/lit/ - Literature

sam bro

This will cure your ADHD:
>Nofap 90+ days
>No TV
>No vidya
>No social media
>30 mins maximum on screens (apart from work/school)
>No sugar
>No seed oils
>Drink water
>No medication
>Lift weights

>>20258119
It unironically takes maybe a week to rewire your brain.
>but I struggle to sit down and read the Odyssey. Why? How can I fix this?
Here's a real protip: get a physical copy of the book, go for a long walk to some public park or quiet coffee shop or wherever where you can sit down, absolutely make sure you leave your phone and anything distracting at home, and then just sit there for 2-3 hours and do nothing but read - when you fail, try again. If you found your mind wandering, trace back and start from where you started trailing off. If you absolutely cannot read for a few minutes, just stare into space.

Do it, it works, important thing is just getting you away from distractions.

>>20258119
Dopamine starvation for 2 months

>>20258127
Sounds like a bad idea thought up by a moron who thinks nothing but bad ideas. Your solution to OP's problem is like having a bitch who does crystal healing perform brain surgery.

>>20258119
do mushrooms

i honestly think if you didn't do it as a kid it will never really "take." everyone i know that's truly literate learned it at home, school doesn't really work, adult "self-improvement" attempts end in frustration and torturous pseudery where you force yourself to suffer through books just to say you did. a person raised on books would enjoy the actual process of reading and wouldn't need to jump through these ridiculous hoops to make it happen. i should thank my mother every day that she made me read. i think you're fucked

>>20258127
Based

>>20258119
idk bud it isnt something I have to force, I like it. Perhaps you don't like to read (due to low iq of course).

>>20258119
Prescription stimulants.

>>20258119
>he thinks people on /lit/ actually read books

>>20258119
Do you have your phone on you or next to you when you read? It helps a lot to turn it off or put it in another room

>>20258149
This is how I've been wanting to approach things, but my work schedule lately has been so fucky it's been hard to get outside before it's already dark out. I'm thinking going camping with a book or two one weekend might be the way to go.

>>20258187
>(due to low iq of course)

>>20258189
Checked. Can go from reading 30 pages to 80 on Amphetamine Salts

>>20258119
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Khcj3q_JuG4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFpVzXmGeTE

Do a dopamine detox

Do concentration meditation daily , even just 10 minutes helps

Read the ultramind solution

You will repair your brain easily with these.

>>20258119
I've learned from books a great deal, but only trivial factoids from wikis and the like. I bet the amount of insight one gets from a subject and the amount of attention they give it follows an s-curve.

>>20258185
don't listen to this retard.
>>20258119
Grab easier books then. Start picking up something you actually like until you feel your reading comprehension and attention span has improved so you can pick up harder books. Don't force yourself to read shit you don't like/can't understand when you're starting. Pick something easy and that interests you. I started by reading books about drug dealers lmao.

>>20258127
This is a bit extreme, but if OP wants results, you need to do a "dopamine detox" where you deliberately adjust your brain's dopamine saturation levels so you become used to lower dopamine intense activities like reading. But, of course, dopamine is too appealing so you'll probably keep your brain soaked in it anyway lol

>>20258157
This is the smartest reply ive seen. We're in the prescense of a genius! Truly the smartest board!

>>20258127
There’s nothing wrong with sugar. If you mean artificial sweeteners and syrups, then fine.

You have to have an objective interest in the things you read. If you don't find the Odyssey interesting, it's not that you are lacking some special concentration brain juice that past generations had, it's that you are seeing it differently. They saw it as an invaluable window into the same thing you are inquiring after when you read those 50 Wikipedia articles, which made them want to pore over it and savour every aspect of it. You probably see it as a chore, a "classic of great literature one ought to read," where "one" is a disembodied no-one, and "ought" means something nebulous like "to be impressive, to be an acceptable person."

Dante was boring to me when I thought it was just some guy writing some made-up shit about heaven and hell, and you either find what he made up pleasurable to read (again in some vague way), or you don't. When I learned about the Middle Ages and learned that the poem was a visionary description of a Neoplatonic mystical ascent, I had more interest in it.

There are three key things to know about this more general point though:
>1: You only gain natural interest in things by learning other things that situate them in webs of significance
>2: This requires continuous reading, which means that you have to read to enjoy reading, which means at the very outset you are at a disadvantage, because you haven't read anything
>3: The more you read things that provide context that makes other things enjoyable, the more the things thus become enjoyable will "turn around" and become the context for something else, in a sort of ratcheting dialectic that goes exponentially and eventually reaches a point where you simply find most things interesting because they are all connected in a meta-web linking up your webs of significance in which not much in the world can be truly uninteresting to you

Reading Moby Dick if you're some pinhead video game addicted retard, looking for one drop of sophistication in a sea of hedonistic piss, is probably not worth it, because it will just be Whale Book* (*with lots of inscrutable crap that can only seem like filler when you know nothing). Reading Dostoevsky for most people will just be reading a somewhat psychologically insightful author describe the goings-on of a few arbitrary people, some more colourful than others. There will be patches of engagement and patches of disengagement, and you might even remember the Grand Inquisitor bit because someone else told you it was important and explained its significance.

