Slow down, you read too fast.

When a pair of bibliophile holidays caught my attention this week - National Read a Book Day on September 6^th and UNESCO’s International Literacy Day on September 8^th ; I wondered, in an age of decreasing attention spans, does how fast you read matter?

©xkcd

Over the past few weeks I’ve touched on a several alarming trends. Distilled - Fewer American’s are reading than ever, often for less than 20 minutes a day, that may be fueling a decrease in empathy (due to the lack of engagement in storytelling).

Is our super-charged world moving too fast for reading? Are most people slow readers and not achieving the instant gratification they expect? In Kevin McSpadden’s piece “You Now Have a Shorter Attention Span Than a Goldfish”^[1] he dug into research conducted by Microsoft for answers. Canadian researchers “found that since the year 2000 (or about when the mobile revolution began) the average attention span dropped from 12 seconds to eight seconds [shorter than a goldfish]” according to the 2015 Microsoft report.^[1] Neuroscientists suspect this may be our brain evolving in response to the rise of rapid bursts of information and our fragmenting mobile society. ‘Ooooo shiny’. Cue ‘squirrel’ from Disney’s UP.

©Giffon Webstudios

Technology is reprogramming how we collect and collate information while introducing myriad distractions. How do diminishing attention spans gristle against the biology of reading? In Mark Seidenberg’s piece “Sorry, But Speed Reading Won’t Help You Read More”^[2] he uses excerpts from his book to explore the biological limitations of reading. Back of the napkin, Seidenberg estimates your eyes can only process 280 words per minute. “The exact number of words per minute is far less important than the fact that the value cannot be greatly increased without seriously compromising comprehension.”^[2] On average, adults read 200 to 300 words per minute with a 60% comprehension rate depending on the material.^[3&4] Given the physical processing limits of our eyes and brain, Seidenberg went further and dispelled most of the popular speed reading modalities.

I have always been a ‘slow’ reader. I read all the words. I create the environments. I like my immersive escapism. I get a bit grumpy when someone bothers me while I’ve got a book open. I am totally at odds with a society demanding I answer every e-mail, direct message and Tweet the second it arrives. I can’t change the physical processing limits of my biological supercomputer, yet. Attention spans will continue to dwindle in response to increasingly fragmented information. How does the slow reader thrive? 

Brett Nelson observed, “The most successful people I know don’t just read – they inhale information… manag[ing] to fit in what amounts to an extra work days’ worth of reading every week.”^[4] Like any skill, reading takes practice and delayed gratification. Seidenberg further drives the point home. “The serious way to improve reading – how well we comprehend a text and, yes, speed and efficiency – is this: Read… As much as possible… Mostly new stuff.”^[2] But maybe turn off the predictive timer on your eReader… Those things are creepy and only reinforce how much longer you’ll be engaged in your current read.

Update: Hovering at 60% complete, I’d expect to collect my thoughts on Cline’s Ready Player One next week. Until then…

How long is your attention span? How fast do you read? Does it matter? And thank you for 2 minutes and 15 seconds of your time.

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1: McSpadden, Kevin. “You Now Have a Shorter Attention Span Than a Goldfish” Time, Time Inc., 14 May 2015, http://time.com/3858309/attention-spans-goldfish/

2: Seidenberg, Mark. “Sorry, But Speed Reading Won’t Help You Read More” Wired, Condé Nast, 24 January 2017, https://www.wired.com/2017/01/make-resolution-read-speed-reading-wont-help/

3: Nowak, Paul. “What Is the Average Reading Speed?” Iris: Reading at the Speed of Thought, Iris Reading LLC, 29 May 2018, https://www.irisreading.com/what-is-the-average-reading-speed/

4: Nelson, Brett. “Do You Read Fast Enough to be Successful?” Forbes, Forbes Media LLC, 4 June 2012, https://www.forbes.com/sites/brettnelson/2012/06/04/do-you-read-fast-enough-to-be-successful/#9ac8760462e7

Twain and a Liberal Arts Education

Life as an independent contractor is unique; ebbing and flowing to its own rhythms rather than the agrarian calendar. I had an unexpected deadline-driven opportunity this week that reminded me of the season’s changes. The first red leaves and autumnal light are hard to ignore. Cooler weather is coming and I am less than impressed.

