I used to be an avid reader, but years of high school and depression completely ruined that. I haven’t been able to complete a novel since senior year six years ago. It’s frustrating to me and I want to know how I can overcome my lack of focus and anxiety. I’ve heard I’m not alone when it comes to this sort of thing at least.
I get stuck because of physical health reasons. My three things I try to kickstart it again are:
dark mode on my tablet, can make a huge difference for me
reading free page turner crap I get from the online ebook store (in dark mode of course)
reading novels I already know the general plot of
The built in reader on my tablet keeps track of time read. It's set at five minutes, so I try to at least get to that target with the free page turner crap.
Reading fluff for five minutes is easier than taking on something substantial. And if it doesn't happen on that day, that's ok, I can always try again later.
This is what works for me. There will be something which works for you, so try and keep trying until you find it. If something doesn't work for you, that's ok. You'll find one that does.
(Have you tried short stories? Easier to complete than a novel.)
It takes time and, for many throughout their life, things come in phases.
I won’t go into the details of my life story but it’s come and gone for me. My last year of voracious and pleasureble reading was 2020 due to work from home and a relatively chill personal experience of the lockdown. Some things in 2021 happened and I’ve maybe read 3-5 books since.
It may help to learn to be more forgiving of yourself and accept differences in your life that have changed your habits and hobbies. You sound like you have a lot more of life to go and you can’t expect to realistically hold yourself to many of the same standards of life you had from when you were young. Take it easy on yourself if you can’t expect anyone else or life to.
I was in this boat myself at the start of the year. My brain weakened by Twitter, I guess, and it taking forever to read the nonfiction books I used to love.
A New Year’s resolution was to read a book a week, given my four shelves of unread books. I started by literally sort the books by page count and reading the shortest books I had first!
That was helpful. What I then found was that I had grown tired of nonfiction. Fiction, on the other hand, got me turning the pages, reading more than I meant to each day, to find out what happened next.
So far this year, I’m 3 books ahead of schedule and enjoying reading again.
What really helps me is having the Kindle app on my phone! So, now, whenever I'm in a waiting room or in line for something, I can read my book instead of playing a game or scrolling social media, and I'm never at risk of forgetting my book somewhere :-)
Ok I’m going with my experience here. I’ve been an avid reader of hundreds of books a year since I was a teen. When I had my baby, I wen through a traumatic birth that left me with post partum PTSD. When that happened I couldn’t read anymore. What helped me get back into reading is audiobooks and comics/mangas. 5 years has passed, I’m now mostly recovered from the PTSD but I am not the reader I used to be, I can now read a book now and then, I sometimes read big fanfics because knowing the characters and tags help a lot but audiobooks are really my go to and I can listen a bit everyday. Well, nevertheless, don’t feel bad for not reading, do whatever feels good to you.
Audiobooks really got me going again. Life got more busy, but I can always listen to audiobooks while on the car or during chores. Quality of audiobooks can vary a bit, and you might demand something more higher quality until you get into audiobooks more. Plus, I listen to them in english which is not my first language, so it’s a really good listening exercise when the narrator has some bit of accent, I learn to recognize that accent later
While I can’t speak to the mental health mentioned in this post, I used to read all the time, but by the time high school years hit that dwindled and I could barely read a chapter without wanting to do something else. I think that social media really took a toll on my attention span (though I can’t prove that).
What helped me was making a book club with some friends of mine! When I had a deadline in place where if I didn’t finish chapters at a set time (otherwise I wouldn’t be able to properly have a conversation about it with them) that really helped motivate me. This also had the added benefit of exposing me to books I wouldn’t normally read (this is how I was introduced to House of Leaves). I still don’t dive deep into a book as easily as I used to, but it has been improving and like anything else just generally comes with practice.
I've discovered that my brain will only accept certain content certain ways. If I'm really into a fun book, then text is perfect. If it's any kind of "literature" or non-fiction, I need to listen to it at the fastest setting my brain can absorb (usually 2x speed) while doing things that would otherwise not be fun (unloading the dishwasher, cleaning, doing laundry, whatever). And I pay attention to my emotional reactions to stuff. If something is too heavy to be fun (or to handle in general), I don't make myself go back to it. I evaluate whether I want to continue. I have more than 1,000 books on my Libby wishlist, so I feel no guilt about moving on to the next thing.
This was sort of me. I couldn’t use my eyes to read a book after college. Something about college took that from me. Maybe that’s when I really dove into social media, maybe I never had quiet space to just read. Either way, undiagnosed adhd and some degree of dyslexia went a ways towards breaking my looong time visual reading habit.
But, I never stopped reading audiobooks. Almost a decade out and I’m still recovering my visual reading, but I downed 13 books and novellas this month via audiobook. (And finally finished an ebook I started in February!) Reading is now an inevitability rather than a goal.
I read almost exclusively sci-fi and fantasy, but slip in non-fiction or classic fiction every so often.
So, for me, it’s read what you like and read how you like.
Side note: books that I really want to ready that aren’t at my library as audiobooks are the sole driver of me getting back into visual reading. Being audio-only locked me out of a LOT of books that I really want to read. So, unless that matches you, I have no idea how to reincentivize visual reading other than that.