>>20258907
People who really dedicate their life to humanistic studies can eventually read Rousseau's Emile as an esoteric allegory for the education of the soul in parallel to Plato's Republic, they can understand the historical significance of Montesquieu's Polybianism, they can read Cicero not as "some old guy, togas or something I guess, talking about Fate I guess, I've got some thoughts about fate I suppose, mostly I work at the phone store, dude do you play Red Dead what's your gamer tag" but as a window into an entirely other way of seeing the world, one with its own windows onto other other ways of seeing the world. Not in some vague shallow sense like "yeah I guess everybody sees the world a certain way and we can benefit from seeing other ways of seeing it bro I wonder if Cicero played Red Dead or like if he thought he was fated to play Red Dead or something?" but as a genuine adventure in which you can be completely transformed.

This is the chief thing that has been lost under late modernity, a general sense that everything "hangs together" and nothing is "just" what it is. Nothing is "just" a book, it's a window into an era, it's a window into the other books and ideas of that era, and all of those are windows onto other things, and eras themselves become windows into other eras with analogous structures and processes. Even if you don't like psychological or realist literature, you can suffer through a book that isn't in your wheelhouse a lot more easily when your unconscious mind knows that it's telling you more about the period that also produced Baudelaire, or that its author decisively influenced Baudelaire, because he is your real interest.

Why did Baudelaire's only novella include a reference to Swedenborg, a mystic visionary who claimed to talk to angels and the souls of dead, and supposedly used his powers to predict a fire in Stockholm in the presence of the Swedish nobility? Why did Kant write to Swedenborg seeking proof of Swedenborg's visionary abilities if he is known for a philosophy that has no place for mysticism or visions? Why was Swedenborg an Enlightenment scientist who started having visions in the first place? You fall down one rabbit hole and then five years later you are reading something else that implies familiarity with Swedenborg, or Kant, or Baudelaire's symbolist side, etc. On a larger scale, later when you find your true calling or passion, you'll find all sorts of resonances and bridges leading onto it from other things you already know, which helps you see broad outlines and get a sense of its topography.

>>20258856
Not him (and think half of what he's talking about is kind of woo) but there is a lot to be said for not having sugar rushes. Syrups and refined sugars are things you should have pretty rarely in nature because they're labour intensive, which is not to say you should never have them, but rather you should eat them about as often as you'd willingly put your hand in bees or spend a day hauling firewood or churning butter. Highly refined foods are industrialised and common because back when you had to do the natural level of work to obtain those foods humans tend to nope out as the cost doesn't pay for the benefit. Refined sugar with no work to be done for it is what makes lab rats choose the sugar feed over the cocaine. Complex carbs give a more even keel to sustenance, and simple sugars need the natural cost of labour to compensate for their short term high.

>>20258916
>How can I fix this?
You have to have more faith that you're doing something that is going to last a lifetime, that it's an exponential process, that it's gradually revealing a "whole," but that it is doing so in ways you can't plan or foresee ahead of time. You are turning yourself into a mirror of the world, the whole really exists out there in reality and you are just sympathetically creating a parallel to it in yourself. The more you do, the more little magical intangible things will happen that convince you it's working. Only just recently do I feel like I "get" certain periods, and I look back to three years ago when they might as well have been space aliens to me and the contrast is shocking.

Have faith that nothing is unrelated, everything will show itself to be connected in the end. I forced myself to read the Iliad and the Odyssey and Plato's dialogues as a teenager just to say I had read them, and I can't tell you how many thousands of times they've come up in my thinking, or informed other things I've read. I'm so glad I read them. As long as you're constantly and consistently reading, you really can't go wrong. There are things I wish I had read earlier, or at a different time, and you will always have to circle back and read something for a second time (frankly, you will have to do this with everything important you read in the first 5-10 years of serious reading), but the only thing I wish I had done more was just have faith in the process and keep reading. The only things I really regret are the periods where I got "backlog syndrome" and killed time instead of reading.

When it comes to fiction in particular I think you need to completely reconceptualise it as a continuous process, not as singular books to knock off. Just accept it, you may not get through "the canon" for decades. That doesn't mean accepting that there is no value to the canon. Everybody should make a goal to read the obvious greats like Dante, Homer, Melville, etc. You should feel a little pang of regret when you realise you haven't really read Yeats, Whitman, Browning, Tennyson, etc. Backlog syndrome is a good thing, a little bit of anxiety about how much there is to do and how little time there is to do it is good. But combine it with the aforementioned faith that the process is working, and combine it with the healthy resignation to the fact that it's going to take years, and reconceptualise the whole thing as a lifelong adventure you're grateful to get back to every day when you wake up, as opposed to a chore and a burden that you secretly wish you could download into your brain like a computer and be done with it.

