Something that’s helped me before is to start reading out loud
The biggest disappointment is when you finally lock in and process the paragraph and it had nothing of substance to say.
Its like, I read it, absorb nothing and think “what? fuck, I wasnt paying attention huh” the reread it 3-5 times only to find out that paragraph really didnt say anything worth reading and that was why my brain was sending it straight to the trash bin.
Sounds like necessary evolution
Having to read a whole book basically 5x is so frustrating. Takes me forever to read a novel.
If you have an easier time focusing on spoken word, audiobooks might be worth checking out. It’s been shown that both reading and audiobooks activate the same areas in the brain, so you’re still engaging your mind like you are with reading. I prefer audiobooks because they allow me to do something visual/tactile that doesn’t engage the language part of my brain at all, like a card game or sewing, so I leave that part of my brain free to focus on the audiobook.
I fully recommend using multiple sources of stimuli.
If you have an ebook, use an ebook reader or voice service and follow along. Speechify highlights the current word and sentence, too, which I have found helps keep me zeroed in.
May not work for everyone, but it works for me.
If I absolutely need to remember what I’m reading I write it all by hand. In community college sometimes it was whole textbooks. Stupid brain.
My problem is that the medium is how I can recall it. So if I did write it all out by hand, I would need scratch paper in order to write it all out to be able to tell it to someone else to prove I know it. This happened to me in school a lot.



