Related Recs

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Reducing friction

not an avid reader (~3-4 books / year, trying to get that number up) but the things that have really invigorated my reading when it feels like a chore to get started: - reading books that aren’t challenging to start off. all about love and the will to change by bell hooks were the first books i was able to successfully finish in like, years bc her writing style is very colloquial despite the subject matter being very dense. similarly, finding a fun fantasy book (or other genre fiction) to get back in the practice of turning pages and “wanting to find out what comes next” is gonna be paramount to being able to do that for books that are gonna require a little more give from you down the line (haven’t read a physical book in over six months so personally going to start legends and lattes soon to try and trick my brain into not thinking books are time-consuming and scary) - audiobooks; for me at least reading requires too much visual processing + “sitting still” time that i can’t multi-task and read, so i have to schedule when i’m gonna try and do it (unlike tv where you can have it on in the background as you do dishes or working from home or something and can look up periodically) - taking a chunk of podcast + music time and replacing it with audiobooks has been a game changer bc i now read at the gym, at the office, and in transit <30 min long bc i have to track what station i’m at or see where i’m going

@alaiyo

Mar 28, 2024

📚

Short-Form Reading

I think a lot of us want to be able to read longer material, but our attention spans are fried for various reasons. For me, it was the fatal combo of doing a reading-intensive college degree that ate away at my time + social media brainrot + a high level of anxiety that makes me feel generally restless and unfocused. I used to be a huge reader, so I've tried jumping right back into reading long novels multiple times. This hasn't seemed to work in any lasting way. I've had more luck recently with starting small. Even if you set your goal as: "I want to read something longer than tweets or social media posts," it's progress! Zines, articles, Substack posts, anything just a little bit longer that your brain can latch deeper into will help rebuild your attention. Short story collections and novellas have also been helpful for me, especially if you pick a topic or genre that you're really interested in. I'm still on some forms of social media, so I haven't gone cold-turkey. But I do feel like incorporating longer-form material again, even mixed in with scrolling, has helped my brain so much already. It's refreshing to hand-select what I want to read and give my attention to, instead of letting an algorithm serve me topics. I didn't realize how much depth I was missing in exchange for the breadth of the internet!

@gforce2001

Jan 19, 2025

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books/literature subreddits

Authors sometimes have their own dedicated subreddits where people are constantly discussing a text but if your reading a really specific book someone may do a writeup in r/books and if not probably some discussion on goodreads (as annoying as goods reads is , f*** amazon) I like watching certain booktubers Tokyochemist is one of my favorites but theres a lot of booktubers who post frequently about books so just search up book reviews on Youtube. I’m in college so when I’m looking for something more analytical I go to my schools library page and search for any literary analysis stuff (these can get pretty technical sometimes). After watching X-men 97’ I found some really cool work on Rogue and repressed sexuality! I also found some interesting writing on Donnie Darko through here. Hope this helps 🙆

@rod

Sep 21, 2024

Top Recs from @danielalala

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having a picture of your younger self on your mirror

kind of cheesy but it reminds me of who im being mean to

@danielalala

Nov 24, 2024

1

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Making cards for birthdays

I made this card for my best friend’s birthday and I’m very proud of it - I drew things that remind me of her like her cats and her fav movie as well as photos of some of my fav memories together - it took so long because there were so many tiny pieces of paper to cut out but I just put on a movie and in the background and had fun crafting which was actually very relaxing

@danielalala

Jan 12, 2025

2

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being on time

i am a stickler for being on time and by being on time i mean being 10 minutes early - i find it so disrespectful when people are consistently late because it just shows that they don’t respect my time and i don’t get the excuse that it’s just part of their personality bc if they really cared they would make an effort to change anyway this was brought on by the fact that i missed my very expensive train bc my friends were late

@danielalala

Feb 15, 2025

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