Hacker News Reader

Comment by gosub100 | Hacker News Reader

Did you have the inability to read books? I notice that I simply cannot focus on reading a book to save my life. I can read internet comments and articles all day though. If I try to read a book I get annoyed that they're "not making their point" fast enough, especially with fiction and visual descriptions of people and places. I used to just complain about it, but now I wonder if thats actually pinpointing something wrong with my brain (such as ADHD). If I'm reading fiction, I do not translate the word "red" with the color, things like that. And usually within 2-3 paragraphs, my eyes are reading the text but my brain is thinking about computers or what I need to get done that weekend. It's awful because I'm missing out on an entire mode of art but I dont know what to do about it. I've only been enthralled in a book once or twice in my 40 years of life.

View on HN

I read a ludicrous amount of books as a kid. Stuff like The Wheel of Time, 1000+ page books.

Now I just buy books and don't read them. I'll also buy audiobooks and bounce between them not really remembering much of the plots until I fall asleep.

I think the instant gratification of refreshing reddit/digg(rip)/instagram and having completely new things to see/read has destroyed my long term attention span.

I don't really like watching TV or playing consoles without having my laptop on my lap so that I can multitask and if I get bored for a minute refresh and see new things. It's bad. I'm single right now so I haven't actually used my living room TV in months. I do everything on my computer.

I feel claustrophobic if I can't multitask.

This is definitely a common thing these days. I'll mention that as someone diagnosed (within the last year) the same is true about me. But what's also distinguishing is that there's hyper-observant behavior. For example I might be out with friends and having a hard time maintaining a conversation because I'm queued into the conversations at the table to my left and to my right. Not because I want to, but because I can't turn it off. I've been like that since a kid too. Even back in 2005 I'd have the TV on, my laptop out, and be doing homework while clicking through Stumble Upon. So I definitely think there are aspects of our modern society that are creating an attention deficit disorder at a larger level but I think there are still things that distinguish ADHD from attention/novelty addiction. But don't be afraid to get tested if you think you have ADHD, it'll be covered by your insurance and can help you learn to better handle your issues.

But I definitely think we do need a discussion, especially as the people developing these addictive technologies, as to the consequences of what we build. Maybe you shouldn't take that job at TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, or Facebook, maybe you should. Just consider more than the money because if you can get one of those jobs you can probably get another high paying job. Or maybe question certain features and/or metrics and ask if they actually align with your real goals and if those goals are actually beneficial or harmful (it's frequently not obvious a priori). Move fast and break things is a useful strategy but not in every situation. Not everything can be repaired as easily as they can be broken.

> Now I just buy books and don't read them. I'll also buy audiobooks and bounce between them not really remembering much of the plots until I fall asleep.

I'm sorta addicted to Audio books. I apparently listened to slightly over 2000 one year on Audible.

Though for me, I can have half a dozen books and remember most of the plot(s). Smaller details will slip my mind, but the overall plot gist is just like a fun puzzle for my ADHD brain and it's back within minutes. Though for the life of me I can't recall if I took my medication today.

> I don't really like watching TV ...

Ugh, I've gotten that way in the past few years. It's kinda annoying, and I can only "focus" if it's a really good TV show.

fuck, are you me?

My issue with reading is that my eyes will continue on while my brain has already left the station, so to speak. I'll end up having to go back and re-read sentences/paragraphs.

I started doing some research (prior to speaking with my psychiatrist) and started noticing some ADHD-esque behaviors in my toddler. I'm not looking to get them diagnosed (yet?), because who knows what is "normal young kid inattentiveness and hyperactivity" versus anything else, but ADHD is absolutely hereditary and a family history is one aspect that is/was used to diagnose.

This is a good resource I've read (well, listened to the audiobook of..): https://www.amazon.com/Driven-Distraction-Revised-Recognizin...

I have a 9 year old dyslexic boy with solid ADHD (impulsive). It’s been quite the journey (so far). He is heading back to ‘normal’ school next semester with no special support and fully integrated almost like a neurotypical. Sort of.