It also helps if you believe that there is more to life than this, that you have a soul you are really improving in a real sense, and that we're not just consuming higher grades of meaningless hedonistic material when we read Plato instead of re-watching the same shitty TV show for the third time.

Start with short stories and short books. Keep a reading journal, take notes. For some a sense of collecting achievements help, like ticking off books from a list or keeping a log. Set goals for yourself, like reading for at least 30 minutes every single day. Use a timer if you have to. Reading out loud does help a lot when you're struggling to focus. Read crap that /lit/ would make fun of you for reading.

The first goal is to fix your brain, the rest comes with time.

>>20258119
One tip I have is to listen to continuous ambience so that your sense of hearing has something to do while you read. This one on loop is one I like:
https://youtu.be/_VwIR3xhQn0

>>20258119
>but I struggle to sit down and read the Odyssey
You're probably trying to read long, overly complicated and elaborate books. Just start with something simple and easy that you enjoy, once you actually get into the groove of reading an easy book then you'll want to read more complicated stuff.

>>20258127
>No seed oils
lmao what new fad is this

>>20258119
Maybe you just aren't interested in it? You don't need to do things you aren't interested in, a lot of literary classics are honestly overrated. Nothing wrong with reading nonfiction or factual information.

>>20259005
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvKdYUCUca8

>>20258119
try listening to audiobooks instead

>>20258119
you have to find something you really want to read. emphasis on want. Something that you actually want to learn the contents of. Maybe you're picking up the wrong books. I remember when I used to think I liked scifi and fantasy books. I would pick one up and begin reading it, then got bored quickly. I found out after many failed attempts of trying to read novels, that I enjoyed memoirs and history books more, general nonfiction.

>>20258127
>>20258127

>nofap
>mewing
>8 hours of sleep every night
>get out of bed immediately every morning
>wim hof breathing exercises
>cold showers
>waking up 5am
>journaling everyday
>duo lingo everyday
>Fluent in Japanese
>PPL 6 day a week routine
>neck exercises
>run a mile everyday
>Naked Yoga
>omega 3 pills
>zinc pills
>raw onion a day
>kiwi everyday
>coconut oil
>dozen eggs a day
>no S O Y
>no white flour
>OMAD
>reading 4 hours a day
>meditating 30 minutes when you wake up and 30 minutes before bed
>Joe Rogan podcasts
>Jordan Peterson lectures
>Marcus Aurelius Meditations
>The Bible
>Quran
>Study Vedanta
>Read the Sufi texts
>read the Poetic and Prose Eddas
>Read Waffen-SS autobiographies
>Schopenhauer
>Nietzche
>Miyamoto Musashi
>Oswald Spengler
>Julius Evola
>Yukio Mishima
>Rene Guenon
>Frithjof Schuon
>Steve Jobs
>Nick Land
>Moldbug
>Survive the Jive
>Pewdiepie
>playing unmodded vanilla Skyrim
>nature walks
>learn 2 code
>homesteader
>no shoes
>Extraordinary survival and leadership skills
>trained in Boxing
>god like charisma
>Writes a page everyday for his book
>painting in van Gogh style
>Bach
>Beethoven
>Vivaldi
>Warren Zevon
>no sex until marriage
>experienced pure teenaged romance with a 10 out of 10 trad virgin tomboy tsundere childhood friend
>genuinely enjoys existence and wants to have as many babies and bring as much life into existence as possible once he marries his childhood friend
>schizotypical
>doesnt take his meds

>>20258119
Like with everything, it gets easier the more you do it.
when I was 10 years old, 10 pages would take me like 1 hour minutes. had to re-read stuff and would get easily distracted.

>>20258119
just stop trying to chase the good feelings all the time like a child

>>20258927
not OP but I often struggle with the same problem. I've been in a backlog syndrome stall for months, telling myself I don't have time to read on top of doing my master's degree (in the sciences). But I mindlessly scroll through twitter and use up the time I could at least use to make minimal progress through the things I want to read.

This is great advice - I've already resigned myself to the fact that i'll never read everything I want to read, but that's fine. Thank you anon

>>20258119
>189 words
10~25 pages a day. note pad to jot what you have just comprehended. you just need drive. you could even write a book at the rate you're going.

>>20258127
This works but should be introduced gradually. Some people just can't make drastic changes stick.

>>20258119
I have like 5,000 hours clocked on TF2 and can still read 5 books a month. Get good.

>>20258127
lmao
but seriously >>>/pol/