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Comment by a13n | Hacker News Reader

agreed on energy for reading. do you think it’s that we’re getting older or that the friction associated with consuming information is just getting lower and lower over time?

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So my energy levels have declined noticeably from age 20 to 30. I thought it was mostly my own chronic health issues causing accelerated aging, but many of my friends are making similar complaints.

I did notice far before this point (e.g. age 10 to 20) that my patience for reading had gone down significantly. If I had to guess I'd say that in my case it's due to an underlying anxiety that started in early teens and never left me. Drowning it out seems to require something more stimulating than reading (on paper).

(Perhaps meditation or therapy (shadow integration?) would help here. I've certainly had glimpses of inner peace during times when I was meditating regularly. One insight from this time: "holy crap, I always thought I needed to struggle harder, but it turns out I just needed to learn how to relax...")

I can get through audiobooks but I can only consume them while traveling or doing chores. If I'm sitting down, the restlessness is too high and I can't concentrate on the book.

I also have ADHD and heard similar things from others with ADHD, so I'm not sure to what degree this translates to others.

Wanted to share that I also had intense anxiety/depression well into my thirties but was able to finally sort it out a few years ago.

I think your phrase "learn how to relax" is spot-on. I was chronically under-slept and chronically over-focused on school, university, career, side-hustle(s), etc.--without much great effect I might add. My brain was so wound up from a decade-plus of hyper-vigilance that I had actually forgotten how to relax.

Obviously, I am not you and n=1, but hopefully it is encouraging to know that you might not always need to drown it out.

I never had ADHD or related attention problems. However, I find the way interwebs has evolved over years and to basically trained our brains to be so focused on super short pieces of simply digestible content has basically turned me off of longer form content. I’ve noticed my preference for immediate gratification has increased significantly. It feels like I’m developing an attention disorder in my middle age years.

I read a huge amount every day, lots of news articles, chapters of whatever book, random material of interest, people's comments and questions. I rarely read anything "long-form", however, because it has a strong tendency to be a giant self-indulgent bloviating pile of shit. There are exceptions: I've read every story on damninteresting, because it's true to its name. (Hi Alan. Post something new.)

I've nearly finished Moby Dick, but I don't know why, it's dreadful, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I guess it's historically interesting.

Possibly you guys are not losing the will or energy to read, you're merely discovering that the things you think you ought to read are terrible. Try only reading what you like. So what if it's short? Maybe your preference is right.

I can't read long form content from a phone screen or computer monitor. I really don't like it. It might be the scrolling, or maybe the type of screen, or conditioning to expect instant gratification. I do, however, read 20-30 books a year, both paper and on an ereader.

I think it's super important to make reading a habit so one must identify what doesn't work for them and try something else. You lose so much if you don't read.

Yeah, reading on a screen is ass. What eReader do you use?

I got a Kobo recently and I don't like it much. It's much duller than my last one, which is either due to the color screen having less contrast or me misremembering.

Kobo's main selling point was that it's not botnet, but I couldn't even turn the thing on without making an online account...

I use a Kobo Clara HD. I think Claras are the second cheapest ones. No colour. I find the contrast about as good as a cheap paperback book. Not as good as good quality printing on acid-free paper, but that's OK.

I actually prefer lower contrast, it gives me less eye fatigue and I've specifically chosen low-contrast themes on my computer for as long as I can remember.

I think there is a way to not create the account if you really don't want to. I put KOReader on mine straight away and never use the built-in software. That also incidentally has an option to adjust the contrast.

When it comes to online reading, there are quite a few things that cause me fatigue that I don't feel I used to experience. Advertisements have been there for a long time, but often these are woven into the content, either as literal text placed in the article, or as visual ads that you need to scroll through to continue reading the article. Relying on different JavaScript and CSS techniques to "enhance" the user experience often cause me issues when I'm just trying to focus on reading. Those include overriding scrollbars, dynamic loading of content when the text is small enough to have been included in the page, and displaying some kind of alternative action when highlighting text. I'll often highlight text to keep track of where I'm reading, and some sites will pop up a dialog with share actions, or the ability to add annotations, etc. This is distracting and makes it more difficult to follow along with a longer article.

I'm 45, and got my start on BBS pre-internet, but I feel like if I find an article without the distractions I mentioned above, I actually have more energy to complete an article than I did in my 20's and 30's. Having access to the article without distractions helps me to focus, and when I focus, I tend to consume more content than I normally would. Most likely one of the reasons we're drawn to HN.

You've just made me realize why I usually avoid clicking the actual article link on HN. It's usually a very unpleasant experience, unless it's clear that it's a smaller website.

Perhaps a small help for you might be "reader mode" or "focus mode" or whatever your browser of choice calls it.

It's usually embedded in the url bar (probably a hotkey for it), and gives you only the text. A major step forward in not having to subconsciously ingest and then choose to ignore all the ads, related links, etc.

Thank you, I'm not sure why I always seem to forget that feature. Although I don't like the Google lock-in, on certain sites I can also visit the AMP version of the page, and have fewer ads while also getting the images.

Partly lower energy in general, though it would be interesting to try a "low information diet" and see what effect that has.

If you're eating snacks all day, you won't have a healthy appetite for proper meals.

I noticed on vacation I spend far less time online, and a lot more time reading books.

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