I have the same ADHD style:

Overall lessons: 1. Sleep. Melatonin. Transformational 2. Love. Love and more love. 3. Forgiveness and understanding 4. Throwing the kitchen sink at him for finding the outlet (sport) he loved. Gave him a sense of direction. 5. Ritalin: assists with ability to concentrate and therefore learn. Used only for education. 6. Educate yourself and get diagnosed yourself if you have. 7. Be the change in yourself and mirror and explain what you know (and don’t know) 8. Full spectrum intelligence test. Know where the issues are (processing speed, etc) and also where the strengths are.

We got a semi diagnosis at 5, then year on year assessments to see what we could know.

I wish there was a better support and road map for the steps to go through as a parent. I feel very lucky to be a dad of a child with ADHD in this time though.

This is good to hear that you have a solid foundation of how to best work with your son. I definitely wish I had that level of support growing up! I'm hoping to do the same with my kid.

The challenging kids split you apart and help you work out what needs to happen. THE definitive life experience for me. Good luck!!

I think your situation (especially with your child) outlines one of the insidious challenges we face in our modern society: breaking through the confusion and understanding the nuance of an issue (in this case, ADHD).

We've all heard the misinformation tropes "Back in my day, a kid was hyper because he wanted to play, nowadays $BOGEYMAN says those kids need to be medicated so they can get a 4.0", and they sound so alluring to large groups of people, so they write off ADHD altogether. Yet I distinctly remember kids from my childhood who could not hold a conversation, they would literally break off into a new topic while you were mid-sentence with them. Tell me how that kid can possibly learn anything if he doesn't even know that he vacated a conversation.

This is a parallel to George Carlin's "It's called shell-shock" spiel, or used by people to deny the existence of depression. It's very difficult to both convey nuance, and get people to accept it, even though it (the nuance) abuts life-threatening issues.

For people my age it was "Back in my day, people applied good old fashioned discipline. That's all ADHD is, a lack of discipline." Often discipline came via the strap or similar.

> Yet I distinctly remember kids from my childhood who could not hold a conversation, they would literally break off into a new topic while you were mid-sentence with them.

I have some variant of this - I'm constantly, subconsciously cutting in during someone else's sentence just to blurt out what immediately came to my brain, because I usually forget it by the time they are done. It's something I'm really working on, but it gets better day-by-day.

take good care of the kids nutrition. read up on it. take it serious. let it eat clean. don't fuck this up.

the connection between ADHD and nutrition is brutally underrated, in terms of amounts per meal, intake of food additives and the mix as well. if starchy carbs, then very little fat and little protein. if meat, then no bread, no potatoes, no noodles or similar stuff at all. veggies are always fine except if the digestion of the kid says otherwise. sugar is a tricky thing. timing is important in terms of time of day and time after food intake but it works bad after some foods, which is different depending on geographical origin of grandparents.

you don't need to point a camera on the kid or anything. the effects of foods and the stuff that the body releases to digest the different compounds on body and brain become obvious within an hour or two. but you need to know the baseline(s) of your kid, e.g. time of day, after activities, around certain people, in places, crowds, moods, etc. make sure you do.

this is something I have long thought about. carbs make me batty.

doing keto made my skin look much better, but also helped me focus, and I found it was easier to sleep. whenever I had cheat days and crushed like half a pizza I found I immediately was exhausted and had trouble focusing.

also coffee vs. tea. switching to tea every other day instead of coffee really dove home how much of an impact coffee has on things like serotonin[1].

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35345760/#:~:text=Excessive%....

interesting. will definitely take a look at caffeine's effect on serotonin. thank you.

most tea brands have a bad impact on my digestion and while I thought it must be the theine, which, as I learned, is just caffeine, I now believe it's connected to residue pesticides[1] since "homegrown teas" don't have the same highly undesirable impact.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36537161/

anything that screws with my digestion makes my gut, the literal and metaphorical one, itchy and I get nervous. similar things happen when I eat short-chained carbs in amounts over 100g in one meal but the negative effect disappears after an at least 13h fasting period or 16h+ if I drank liquor the night before. so I assume it has to do with enzymes released in the mouth and in later stages of digestion since I sometimes start to feel itchy even though I only started chewing oats for example.

