
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 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
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 :)
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.
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.
AUDIOBOOKS BABY
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.
I’m like this with video games and shows tbh
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.
I’ve been reading House of Leaves and I’m struggling to get through it because the characters are just abrasive fuckheads tbh. Only halfway through after like two months.
Are you able to give a short summary what it’s about? I’ve had a few people saying it’s fantastic and very special to them but I didn’t really get much of an answer why. And trying to find anything on the internet hasn’t been successful to the point where I get what’s so appealing about it.
I could of course just try reading it for myself but it’s currently in a backlog along with quite a few other books :P
People like to gatekeep it because it’s unique in its formatting and style.
Basically it’s a story with a ton of nested framing devices. You have:
- A guy named Navidson whose house keeps changing its geometry, until one day an infinite, sprawling series of corridors opens up, which he then explores with a team of professionals. Navidson is a jealous asshole who constantly gets into ego battles with every man around him.
- A guy named Zampano, who is writing a pseudo-academic analysis of Navidson’s journey, stating that it all happened in a movie. Zampano is a paper-thin character who is only really incidentally connected to the story and doesn’t get a ton of development until you’re far into the novel.
- A guy named Johnny, who finds Zampano’s writings after he dies and reads them/adds footnotes. Johnny is our main perspective character and is, imo, an irredeemable womanizer who probably has schizophrenia. I swear half his scenes are him boning some random woman he just met, and the other half are word salad or incoherent stories that draw vague parallels to Zampano’s writings.
- “The editors”, who are compiling all of these notes and footnotes into a book with appendices, which is canonically what you’re reading as the end user.
The story unfolds in a way that invites you to read through footnotes, appendices, and sprawling side-narratives to a point where you can just get lost in random threads. Some people really like that, I find it annoying. It would be more involving if the characters were better. Even the side characters are mostly just assholes or set dressing, and every woman in the story is a loose slut to a point where it’s weird.
Thanks for the explanation :D I remember some of the things I found out before and now it finally makes more sense. I saw some of the names you mentioned but it never clicked for me that it’s (in-universe) multiple people’s writings that make up the book. It definitely sounds interesting, and I’m fearing and looking forward to how cringe-worthy the characters can get.
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 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.
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).