Short stories is the answer. They do seem to mainly the province of horror and sci-fi but even if that’s not a favoured genre(s) it’s a way back in. Try Night Shift or Skeleton Crew by Stephen King (give The Mist a miss though, it’s not really a ‘short’ short story). Take it a page at a time, stop reading the minute you start to lose interest, try again 15mins later. Remember it’s fun activity not a competitive sport, take all the time you need, the books you want to read are going nowhere :)
Honestly, I thought it was a focus problem for me, but what it turned out to be is that now that I’m older, I can’t tolerate shitty books, and it turns out there is a lot of junk material out there. When I get the right book, I read it no problem and turn pages just like I used to. If it’s not a good book, I’ll abandon it pretty quickly. And with eBooks, that’s a whole different level of stuff to pick from than I ever had as a kid. My reading material at that time always had some sense of curation to it - a librarian or my parents had to think it was a good enough book to buy. Now, we’re our own librarians. I think that’s why it feels so much more difficult to pick something up, and it only multiplies as we become adults and other things are vying for the time it takes to find a book.
I find I read best when I’m on vacation, camping, or when I’ve set aside time and a quiet place to do so. I like to make tea so I feel extra cozy, and it helps get me in the right mindset. To work through the challenge of finding a book, you could go to a physical library - everything is free, it’s a smaller selection, you don’t have to charge any batteries or anything - or if you’re lazy like me, see if your library offers eBooks through something like Libby. I use a combination of Libby and Goodreads to find new books.
And if after a chapter or two, you can’t get into it? Turn it back in and try again. It’s okay to put a book back. Not all books are good and there’s no reason to force yourself through something that isn’t clicking for you.
The problem for me is that I'm always trying to read shit that is boring as fuck, for like self betterment or something. Like I try to read non-fiction history, or a textbook, or some award winning abstract cerebral literature shit. Y'know, to learn something or get a different perspective and generally be a better person.
My brain doesn't like that shit. My brain wants to read about emotionally repressed wizards shooting red lightning and werewolves that have too much sex. Way too much sex.
Maybe you have a similar problem as I do. You're trying to read based on what you think is logical to read. You only have so many hours in a day so you want your reading to have a purpose or a benefit, but the books you enjoy reading don't make you think or teach you a skill. They're emotional fluff, but they're what you actually enjoy reading. Does that sound like you? That's me in a nutshell. Logically at odds with what I enjoy.
If I want to actually get through that other boring crap I have to set a schedule, read like 3 pages a day and put it down. I have to stick to the schedule, like working out. It takes forever to get through a book. It works though.
tldr; stopped forcing myself to read + cut social media habit + cheated
I used to be a voracious reader too, then clinical depression hit, followed by anxiety and my reading habit dropped. I'd still buy books intending to read them, and they'd just go unread. I'd see my increasing pile of interesting yet unread books grow larger and that'd stress me out more while making me feel like a failure. Which would just depress me even more. It was quite a cycle.
Therapy helped me realize some patterns..
I realized that whenever i tried to force/ guilt myself into doing anything, I just ended up resenting myself which sent me into a self-hating depressive cycle. So I gave myself permission to not read if I didn't feel like it. It removed all pressure, guilt, resentment, and any negative emotion I had towards myself for not doing something that I thought I should be doing. Which also boosted my mental health.
I realized that my social media habit interfered with my reading as it lowered my attention span. Plus seeing the world going to hell in a handbasket worsens my anxiety and depression. So I broke that habit. The only way I could do it was by forcing myself to go offline. Took a few tries to get it right but I realized that I naturally gravitated to books when I didn't have social media to go to. I now have monthly SM detoxes where I avoid SM for an entire week, which has also helped my mental health.
One other pattern I recognised was any stressful event in a book (even fictional) would stress me out and make me too anxious to read anything, which is a bummer since I love murder mysteries and non-fiction. I also realized that when I knew how the book ended, I could it read it with negligible anxiety. So that's what I do, even though it feels like I'm cheating. I read the first few pages and when/ if I start stressing out, I read the last chapter, put the book down and go for a walk/ do some outdoor activity. Invariably I end up grabbing the book and reading it cover to cover while enjoying it, which imho is the most important part.
A good friend restored his reading habit by making his exercise & diet cheat day as his book day. By associating pleasure (via lazing, chocolates, & whisky) with books, he rediscovered his joy of reading.
This is such a good idea. I’m stuck on a couple of books that I just can’t seem to finish because I have to put them down when they get too grim or anxiety-producing. Reading the end would either ease the anxiety or let me know I don’t want to finish them.
Try reading something in a different format, like comic books, short stories, web serials, or audiobooks. Once you've gotten in habit of reading again it shouldn't be too hard to switch back to regular novels. Maybe try out different genres, or revisit some of your favorite stories. And don't be afraid to switch to another book if you find yourself not reading your current one. You can always come back to it later.
It takes me about a week of holiday before I can read. No work stress, and less obsession with the continual dopamine hits of smart phones, eventually lets my brain relax enough to pick up a book.
Every time I come back from holidays I tell myself I should keep reading. I never have kept it up though..
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