In the last two years, I’ve developed a bad habit of skimming articles instead of taking my time to comprehend them. I think this habit is partly the reason for my reading comprehension being at an all time low. The question is, why do I feel like I’m always in a rush whether it’s reading an article or trying to get a task done?
It doesn’t matter how long the article is, if I can’t read it in the same time I can read a Tweet, it’s too long and I lose interest fast. This sounds like symptoms of attention deficit disorder or ADD to me. Even if no one is forcing me to move fast, it feels like there’s someone pushing me or a voice in my head saying “I ain’t got time for that“.
I feel like my lack of reading comprehension skills has significantly affected my ability to write. Have I unknowingly become part of the TL;DR movement? It’s ridiculous that TL;DR exists at all, but I can see why it’s a legitimate thing.
I need to slow down and read articles from beginning to end. I need to stop letting notifications take my attention away from whatever it is I’m doing. Responding to Twitter, then Facebook, then email, then back to Twitter creates an endless cycle of interruptions and lack of productivity. I need to increase my comprehension skills before I don’t have any left.
Me too. I did read all of this one though. A lot of the time I see a technical article about X framework or Y technique that I really want to say that I know but I can’t learn them all.
In the end I start out with the simple introduction but when the going gets tough I remember that I also need to this other thing and the tab stays open for a while before being abandoned at the next cleanup.
Could you be abandoning the articles because you didn’t ever really intend to read them in the first place?
I manage to sleep at night because it means I at least know a bit about everything. For example I now know that React uses a special jsx language before its transpiled. I can’t write anything in it though and may not even recognise a snippet put in front of me. For the moment that’s enough and I know its there if I need it.