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by yigitcakar 1890 days ago
The article lacked substance but I am glad that we are talking about reading with ADHD here.

I don't feel guilty about not finishing books because most of the times if I force myself to finish a book that I don't find interesting enough, I don't remember the information in the book anyway.

Over time I have learned to trust my brain, and figured that it will remember the important parts I read. If the book bores me then probably there is nothing interesting in it for me.

Most of my life I read books without taking notes, and I would go through them thinking that I understand everything, but in the end I would miss deeper connections and wouldn't connect them to the information I already possess.

Now, I read non-fiction books with taking notes and taking notes makes me stop and think about what I am reading and enables me to make deeper connections with what I already know and improves retaining. Also shifting from reading to note taking and going back helps my ADD brain. I read a couple books at a time, and when I get bored of one, I shift to another one that interests me. I choose my books around one topic, and this topical similarity makes my ADHD a boon because this way I can make those books talk to each other and improve my understanding of the subject. I used to take all my notes longhand before, but now I type really fast and writing longhand feels antiquated now. I also love to be able to search my notes and use my notes as a second-brain.

I read both from kindle and paper-books. The change from kindle to paper also helps my brain. The variety increases my concentration.

When I am reading fiction, I try to visualize everything I read because if I stop visualizing, it turns into eye training, I think other things, or just read and don't remember anything. If I figure out I am eye training instead of reading, I stop reading the book and come back later.

I hope this helps.

4 comments

Great comment, I nearly read all of it, go me ;)
Thank you! Good job! I am so proud of you :)
You beat me, I skipped to yours :)
I don't have the diagnosis but certainly recognize add elements in how I navigate the world. My conclusion was that there are actually quite a lot of books that just start out great and objectively become worse as the page count goes up (like The subtle art of not giving a F. You really start feeling "yeah, ok, I get it." There are also books that are the other way around (like Atlas shrugged) where you struggle through the first half and then almost read the second half in one go.
I'm not sure I've ever found a non-textbook science/math/philosophy book where the last chapter or two wasn't entirely skippable. There seems to be the point where the authors start stretching past what they really know and into more speculative, almost like they are planning the next book. I don't blame them, but it's not what I'm in that book for always.
> The subtle art of not giving a F*

This is a great example. I liked this book, but it could have been a blog article, or hell, even a single sentence: Konmari can also apply to obligations.

IIRC it was a blog article, and the author was got a book deal out of it.
Sadly, publishing world is guilty of turning popular blog post series into books because the bloggers have a platform to promote. Then the bloggers turn each paragraph in their famous blog post into chapters in their book. You can understand that kind of books by reading the first few paragraphs of each chapter. As an example, Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life comes to my mind. I think he turned a Quora answer to a book for that one.

I love books that make me think along, and take me a lot of time to finish. James N. Frey's How to write a damn good novel is my example for that kind of book.

I would love to hear the books you have studied thoroughly.

Studied is a big word but (on the fiction side) most things by Greg Egan keep me reading with ease. Also Harry Potter :). But also the Commonwealth Saga 1 and 2 by Peter F. Hamilton, the 3 books after that I never finished. Dune kept me going for 5 books until I stopped. On the non-fiction side, Richard Dawkins is a good writer.
Thanks for the recommendations, I will definitely check Greg Egan, never heard of him. I agree with the rest :)
Yes! I have just discovered this recently myself as well: whenever I wander off I context switch to something else I want to do instead of reforcing focus: multiple books, work, anki, side projects. Good so far.
Do you follow a certain system for taking notes for non-fiction books?
I don't use a particular system. I am using Evernote to take all my notes because I take notes on many machines and when I started note taking Evernote was the only one I found with multi-device support.

Rarely, when I come across an interesting sentence structure or a great way to express an idea I write the exact words that is in the books.

Usually, I paraphrase what I have read, and jot down why I find it worthwhile. If the idea leads to new ones I follow those as well. I used to skip these thoughts because I thought reading the book was more important, but now I am focused on getting the most out of a book and following my thoughts, and thinking about the information is part of it.

Before, the title of the notes used to be the book's title and I would organize my notes based on titles. But for a couple years I have been taking notes around subjects. Since I also read around subjects, my note taking and my reading support each other nicely. If you consider starting to take notes while you are reading, I'd suggest going with subject based organization. If a note can be part of more than one subject, I copy the note to the other notebooks.

This subject based note taking also helps with understanding my interests, because some subjects grow dramatically while others grow marginally.

It also works as an early alert system when you are slacking off on areas you have to know but skip because you find them boring. This early alert system is extremely important for people with ADHD. I don't know about you, but I tend to over-focus on areas that I find interesting and don't touch areas that I don't. Then I try to make the areas that are important more interesting.

Not OP, but I mostly highlight and occasionally sprinkle in some text pointers. My goal is for future me to be able to pick up the book and only have to review the highlights to understand the important points.

Occasionally I’ll also use an index card as a bookmark and write page numbers with 1-2 word summaries of big ideas.