Regaining Focus With a Deep Reading Practice • Zettelkasten Method
Regaining Focus With a Deep Reading Practice • Zettelkasten Method
Our ability to focus is under attack. Remove the harmful stimuli, introduce beneficial ones. Daily deep reading is has a high return on the time invested, and it doubles as the front end of the Zettelkasten Method.
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This is a really good article. I think a secondary challenge is that if you use a digital tool for your Zettlekasten, you need to similarly create a distraction-free zone there too. Distraction in terms of what other tools on your computer might be competing for your attention, but also what mode are you in while you are in your slip box? What is the definition of done on a slipbox note, but what can rest until you feel it is settled? Part of the joy of being in the slipbox is the rabbit trails, but also that is not the best thing to do if I am trying to build a bit. I'm still working that out and enjoying the oscillation.
They are. :-) We are having legal initiatives worldwide for phone bans in schools and age restrictions for social media.
And we know that we're dealing with addiction. One professor in the Atlantic article is reminded of "nicotine addicts going through withdrawal during screenings" when he sees students trying to not check their phones.
Have you read Dopamine Nation (2021) by Anna Lembke? It uses the opponent-process theory to explain some of the attention-destroying behaviors. The core idea is that pain and pleasure counteract each other. The experience of pain makes it easier to experience pleasure. As human beings we need both, pain and pleasure, in a certain amount. Your morning routine aligns with Lembke's recommendations. Starting with pain (exercise, cold showers) releases pleasurable feelings and makes you more receptive for the joys of focused reading.
I've been lurking for a while, and am one of those softies, curious about philosophy of life. Often pointed to by my strict scientist friends as an example of a liberal arts major who is about to sacrifice a goat, but can barely commit to watering a houseplant.
I'm here to report on Regaining Focus With a Deep Reading Practice. I'm taking this as a challenge. Can I up my deep reading game?
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This is a great outline of a deep reading practice.
1. Read in a distraction-free environment.
2. Read a physical book.
3. Highlight with a pencil.
4. Write spontaneous ideas on paper sheets.
5. Create a processing strategy.
6. Read for an extended period of time.
7. Work with a timer.
8. Keep the practice sustainable.
9. Prefer early morning sessions.
We all have limitations. Let me share how I'm getting around mine.
1. I'm a full-time caregiver for my wife who has Parkinson's, so a distraction-free environment is hard to come by. I'm using the time she is at physical therapy once a week to deep-read.
2. I'm visually impaired and read on a tablet because I can manipulate the text size and the line length. I haven't read a physical book in years. I don't feel like I've lost anything. (You be the judge.)
3. I do use a pen stylus to select and highlight.
4. Here is where things get interesting. I have my laptop open to The Archive note relative to my reading, and with every highlight, I switch my focus to write my own assimilation in real time. In my time allotment, I’m reading, highlighting, and writing my ideas, covering about 10 pages.
5. My processing strategy is to spend time refactoring my writing to be more concise and readable once I finish the book. Each note is corralled into my proofing oven until it is ready for release into the wild. (Sorry for the mixed metaphors.)
6. I read for 43 minutes., keeping cognizant of the peak-end rule.
7. I use my watch's timer because I love how it vibrates when the timer ends.
8. We'll see how this goes. Can he keep the practice sustainable?
9. I’ve been a morning journaler for more than 20 years, and while I want to be nurtured by both journaling and deep reading, journaling will always have a slight edge.
Thanks @Sascha
Will Simpson
My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
My Internet Home — My Now Page
A legal initiative is not a moral panic and the legal initiatives worldwide are as far as I know not motivated by a moral panic. The last number that I heard (by Manfred Spitzer) is that you lose 15 IQ points just by the presence of the phone.
Yes, I have. However, I don't subscribe to the association of dopamine and pleasure. Dopamine's function is to code for a positive reward prediction error and not for pleasure. Healthy dopamine provides part of the mechanism on how to arrive at pleasure.
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I consider these initiatives a symptom of a moral panic. Teachers and parents are so scared that they demand and support drastic measures.
Why aren't they scared for themselves? I think they are so addicted to their phones, that they don't want to change their own habits. :-)
Yes, according to Wolfram Schultz dopamine codes for a "reward prediction error", eg when you get a better reward than expected. You don't just seek the same reward again, you seek a stronger reward. More of the same is boring. That's part of what makes dopamine relevant for understanding addiction. In Schultz's words:
Lembke also talks about addiction in the introduction of her book:
Dopamine doesn't equal pleasure, it's also released by pain. Lembke writes in chapter 7 about cold showers and cold baths:
Schultz and Lembke examine different aspects of dopamine. Both are aware of its relevance for addiction.
The problem with phones is that they are delivery devices for digital drugs. The good news is that you can control what apps you "use" on your phone. The bad news is that it can be hard to break a habit. As long as you're hooked to constant distraction by attention-seeking apps, it's difficult to uphold the calm focus needed for deep reading and deep thinking. You lack the practice and you might even have to endure withdrawal symptoms.
Not stronger per se, just larger than your brain predicts (or expects, which may perhaps be the same thing).
Dopamine and the reward prediction error are fascinating. See for example this article:
@Will Good to hear your comments and how creative you are being in applying a deep reading practice. We are definitely limited by very real constraints and have to figure out how to work with them.
@Sascha Thanks for this article; to me, it is a critical one that I will be sending out to a number of friends who don't understand the principle. Hopefully, they will take the time to read and assimilate it, and the associated material that you reference
Oh - I forgot to mention - for a long time, I've handwritten notes (using a pencil) in the margins of most technical / non-fiction books that I've read, which has transferred over to the practice of inserting electronic notes/comments into ebooks that I read (depending on the reading app, with tags). These notes come from a careful consideration of the material read and might even qualify as "mini-zettels". It allows all sorts of follow up activities, such as quickly reviewing what I found of interest, having material for further processing into my Zettelkasten, and providing a jump start to additional deep thinking the next time I read the book.
As an aside, a friend who was a book publisher was appalled at my marginal note-taking behaviour. In his opinion, nothing should mar the appearance of a book. My response - such a misguided (though sincere) statement. We should do what we must to make sense of the material we read. When I was younger, I had no knowledge of the Zettelkasten world, so I did what made sense at the time. Ten years spent studying engineering in university taught me that I needed to fully use the time I spent reading and studying.
I recently encountered an article, "Wikipedia Faces a Generational Disconnect Crisis" (published in IEEE Spectrum!) that appears to claim that Wikipedia is too "information-dense" for today's young readers. I will quote it here as horrifying evidence of Sascha's "full-on attack on our minds" (emphasis added):
One wonders why the author does not chastise Encyclopedia Britannica for retaining its "information-dense, text-heavy style" and not adapting to the rise of radio dramas in the early 20th century.
OTOH, there is Richard Feynman's advice to the effect that when you want to make sure you understand an idea, try to distill it down until you could explain it to a middle schooler [reported in https://nesslabs.com/feynman-technique].
Good point, but what the quoted article advocates is AI-generated simple summaries (or rather it decries the Wikipedia community's rejection of them), which is not the Feynman technique!
I'd settle for aiming to explain it to a middle schooler from Feynman's era, since the attentions span of a middle schooler is a moving target that is falling rapidly (not just the young people. All people that have a pathological relationship to the offerings of the attention harvesting industry)
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