I used to love reading so much and I could devore entire books in a single sitting. As I’ve gotten older, my adhd has gotten worse (I believe it’s related to my anxiety disorder?) and now I have such a difficult time sitting down and reading.
If I pick up a book it usually find it really difficult to stay focused on the words on the page, especially if the print is small or there are huge chunks of text and then I end up putting the book down after a chapter or less and can’t motivate myself to pick it up again.
I do listen to audiobooks sometimes, but sometimes they’re also hard to focus on and I really miss physically reading whether that be an actual book or my kindle.
Does anyone have any tips or advice?
by newtsdaisies
4 Comments
Tackle the ADHD and anxiety first. Get professional help, therapy, medication, life coaching, whatever you find useful. If you can learn to manage your health, with help where needed, then your symptoms will improve.
I say this as someone who was diagnosed with ADHD in my 50s, and since then I’ve worked very, very hard on my difficulties, with a lot of professional help, and it’s changed my life.
Maybe this is a longshot, but I wonder if there’s any talk of developing a bionic reading plugin for Kindle/Android or something along those lines.
I love walking to audiobooks, noise cancelling headphones/buds. Of course, my area is safe enough for such things.
I’m very similar and what works for me is listening to audiobooks while I do other things: cleaning, driving, walking or jogging, nursing, pumping or rocking my kids to sleep (when they were babies and such tasks took up a large part of my day lol), laying down with my kids at night until they fall asleep (now that they’re older but still need this sometimes), or doing mindless tasks for work or fun (such as browsing Reddit/Twitter/the Internet while my kids are playing in the backyard or at the park with other kids etc., or while making art, or formatting documents in Word for work, etc. etc. etc.)
I have the attention span of a squirrel so I love multi-tasking like this and it also makes the mundane more exciting. I love that someone is telling me a story while I do the dishes! Haha. I also find that one activity fuels or motivates the other, such as if I’m at a good part of the book and don’t want to stop listening so I start cleaning or else I’d just be sitting there with nothing to do but listen to the audiobook (which I almost never do unless maybe it’s super captivating or I’m feeling particularly lazy/tired… some people listen to audiobooks while falling asleep but I hate not knowing where I left off so I rarely do; sometimes I listen to them while taking a bubble bath or relaxing in a hot tub though, and that’s like Heaven to me!), or if I have to clean or do a boring task for work or drive somewhere on a road trip, then I get more audiobook listening in, etc.
Audiobooks have made my life so much more fulfilling and have helped me “read” so many more books because, like you, I used to read actual books a ton as a kid and then for a long time as an adult, I never had time or found them too boring/hard to get through, etc. But I started listening to them while going for walks during Covid lock-downs just to get out of my house where I felt isolated with my many kids and husband (I love them but needed some me time! lol) and I absolutely fell in love with them and highly recommend them.