askchapo

This is my experience, and I need to preface it with this: I don't manage this perfectly, i just know the strategy works when i execute it:

First off, you need to have some awareness of why you form routines and habits. If you're sober, you get dopamine largely from external activities, and engaging activities. Things that stimulate, beckon you to give input - you mention gaming and painting (same tbh) - Why do you think you're so connected to gaming? It's stimulating. It needs constant input, engagement, it's flashy, it's engaging almost all of your senses and your thought capacity in a totalizing manner - this is hijacking your reward pathways. It may not be as ruinous as, say, recreational drugs can be, but this is still addictive; even if not, it's certainly habit forming.

You mentally need the tools to deny yourself. Not to become a monk or ascetic, but things like mindfulness and meditation can help because they train you to pull back from external stimuli and engage them differently. If you do this, once you start detaching, I'm telling you, your mind will start to re-order its own priorities and deprecate cheap thrills.

Cultivating a sense of joy in learning and experiencing information in your internal world isn't that difficult, but you need to sort of make sure that other stimuli are set aside. I will turn my computer off and leave electronics out of my reading space so that no vibration, no alert, nothing will ask me for attention - there is so much bullshit calling you to attention that makes a passive activity like reading extremely hard to do.

you can think of your relationship to the world as something inside a meatsuit that is raised from birth to react to what's outside it. If you do not question or manage this relationship, you will always be pulled outside of yourself by the most engaging/pressing/conditioned thing in your environment.

This is a lot of words without even getting to the task of reading, but this is the stuff that I personally had to internally wrangle before I ever found time to start reading and self study again.

You can rewire yourself to find pleasure in productive tasks. Eschewing marketed entertainment for skill and knowlege building sounds boring, but once you've trained yourself to get dopamine from those things it just becomes a new normal.

You're gonna have to find the discipline to construct a new routine that devalues something like gaming and replaces it with something like reading, and in 2025 that's not actually easy.

Some strategies I've used over the past few years to turn me into a proper reader:

1. Book clubs/reading groups. I've been in 3 this year. It's a great way to stay motivated, keep in touch with friends and deepen your understanding of the text by hearing other perspectives. A book club does not need to be formal - whenever someone is talking about reading something on my list, I'll say lmk when you start I'd book club that with you. If you know other ppl who'd be interested, loop them in otherwise 2 ppl is still a book club.

2. Audiobooks to supplement denser texts - when I'm logging through a tougher (usually non-fiction) text, I'll get the audiobook as well and do both: I might read first then use the audiobook to review chapter-by-chapter, or I may use the audiobook as a preview so I know which sections of the text I can skim, vs ones I'll need to go through slowly and take notes.

3. Set reading goals: last year I set a New Year's resolution to read X titles, but I found it made me less likely to tackle larger texts. So this year I chose a page count instead, and I've basically already hit my year's target.

Good luck comrade, good for you for having reading goals and asking for help braver than the troops

ever since i was a small child i read for an hour or so in bed while winding down
does have the downside that i've pavlov'd myself into feeling sleepy when i read a book

routine in practice and variety in style seem helpful, at least to me.

my routine is i generally read a good bit each night and always read a little bit during lunch at work. epub or pdfs of books are especially helpful for the latter, as i can sneak in a little extra via a browser plug-in, but i strongly prefer paper because i like to pencil in notes while i read. that also helps me retain more of what i'm reading, which feels good, and feeling good reinforces the habit. also, if i'm especially tired and can't pick up a book before bed, i can at least look forward to reading a little tomorrow at lunch.

for variety, i try to keep four books going at once, one larger book (300+), one small (less than 200), and two mid-sized. i've found that reading smaller books helps provide a sense of accomplishment and progress to reinforce the habit without feeling mired down in larger ones (again, feelin' good!). i also pick books from different genres (nonfiction/theory, fiction, poetry), regions, and time periods in case one of the books i'm reading is emotionally taxing or just rigorously dense.

I use a habit tracker, and start reading 1 page a day, increasing by 1 per day, until it reaches unsustainable levels. Then I back off a bit until it's comfortable, right now that's 20-35 pages a day. I also recommend splitting theory and fiction, theory in the morning and fiction at night (or however works best for your schedule). Fiction is super fun and important for engaging with theory! Keeps reading interesting.

I don't like them, but audiobooks are super useful for others too!

Before bed is mandatory IMO.

Instead of rotting on my phone shitposting here or watching youtube, I pick up a book. If it's a shit read (grapes of wrath is so long-winded) then I'll read a few pages every night

You’re putting pretty good numbers on the board already. Also depending on what you’re reading, it might be excellent. Some books I rip through, others take me months.

Setting aside chill vacation times when I tend to get a lot of reading done, I’d say the two things that keep me moving through books are: I basically need it as a sleep aid so I almost always read before bed; sometimes I make it 5 mins, sometimes it’s hours, and slowly teaching myself that it’s ok to read multiple books at once, or to put a book not really vibing with down and maybe come back to it later.

If you’re really interested in increasing, you could try to make it a long habit, like read 15-20 mins at lunch or another time/task where appropriate.

