Hacker News Reader

Comment by theshrike79 | Hacker News Reader

What helped me with reading was:

1) Read on a Kindle or any other e-ink reader. It's always just in the spot you left it in and it's light enough to carry around everywhere. I usually read while I eat and continue to the end of the chapter after I'm done eating. Try to open a book instead of Reddit/Instagram/Facebook/HN

2) Read something fun. You don't need to pick stuff that's super-deep or insightful or productive. Pick a simple "Main character is really good at $thing but doesn't know it yet" -book. Skip the 1000 page monsters. My suggestions: Bobiverse and the Murderbot series.

View on HN

One of my issues is grabbing the phone to kill time while waiting even for a small amount of time.

Ordered a bagel? Let me grab my phone for the 2 minutes it takes for them to call my number.

In an uber ride? Turn on the phone...

Waiting for a deploy? Let me scroll through reddit a bit.

I love the kindle, but reading a page at a time here and there isn't appealing to me, personally.

Instead, I've been trying to make a conscious effort to just be aware of my present physical space instead of grabbing for my phone during those little waits. I'm old enough to have grown up without a phone until after I graduated. I /know/ that I'll be perfectly fine without picking up my phone... but this habit of constant digital information ingestion is hard to break.

I just installed an ereader on my phone so that I can open that instead of this website and it works about half the time

I put the book I'm reading right on my home screen. Open screen, press cover of book, opens to where I left off

I put the Kindle app on my first page of apps and all the time sink apps deep inside a folder on the last page of apps. I even named the folder "No". It's still hard to stay away, but I am definitely reading more often.

I actually took stress-management class at an old job. It was taught by 3 actual psychologists studying stress and it's effects on people.

The main thing I retained from that was that your body has power over your mind.

I, for example, tend to _always_ grab my phone when waiting for the elevator. Now, as per their instructions, I take 3 deep breaths first and then grab the phone.

It's amazing how much that changes the way you use it. You relax a bit and don't get the urge to doomscroll on Twitter or Reddit.

It also shows you how bad you are at breathing. Modern humans tend to breathe fast and shallow and it signals "emergency" to your body. Deep breathing or box breathing completely changes your mindset. No need to do any fancy mindfulness or meditation, just breathe.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com