It’s strange writing this out, but lately, I feel like I’ve lost my ability to read. Long-form texts are particularly challenging for me. Sentences are incredibly hard to get through. And don’t even get me started on chapters. Chapters have lots of paragraphs, which are, in turn, made up of many sentences.
Ugh.
Even in the rare case that I finish a chapter, another chapter is already waiting for me on the next page. A typical book has ten or more chapters — that’s a lot of paragraphs and sentences.
It’s exhausting.
I’m not the only person who feels this way. The time we gladly spend with texts is at an all-time low in many countries. A survey by the National Literacy Trust with over 70,000 participants found that more than half of children and teens don’t enjoy reading leisurely. That’s the lowest level since 2005. Other sources confirm that the number of people who read for pleasure has significantly decreased.
I suppose the most annoying part is that I — like so many others — want to read more. I want to devour books just like I did in my teens. To me, reading is one of the most fulfilling ways to engage with stories and information. As a writer and philosophy student, it’s also an essential component of my life.
But why, then, has reading become so difficult? Have I — have we — lost the ability to read? And if so, is there a way to make reading effortless again?
Turns out, there’s a counterintuitive solution — but to get there, we need to understand the real reason it’s so hard to read right now.
Books are needles in a haystack
To be clear, I don’t want to regurgitate the whole debate about dwindling attention spans. That’s not the problem here, I don’t think.
The deeper challenge I’m confronted with is that I’m overly aware of other information while I’m reading. What I mean by this is that I can’t stop thinking about how many sentences I still need to read in the paragraph, how many paragraphs are left in the chapter, and how many pages are left in the book.
Similarly and perhaps more importantly, I tend to be too aware of all the other things I could be reading instead of the thing I’m already reading. While reading a feel-good novel, I often think, “Shouldn’t I be reading something more challenging?” And while reading philosophical papers, I often think, “Why is this even relevant? Shouldn’t I be immersing myself in a captivating story?”
When I told this to people, they said, “Oh, you just haven’t found the right book yet! Try reading [insert generic book recommendation]!” And so, for a long time, I treated reading like finding a needle in a haystack. I used to assume that if I just managed to find the right book in a tremendous, strawy pile of content, I would magically regain my ability to read.
Well, that turned out to be hogwash.
Sure, depending on the person and their circumstances, some books are better suited than others. But when I actually tried to find and read the best books for me, I just returned to the initial problem: books felt like a chore, something I needed to get through. In fact, my anxiety increased because I was constantly checking if I had found the perfect book — the needle in the haystack — or if I had to keep looking.
But then, unexpectedly, I stumbled upon an idea that would completely change how I approach reading in the digital age.
The trouble with too many needles
“It’s not information overload. It’s filter success.” This remark by tech writer Nicholas Carr fundamentally changed the way I read. But I’m getting ahead of myself, so let me explain.
Information overload is what I used to think was the problem with my reading drought. I thought great books were like needles in a huge haystack of other irrelevant content. To solve it, I assumed that I just needed to look hard enough and find the right book at the right time.
Which didn’t work.
The truth, as it turns out, is far more twisted. On reflection, it’s not very difficult to find a great book. Artificial intelligence has become scarily apt at knowing what we like. Through social media, attention-grabbing books naturally float to the surface.
So, ironically, the real trouble is that we already have machines that find the needles in the haystacks for us. And when these machines are incredibly skilled at doing so — too skilled, in fact — the price we pay is a sense of overwhelm and paralysis.
That’s the real trouble. There are too many amazing books, too many needles.
Carr calls it the problem of filter success. His point is that algorithms have become so efficient at detecting what we like that great content is always just one click away. Intuitively, this sounds amazing because we can always read the content we need most. We can choose great content in a sea of great content.
But this is stressful. Because we’re constantly confronted with intriguing material, we always remain at the surface level of selecting stuff to read. At the same time, it gets increasingly harder to actually read one book, let alone engage with it deeply.
The rate at which we discover new content significantly trumps the rate of meaningfully digesting that content. New needles are added to the haystack faster than we can reduce its size.
The pain of digging through needles
So, it’s not that we need to find a needle in a haystack. It’s actually the opposite. What we’re dealing with are, as Carr says, “haystack-sized piles of needles.”
When I look at the unread books on my (digital) bookshelf, I find that I genuinely find all of them interesting. And most likely, I will enjoy reading all of them. But what keeps me from actually enjoying them is the constant pressure to find the best among them or to find something even better (which is nearly impossible!). It’s like trying to find the best needle in a huge haystack of pre-selected needles.
This impossible task of digging through needles leads to a particularly strenuous type of information overload: ambient overload.
