You could be describing me, minus the playing video games bit, but lately I’ve begun to wonder, how is overstuffing my brain making any difference in my life? Am I just playing information Pokémon? I feel the same way about productivity gurus like Ali Abdaal and Tiago Forte: what is the point of your insanely complicated productivity improvement system if the only thing you’re doing with your life is making YouTube videos about setting up said system?
Why should I be so surprised to discover a fellow DCSS player while browsing my Substack favorites? This is just one of those things you don't generally associate I guess.
I hate to pour cold water (lie), but having something read at you is not remotely close to the same thing as reading it yourself. That "keeping yourself on task" difficulty is also known as "paying attention" and "actually getting it." Having a real person read you something is also different - a talking human is more engaging, & can tell when you've drifted away, & can tell when you're confused by something, & can explain anything you don't get. A recording just drones on whether you're there or elsewhere, mentally or physically. This is why recordings are not a substitute for teachers.
I do, however, agree entirely with respect to the vast majority of books being terribly boring and not really worth reading. I have a trick for finding good books -- when I see a book in a store or at the library, I pick it up and start reading it. If it's boring, I put it back. This is more difficult than it sounds-- it requires having the confidence to judge for yourself what's worth reading. That's a rarer trait than you'd think. Too many people put "recommendations" from "critics" and "authorities" above their own judgment. They end up with "backlogs" of turgid matter that they actually have zero interest in.
So, to get that backlog dealt with posthaste, simply apply my one weird trick: open the book. Read the first page. If you don't have a burning desire to continue, leave the book in your nearest Little Free Library. With this new approach to reading, you'll handle that backlog real fast.
As for myself, right now I'm playing World of Warcraft and alt-tabbing to Spenser on Project Gutenberg whenever there's downtime. Then I pick up random things from Little Free Libraries & used bookstores for late-night reading -- all sorts of stuff -- and I've been sticking to reading (or passing on) what I have before getting anything else. Admittedly, I do have one thing in my queue, a Daryl Hine poetry book, but it's only queued because the first few pages gave me to understand that I should read everything by Shakespeare first. Luckily, I happened to thrift a nice hardcover complete-works, so that's ongoing! My next few months are framed out well.
This was weirdly reminiscent of a large chunk of my experience (up to and including that I was playing Shadow of Mordor last week).
If you're an iPhone person, look into Matter, which has a built-in narrator and their scraping tech seems to be qualitatively better to my eyes. The major downside is they don't have an Android app, and I'm not about to switch ecosystems for that. I get irritated using my iPad to read because of how good that app is.
That app looks very promising but I left the iOS ecosystem years ago. It's also really hard to beat the flexibility of NaturalReader as a browser extension, because anything you see can be read-aloud immediately.
There were many things I expected to feel deep kinship from in this blog and this one was a surprise. I was diagnosed with dyslexia as a kid and am still unsure what that really means but this article is being fed to me by ttsreader.com as I slog through the early stages of the rogue lite steam game "death must die" I got on this summer sale. I have thousands of hours /played on path of exile and I'd estimate 90% of them were played with a blog post, podcast or... discussion board dump.... on in the background.
Thanks for reminding me of the bevy of action RPGs out there! Those might be sufficiently low stakes despite their frantic pace. I've already clocked in tons of hours on Vampire Survivors and its ilk
You could be describing me, minus the playing video games bit, but lately I’ve begun to wonder, how is overstuffing my brain making any difference in my life? Am I just playing information Pokémon? I feel the same way about productivity gurus like Ali Abdaal and Tiago Forte: what is the point of your insanely complicated productivity improvement system if the only thing you’re doing with your life is making YouTube videos about setting up said system?
That's always a question worth asking.
Why should I be so surprised to discover a fellow DCSS player while browsing my Substack favorites? This is just one of those things you don't generally associate I guess.
My homeboy Tracing is also a DCSS veteran. The game builds good character or vice versa
Vice versa: When you build good characters. Ha ha ha.
I hate to pour cold water (lie), but having something read at you is not remotely close to the same thing as reading it yourself. That "keeping yourself on task" difficulty is also known as "paying attention" and "actually getting it." Having a real person read you something is also different - a talking human is more engaging, & can tell when you've drifted away, & can tell when you're confused by something, & can explain anything you don't get. A recording just drones on whether you're there or elsewhere, mentally or physically. This is why recordings are not a substitute for teachers.
I do, however, agree entirely with respect to the vast majority of books being terribly boring and not really worth reading. I have a trick for finding good books -- when I see a book in a store or at the library, I pick it up and start reading it. If it's boring, I put it back. This is more difficult than it sounds-- it requires having the confidence to judge for yourself what's worth reading. That's a rarer trait than you'd think. Too many people put "recommendations" from "critics" and "authorities" above their own judgment. They end up with "backlogs" of turgid matter that they actually have zero interest in.
So, to get that backlog dealt with posthaste, simply apply my one weird trick: open the book. Read the first page. If you don't have a burning desire to continue, leave the book in your nearest Little Free Library. With this new approach to reading, you'll handle that backlog real fast.
As for myself, right now I'm playing World of Warcraft and alt-tabbing to Spenser on Project Gutenberg whenever there's downtime. Then I pick up random things from Little Free Libraries & used bookstores for late-night reading -- all sorts of stuff -- and I've been sticking to reading (or passing on) what I have before getting anything else. Admittedly, I do have one thing in my queue, a Daryl Hine poetry book, but it's only queued because the first few pages gave me to understand that I should read everything by Shakespeare first. Luckily, I happened to thrift a nice hardcover complete-works, so that's ongoing! My next few months are framed out well.
This was weirdly reminiscent of a large chunk of my experience (up to and including that I was playing Shadow of Mordor last week).
If you're an iPhone person, look into Matter, which has a built-in narrator and their scraping tech seems to be qualitatively better to my eyes. The major downside is they don't have an Android app, and I'm not about to switch ecosystems for that. I get irritated using my iPad to read because of how good that app is.
That app looks very promising but I left the iOS ecosystem years ago. It's also really hard to beat the flexibility of NaturalReader as a browser extension, because anything you see can be read-aloud immediately.
Be sure to try Shadow of War, it improves a lot!
There were many things I expected to feel deep kinship from in this blog and this one was a surprise. I was diagnosed with dyslexia as a kid and am still unsure what that really means but this article is being fed to me by ttsreader.com as I slog through the early stages of the rogue lite steam game "death must die" I got on this summer sale. I have thousands of hours /played on path of exile and I'd estimate 90% of them were played with a blog post, podcast or... discussion board dump.... on in the background.
Thanks for reminding me of the bevy of action RPGs out there! Those might be sufficiently low stakes despite their frantic pace. I've already clocked in tons of hours on Vampire Survivors and its ilk
I've been thinking about talking to a doc about an adhd diagnosis, any thoughts on that?
So, how did you liked Subnautica?
Tried multiple times but couldn't get into it, found it very boring.