I believe my sensitivity and ADHD are linked to the amount of enzymes produced by my body during digestion and or some genetic mutation in an enzyme associated with the respective metabolisms.

https://www.nysca.com/index.php?option=com_dailyplanetblog&v...

the lack of focus and the exhaustion after eating carbs are relatable, but again , only if the fasting period wasn't long enough.

I tried Keto, but it made me quite a bit slower, which wasn't bad in terms of performance, but my cognitive processing speed was so much slower that I could not get used to it.

You might check out BeeLine Reader (I am the creator). [1] It's fairly popular in the ADHD community because it enhances visual focus while you're reading. Some people are able to read for 2x-10x as long with BeeLine versus without. I'm always happy to help out HNers with a free code for our browser plugin, just shoot me an email (contact in profile).

1: http://www.beelinereader.com

Is this the same beeline from 10 years ago? I sort of remember installing it back in middle school and really loving it and helping my ability to read walls of text. I never knew it got popular within the ADHD community or that it was still around.

Another reader helper I liked was the one that flashed words in place but that seemed more like a speed read hack rather than actually comprehending what you read, never used it seriously like BeeLine

Yep, the same one. You probably heard of us from our Show HN, [1] which I later found out was the 9th-most-popular Show HN, by upvote count. It really gave us a boost, and led to a flurry of media coverage!

We still have our browser plugins for web [2] and PDF, [3] but are now also integrated into education platforms, [4] and even some news websites. [5]

I've been bootstrapping it (and raising a family) so growth has not been as meteoric as some other startups, but it's been consistently up-and-to-the-right!

If there's ever a platform you'd like to see us work with, just let us know and we'll get on it.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6335784

2: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beeline-reader/ifj...

3: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beeline-reader-pdf...

4: https://help.perlego.com/en/articles/6386814-read-faster-wit...

5: https://inewsource.org/2023/01/25/san-diego-unified-students...

If you run Lighthouse against that website it will provide actionable suggestions for improving it. More info: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/lighthouse/overview/

Appreciate it — will take a look!

I have this happen, I noticed reading is something I kind of need to practice. Maybe short comments ruined my brain lol.

I started getting into reading long books again last year. The beginning was rough, I was starting to think there was something wrong me. Sometimes I still do, but just being consistent and not hard on my self, I'm able to focus longer on reading and enjoy it. Some books and authors are easier then others too. LOTR series was work at times, enders game was pretty easy.

Alot if non fiction sucks too though and is pretty long winded.

If your worried about missing out on writing, there are short stories, and novellas to read

I can read novels I'm interested in. I read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy, but DNF a LOT of books that I cannot get into. My wife cannot not finish a book. Doesn't matter how bad it is, if she starts it she will eventually make her way through the book. She may put it down for a while and read something else in between but she persists. Regardless, we both average a little over a book a week. The game changer for me was shifting from reading at night (often well into the morning) to switching to audiobooks that I can listen to while hauling kids around, working in the garage or doing chores. Now I can DNF audiobooks because the narrator pronounces a word weird.

I am the same, I found a book I could hyper focus on. That was the Chaos Walking by Patrick Ness

I was so fully pulled into that world I was quite sad once I got to the end because I know I'm not probably never going to find a book like that again.

I do this with most texts I have to read each sentence 3-4 times because I know I will have made up half of the words I just read.

I have the same issue with my brain not really thinking about the current situation, if I'm talking to someone I will get bored in a minute or two and it's a real effort to force myself to pay attention.

I think this is pretty common. I can read certain rare books that really capture my attention, and often I read hundreds of pages at a time.

Typically, requiring complete silence.

This is me now, but I used to be great at reading books as a kid/teenager.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com