Technology lets us retrieve and process more information in near real time. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe the tiny air traffic controller in our minds can metabolize this amphetamine of information. Attention spans seem to be getting shorter, and we seem to be getting away with it.
But if the average person can get by with a shorter average attention span, those who can focus will gain an even greater advantage. In a world of withering attention spans, the ability to focus — to really stay with something — is a superpower. And books are a training ground for building focus.
A book is an increasingly big ask for many people. Books demand sustained, active attention. Reading trains you to concentrate for extended periods, to find stimulation in that process of acclimation, whether it’s with a story or subject matter. Stick with it, and suddenly you’re in there.
Because books let you live inside other minds, they can also give you a new portal through which you see the world. That too demands focus.
“He didn’t notice me because of reading a book. Not regular reading, I mean gone. He and that big book were not in this house, nor maybe this world.”
~Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead (Book)
“I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Attack the task with every free neuron until it gives way under your unwavering barrage of concentration.”
~Cal Newport, Deep Work (Book)
“I think one of the insidious lessons about TV is the meta-lesson that you’re dumb. This is all you can do. This is easy, and you’re the sort of person who really just wants to sit in a chair and have it easy… What we need is seriously engaged art that can teach again that we’re smart. And that’s the stuff that TV and movies — although they’re great at certain things — cannot give us. But that have to create the motivations for us to want to do the extra work, to get those other kinds of art… Which is tricky, because you want to seduce the reader, but you don’t want to pander or manipulate them. I mean, a good book teaches the reader how to read it.”
~David Foster Wallace
