How I Started Reading Again After Years of Doom-Scrolling

I used to read. Like, a lot. In college I'd burn through two or three books a month without thinking about it. Sci-fi on the bus, nonfiction before bed, whatever paperback was on the clearance table at the bookstore that looked halfway interesting. Reading was just a thing I did, the way some people play guitar or go for runs or develop concerning opinions about craft beer.

Then smartphones happened. Social media happened. And somewhere between 2017 and last year, my attention span got taken behind the shed and put down. I didn't notice it dying — it was more like a slow fade. One year I was reading twenty books. Then ten. Then four. Then I realized I hadn't finished a single book in fourteen months, but I could tell you exactly what was trending on Twitter at any given second.

The breaking point came when I tried to read a novel my buddy lent me — a thriller, not even anything dense — and I caught myself reaching for my phone after every two pages. Not because I was bored. Just because my brain demanded a hit of something. Anything. A notification, a scroll, a like. The book was genuinely good and I still couldn't sit with it for more than three minutes.

That's when I realized: I didn't lose interest in reading. I lost the ability to read. And that scared me enough to do something about it.

My Attention Span: A Crime Scene Investigation

Before I tried to fix anything, I wanted to understand how bad the damage actually was. So I did a little experiment. I sat down with a book, set a timer, and tried to read without touching my phone.

Four minutes and twelve seconds. That's how long I lasted before I "just checked" a notification. Four minutes. I've microwaved burritos for longer than I could focus on a page.

This tracks with what the research says, by the way. The average attention span for screen content has dropped from about twelve seconds to eight seconds in the last two decades. And while that specific stat gets debated, the general trend is undeniable. Our brains have been rewired to expect constant novelty — new post, new video, new outrage, new dopamine — and a book that asks you to sit with the same narrative for hours is basically asking your brain to run a marathon when it's been doing nothing but sprints.

I actually tracked my screen time for 30 days around this same period, and the numbers were genuinely humiliating. It turns out the same brain that "didn't have time to read" was spending four-plus hours a day watching strangers argue about nothing on the internet. So the time was there. The capacity wasn't.

Step One: Stop Trying to Read Like You Used To

My first mistake was grabbing a 600-page literary novel and trying to white-knuckle my way through it. I figured discipline was the answer. Just sit down and read, you idiot. How hard can it be?

Very hard, as it turns out, when your dopamine receptors have been fried like carnival food. I made it about forty pages over two weeks, hated every second of it, and the book ended up as a very expensive coaster on my nightstand.

The fix was embarrassingly simple: start with books that are actually fun to read.

I don't mean dumb books. I mean books that move. Short chapters. Page-turners. Stuff where you actually want to know what happens next. The literary equivalent of a TV show you'd binge — not homework.

This felt like cheating at first. Like I should be reading Marcus Aurelius or some 800-page history of the Roman Empire to prove I was a Serious Reader. But here's the thing: the goal isn't to impress anyone. The goal is to rebuild the habit. You don't walk into a gym after five years off and try to bench 300. You start with the bar and work up. Same principle.

The Books That Got Me Back In

Everyone's gateway drug is different, but here's what worked for me and what I'd recommend depending on what you're into.

If you like action and can't sit still: Start with Lee Child's Jack Reacher series. Short chapters. Constant momentum. Zero filler. These books are basically engineered to make you say "one more chapter" until it's 2 AM and you've read 200 pages. I read Killing Floor in three days and it was the first book I'd finished in over a year.

If you're into true crime or mystery: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. It reads like fiction but it's all real — a serial killer operating during the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. The chapters alternate between the killer and the architect building the fair, and both storylines are genuinely gripping. It's the book that made me realize nonfiction doesn't have to feel like a textbook.

If you want something that'll make you think without putting you to sleep: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. It's structured as short snippets and quotes, so you can read three pages or thirty. Perfect for a brain that's still in recovery mode. And it's legitimately one of the best books on wealth and happiness I've come across. Speaking of which, if you're looking for more in that vein, I put together a list of books that completely rewired how I think about money — some of them were pivotal in getting me back into reading.

If you just want to laugh: A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. A middle-aged, out-of-shape guy tries to hike the Appalachian Trail. It's hilarious, it's well-written, and you'll finish it fast because Bryson is one of those writers who makes every paragraph entertaining.

If you want sci-fi that doesn't require a glossary: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. If you liked The Martian, this is better. A guy wakes up on a spaceship and has to figure out where he is, why he's there, and how to save the Earth. Sounds heavy, reads light. I stayed up until 3 AM to finish it, which was the first time a book had done that to me in years.

The 20-Page Rule

Here's the deal I made with myself that changed everything: read 20 pages a day. That's it. Not a chapter. Not an hour. Twenty pages.

Why twenty? Because it's small enough that you can't reasonably say you don't have time. Twenty pages takes about 15 to 25 minutes depending on the book and how fast you read. That's one episode of a sitcom. That's the time you spend scrolling Reddit before bed and pretending you're "winding down."

Some nights I read my 20 pages and stopped. Some nights — and this happened more often than I expected — I'd hit page 20 and think "well, I'm already here" and keep going for another 30 or 40 pages. The secret of the 20-page rule isn't that 20 pages is some magic number. It's that starting is the hard part, and 20 pages is a low enough bar that you actually start.

At 20 pages a day, you'll finish most books in about two weeks. That's roughly 25 books a year. From zero. That's not bad for a guy whose longest reading streak was a Reddit thread about whether a hot dog is a sandwich.