I put the books on my phone then I can read them anytime because the books are always in my pocket. Books and hexbear are basically all I use my phone for.

For me it was turning myself into a captive audience for my books. Being stuck somewhere on a regular basis for hours and knowing that my phone battery and data plan were not going to last very long. I don't have that commitment anymore, but I still do the most reading when I go out to a park away from my computer and chargers and my phone will be difficult to see and overheating in the sun, or when I'm in bed and avoiding screen light.

Also, I discovered how much I love ebooks (as long as I keep wifi off to avoid rabbit holes). I forgot how annoying it was trying to get comfortable and hold the book open without cracking the spine, plus it is nice to make notes without concern for margin size and resize text for my bad eyes and have countless options carried with me if I feel like switching. Smoothing over all the friction and little things that made reading more of a hassle helped. A pile of little "oh but if I do this I have to also deal with that" misgivings are what commonly keep me from forming better habits.

I think my biggest problem is that now reading relaxes me enough that I sometimes fall asleep midday.

I don't lol

I read a few books a year and besides maybe like 10-20% of my IRL comrades who are bookheads I'm still usually the person in the room who reads the most.

I basically just read when I'm procrastinating other things, committed to do it to an IRL friend or comrade, or have like a whole free day (rare occurrence) and can spend a couple hours of it reading at the coffee shop or in the park. My interest comes and goes in waves so it's usually like, read a book in 2-3 sittings and then don't read any for weeks.

Getting them from the library helps since there's a deadline, but sometimes I just have to give up and return a book I haven't finished and finish it as an ebook which can be a little demoralizing.

I do read a fair amount of long form essays and such on the computer as well, but its really not the same.

I'd echo everyone saying that some reading time could probably come out of gaming time, especially if you can find some way to still make it social. "body doubling" with someone else also doing a stationary activity might help, and then you can take breaks to chit-chat. And honestly I find even talking to mostly uninterested friends about what I'm reading is still engaging if it's something I am super interested in. Often not wanting to read it with you doesn't mean they would mind hearing your take or summary on it.

I'm going to try to increase my reading, mostly by cutting down on youtube and hexbear time in all likelihood

For me the main factor was if I liked the book. So I would say find the right book, and don’t hesitate to quit a book if you don’t like it.

Once I reestablished the habit I was also able to force myself to read a book I didn’t particularly like, but first I needed to create the habit by reading enjoyable books.

I dont really wanna cut into my little game time and time for paiting. But I also wanna read more books.

the time will have to come from somewhere. when i have busy weeks, i usually read on the commute or right before bed

A lot of the time if I can't make myself read a book, it means I'm not enjoying it.

i pirate the epub/pdf and copy the contents into chatgpt to summarize it for me

I just read a small amount per day, like 2 pages. Sometimes I end up excited and read more, but I just force myself to constantly read 2 a day. It's like once every two weeks that I read more, and usually on those days I end up rereading parts that I didn't get well enough. But 2 pages a day does finish books eventually.

Habits are pretty powerful. I feel kinda empty now if I don't pick up a book for 3 minutes a day now

I got a lot of free time on my hands being unemployed and gaming has reached a point of being work with the completionist mindset I play them with so breaking into reading more often has helped me. When your in public reading people leave you alone so that's a plus (me being brown the police eyeball me all the time but seeing me reading they fuck off). That part may or may not apply but on some level I think people appreciate seeing someone read.

Definitely read things your interest in and treat yourself to some slop, idk the more I read the easier it gets to keep reading.

I play music on vinyl LP and read at night. I had too much ADHD that I couldn't concentrate without audio stimulant (can't sleep without white noise or ASMR podcast) but if I'm listening to on demand digital music like youtube or spotify, I ended up keep changing the music and get distracted by screens. Vinyl doesn't let you skip songs/music, and listen to the album in order the way the artist intended. Then I would aim to finish a chapter or so of book material, within one LP (15 minutes~ish)

I can speed read pretty well, it helps a lot if you can put down a 300pg book in 1-2hr, this is great for fic and idle pure fun reads, something like dense theory or general nonfic the time increases a lot since I like to jot down notes, ideal world if I had way more time would be at least a sentence a page, otherwise at least a few sentences per a section of key ideas or reflections on the reading.

Aside from that I like to read when I can't sleep or had a yummy treat-y breakfast with caffeine.

I'm in-between personal life stuff so right now I go to the coffee shop and put on some softer edm to drown our the noise and will read for an hour or so.

Before and probably once I get settled in the new place, I tend to carve out an hour or so in the afternoon on my off days and will pace around my place and read. My old routine was usually writing code in the am, eat lunch, the do chores and read a bit. It worked out well.

I should note that I do tend to read a lot but not like 400 pages a day or anything, just consistent.

i've gotten even worse somehow but i will probably click play on an audio book next year. you can listen while playing some kinds of games (especially bethesda slop) and i'd expect you can listen while painting but crayons always broke when i touched them so i did not become a visual arts person.

Idk i feel like doing it and then I'll do it. I also only read like 2 real books a year