As Carr puts it:
We experience ambient overload when we’re surrounded by so much information that is of immediate interest to us that we feel overwhelmed by the neverending pressure of trying to keep up with it all. We keep clicking links, keep hitting the refresh key, keep opening new tabs, keep checking email in-boxes and RSS feeds, keep scanning Amazon and Netflix recommendations — and yet the pile of interesting information never shrinks.
Hearing about Carr’s perspective made me realize that I started consuming books like watching a movie on Netflix or buying something on Amazon — that is, I don’t actually consume anything. What really happens is that I spend so much time trying to find the best movie or the best product that I eventually give up. I overthink everything. And even if I eventually choose, I feel exhausted and can’t help but think that I should’ve chosen differently.
It’s the paradox of choice in a nutshell: more options make it not just harder to choose but also make our choices less satisfying.
Carr argues that we should be praying for filter failure. That is, we should hope that our recommendation systems get worse so we stop feeling overwhelmed by too much great content. Alas, this isn’t going to happen anytime soon. Filters will keep improving, and ambient overload will keep increasing. The result is that meaningful engagement with content becomes nearly impossible…
…unless we find different ways to cope with ambient overload.
A principle for sorting needles
The longer I found reading strenuous and difficult, the more I started paying attention to the times when reading felt effortless. And there were, in fact, a few scenarios in which I could perfectly immerse myself in a book. These have included reading a physical book, reading a book while listening to its audiobook, and reading in locations away from technology (particularly in parks and on trains).
I know, I know. These observations aren’t new—many people before me have preached them. But what really struck me was the common link between these scenarios: all of them manage to short-circuit ambient overload because, in one way or another, they eliminate the itchy sense that there might be something better one click away.
Conversely, whenever I put myself in situations where I could easily access something else that was of immediate interest, the harder it felt to read anything.
So, if I had to express this as a principle for effortless reading, it would be something like this: to make reading feel effortless, relentlessly reduce the number of ambient stressors.
To give a pedantic example: when I go to a cafe to read a book and take my phone with me, my phone will be an extra ambient stressor. It’ll distract me from reading. Even carrying a second book with me will be an extra ambient stressor because I’ll start overthinking which of the two books I should read.
Bottom line: the most effective strategy for me is to leave the house, go to a fairly quiet place, and only take one book with me while leaving all other objects of immediate interest at home.
This principle of reducing ambient stressors has been a significant improvement for me. Yet, my initial challenge remained. At times, I still found myself overly aware of all the other great books I was missing out on while reading a pretty good book. What’s more, I still clung to the idea that I needed to digest all the books on my bookshelf — deal with every single needle, so to speak. But as we’ve seen, this approach is doomed to fail when new needles are constantly dumped on top of the pile.
Paradoxically, I only experienced real relief and joy in reading when I allowed myself to do something highly counterintuitive: surrender.
One needle at a time
Surrender — it sounded strange when I first entertained the idea. But the first time my background reading anxiety ceased was when I heard Oliver Burkeman expand on Carr’s idea of haystack-sized piles of needles:
The only way to deal with a too-many-needles problem is to confront the fact that it’s insoluble — that you definitely won’t be fitting everything in.
In this case, the problem is already the solution. The only meaningful way to deal with an overwhelming pile of needles — too many books and other objects of immediate interest — is to accept that you’ll never get through the haystack anyway. It’s to embrace the fact that you can’t find the perfect book to begin with and to acknowledge — perhaps with gratitude — that you’re already surrounded by excellent reading material.
While this insight doesn’t reduce the algorithms’ grip on our lives, it allows us to change how we relate to their overpowering force.
Funnily enough, I haven’t necessarily read a whole lot more since I started thinking about this issue. But I certainly started reading differently — more effortlessly, relaxed, focused, and light-heartedly.
Now, whenever I have the thought that there are so many other books I could be reading, I simply try to take it one needle at a time. I read one word, then one sentence, then one paragraph, then one chapter, and then —
Well, I’m getting ahead of myself. Books are still challenging to read at times. But that’s okay. The whole point, I think, is to accept that we’ll never get to read all the things we may want to read — and with that in mind, gently return to the sentence where we last left off.
I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a great mantra not just for reading but also for navigating an increasingly overwhelming world. We’ll never find all the perfect needles. And we’ll certainly never work through all of them.
So, let’s take it one needle at a time.
Want to Get More Out of the Next Book You Read?
If I learned one thing from studying philosophy and devouring hundreds of books, it’s this: reading books in a community supercharges your ability to extract their wisdom. That’s why I started The Bibliosopher’s Club, a book club where we explore what it means to live a good life – one book at a time.
Enter your email below to join hundreds of avid readers on our quest to read and live better.