Making It Physical

I tried e-readers. I tried reading on my phone. I tried reading on my iPad. All of them failed for the same reason: the second I'm holding a screen, my brain treats it as a portal to everything else. Oh, I'll just check one notification. Let me respond to this text real quick. And then I'm gone — forty minutes into a YouTube rabbit hole about whether you can survive falling into lava, book completely forgotten.

Physical books fixed this. A paperback has exactly one function: being a book. There's no notification drawer. There's no "just one more scroll." It's ink on paper, and your brain treats it differently. I noticed I could focus for 30 to 40 minutes with a physical book versus barely 5 minutes on a screen. The medium matters more than I wanted to admit.

I know physical books take up space. I know they're heavier. I know you can't adjust the font size. I don't care. If your attention span is as destroyed as mine was, go physical. At least until you rebuild the muscle. You can go back to Kindle once your brain remembers how to focus.

The Environment Hack

Where you read matters almost as much as what you read. I figured this out by accident.

My first few weeks of trying to read again, I was doing it on the couch. Same couch where I watch TV. Same couch where I scroll my phone. Same couch where I sometimes fall asleep at 8:30 PM like someone's grandfather. My brain associated that couch with passive consumption, not active attention. Every time I sat down with a book there, part of my brain was waiting for Netflix to start.

I moved to a chair in the corner of my bedroom. No TV in sight. Phone plugged in across the room. Just a lamp, the chair, and the book. It felt almost ridiculous — like I was setting up a "reading station" like a kindergartner — but it worked immediately. My brain got the message: this spot is for reading. Within a couple of weeks, just sitting in that chair made me want to pick up my book.

If you don't have a dedicated chair, a coffee shop works great too. Something about the ambient noise and the social pressure of being in public makes it easier to focus. You're less likely to bail and open TikTok when there's a stranger sitting three feet away.

The Phone Problem (You Already Know What I'm Going to Say)

Leave it in another room. Not on silent. Not face-down on the table. In. Another. Room.

I know. I know. What if someone calls? What if there's an emergency? What if the group chat pops off? Brother, you'll survive 20 minutes of being unreachable. Humanity managed for thousands of years without being instantly contactable. Your fantasy football league can wait.

The first few times I did this, I felt genuine anxiety. That low-grade fizzy feeling of not knowing what's happening on the internet. It faded after about a week. And once it faded, reading became easier almost overnight. Turns out most of the battle isn't about the book — it's about removing the thing that's competing with the book.

What Reading Actually Did for Me

I want to be careful here because I'm not going to claim reading gave me a six-pack and a corner office. But real things changed.

I sleep better. Reading before bed instead of scrolling means my brain isn't jacked up on blue light and outrage when I'm trying to fall asleep. I fall asleep faster, I sleep deeper, and I wake up feeling like an actual person instead of a collection of anxieties loosely held together by caffeine.

I have things to talk about. Not to sound dramatic, but consuming nothing but social media was making me boring. Every conversation was "did you see that thing online?" Reading gave me actual ideas, stories, and perspectives to bring to the table. My conversations got better. Dates got better. Even small talk got easier because I had something to draw from besides whatever meme was going around that week.

My focus improved everywhere. This one surprised me the most. After about two months of consistent reading, I noticed I could focus longer at work. Longer conversations without zoning out. Longer stretches of deep work without reaching for my phone. Reading is like physical therapy for your attention span — it's boring and slow and you hate it at first, but it genuinely rebuilds what was broken.

I'm less anxious. Social media is basically a machine designed to make you feel like the world is ending every fifteen minutes. Books don't do that. Even dark books, even heavy books — they operate on a different timescale. They give your nervous system a break from the constant assault of Breaking News and Hot Takes and This Person Said Something Terrible.

How to Actually Finish Books (The Real Challenge)

Starting books is easy. Finishing them is the boss fight. Here's what helped me.

Give yourself permission to quit. If you're 80 pages into a book and you're not feeling it, stop. Life is too short to finish bad books out of obligation. I used to think quitting a book was failure. Now I think of it as editing my reading list in real time. Not every book is for you, and that's fine.

Don't read more than one book at a time. I know some people juggle three or four books simultaneously. Those people have functioning attention spans. You and I do not — at least not yet. One book at a time. Finish it or quit it. Then move to the next one.

Track it. I keep a simple note on my phone — just a list of books I've finished with the date. Watching that list grow is genuinely motivating. It's like a streak on a fitness app but for your brain. I'm at 14 books since I started this whole experiment, and seeing that number makes me want to keep going.

Talk about what you're reading. Tell a friend. Post about it. Bring it up at dinner. When you know you might have to discuss a book, you pay more attention while reading it. You retain more. And occasionally you'll find out someone else read the same book and you'll have a great conversation about it, which is a better dopamine hit than any Instagram like.

The Bottom Line

My attention span isn't fully healed. I still catch myself reaching for my phone sometimes. I still have nights where the 20 pages feel like running through wet concrete. The damage from years of constant scrolling doesn't undo itself in a few months.

But I'm reading again. Consistently. Books I actually enjoy, that make me think, that give me things to talk about, that help me sleep, that make me feel like a functional human being instead of a content consumption machine.

The secret isn't willpower or some elaborate system. It's starting stupidly small, removing the thing that's competing for your attention, and picking books that are actually fun to read. That's the whole formula. It's almost insulting how simple it is.

Go buy a paperback. Put your phone in a drawer. Read 20 pages. Tomorrow, do it again. That's it. That's the article. Now stop reading this on your phone and go read an actual book.