I want to read more. Properly read, I mean. Not skim, not half listen to an audiobook while I’m packing orders, but sit down with a book and actually take it in. The trouble is I can get to the bottom of a page and realise I haven’t absorbed one word of it. My eyes have moved across the text, my mind has been somewhere else entirely, usually somewhere involving a supplier invoice or a photo I still need to edit.
I don’t think this makes me unusual. I think most of us are carrying around a low hum of unfinished business, and it doesn’t switch off just because we’ve picked up a book. So this isn’t me telling you how to fix it. It’s me working through what’s actually helped, in case any of it’s useful to you too.
The first thing I noticed is that the wandering isn’t really about the book. It’s about everything else demanding a slot in my head. Trying to force focus onto the page while those things are still queued up doesn’t work, because the mind keeps darting back to check on them, like leaving a pan on the hob and going to another room. So before I even open the book now, I give myself two minutes with a notepad and just write down whatever’s rattling around. Not a proper list, just names and thoughts. Once they’re on paper, they seem to loosen their grip. It’s a strange bit of psychology, but there’s something in the physical act of writing something down that tells your brain it’s been dealt with, and it can stop holding onto it.
The second thing was harder to admit. I was choosing books because I felt I should read them, not because I wanted to. And a mind will wander given the slightest excuse if it isn’t actually interested in what it’s being fed. So I stopped forcing myself through things I thought would make me sound well read, and started reading what I was genuinely curious about. The focus that had felt impossible to summon before suddenly turned up on its own.
Then there’s the pace of it. I used to read the way I do everything else, which is quickly, because there’s always a next thing. But reading doesn’t reward speed the way admin does. I’ve started reading a paragraph and then pausing, just for a few seconds, to actually picture what it said rather than ploughing on to the next paragraph before the last one’s landed. It sounds like it would slow me down. It’s actually the opposite, because I’m not having to go back and reread the same page for the third time having taken none of it in.
The last thing is the smallest but it’s made the biggest difference. I read with a pencil in my hand now, and I underline anything that catches me, or scribble a word in the margin. Having a small job to do while I read, even a tiny one, seems to give the restless part of my mind something to occupy itself with, so it stops looking for its own distractions.
None of this has made me a different reader overnight. I still catch my mind wandering off most days. But I catch it sooner now, and I’ve got a few small habits that bring it back without a fight. If your mind does the same thing mine does, maybe start with just one of these and see what happens.
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