Local Mark Twain Statue. Olympia, WA. ©MTHough

While researching for work, I paused Tuesday evening to process the information I was collating and analyzing. Dry, bloodshot eyes shied away from further reading despite my love of it. A quick flip through PBS on demand landed me at Ken Burn’s 2001 documentary Mark Twain. At the intermission, I found myself wondering about 'the classics' and my liberal arts education.

As a child, I vividly remember wall mounted shelves containing hard bound volumes of 'the classics'. My parents insisted on collecting them. As times change, books tend to be redacted or abridged to reflect the evolving social attitudes. They wanted my brothers and me to have access to the originals 'as they were meant to be read’. After musing for several days, I can’t honestly remember the names of any of the volumes and find it harder still to recall reading them.

Everyone remembers reading Shakespeare and a few others in high school, an empire of Cliff’s and Sparks Notes depend on it. What other classics did we read? As an undergraduate, I pursued a ‘well-rounded liberal arts education’ because connections often lie in desperate ideas. I recall reading Fitzgerald, Steinbeck and Kerouac. It was only when I returned to the authors as an adult that I understood or enjoyed them. Mark Twain, I am sad to report, has not been thumbed other than his fantastic wit and pointed quotes.

Born Samuel Longhorn Clements, Mark Twain arrived (1835) and departed (1910) with Halley’s Comet and was himself almost a tall tale spun for his readers. Keenly observed and sharp witted, his stories and novels transformed the literature landscape through the use of American vernacular and humor. I often snicker at Twain quotes! He was pitch perfect in his observations. Although owning The Innocence Abroad, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; my connection with Twain really is his quotes, an off-beat Claymation film from 1985 – The Adventures of Mark Twain, and a local statue celebrating his lecture tour stop here in 1895. This week, that changed. I dusted off the story collection which launched Twain onto the national scene - The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches (1867). Although tough to find the vernacular groove, it is 2018 rather than 1865 after all, I immensely enjoyed these tall tales after Ken Burns’ documentary provided the context for their creation.

Even if you only have a few minutes, I suspect you’ll chuckle. Full text available.

As I return to Cline’s Ready Player One…

What makes a book a classic? What classics have you loved? What classics do you wish you’d read?

Empathy and Love Languages

Achooooo! If only it were from the dust…

Sadly, the last few weeks have seen much of the western US blanketed in unhealthy smoke. Thick, hurt your lungs, make your eyes water, smell of fire nearby smoke. Spurred by wildfires currently fueled by record-breaking heat and minuscule precipitation, it reminds me more of a post-apocalyptic nuclear winter than a region known for its stunning natural beauty. As the conditions have worsened, it seems our crowded marble has become more aggressive – Abrasive clients and angry drivers abound.

I took the long way home a few nights ago… Around the largest lake in our county, through precious little remaining old growth forest, across a railroad track shaded by a dappled sunset where a doe was shepherding two fawns away from encroaching civilization. I wondered, can empathy in our transactional society be related to the book I had just finished on ‘love languages’?

Two months ago, I reserved Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages as part of a co-reading experiment. I’m not one for the self-help books, unless the travel section is considered self-help these days, but I wanted to give this experiment a try and support my friend. Libby, my library app, took the liberty of finally downloading the title. Sadly, the co-reader has gone but that hasn’t stopped me from reading the material anyway.

Originally penned in 1992, Dr. Chapman distills his thirty years of experience as a marriage counselor into three simple principles:

1. We all have a ‘love tank’ that needs to be tended. (Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.)
2. There are five primary ways people express they care for one another, although, these tend to be a continuum more than discrete boxes.
3. We each experience the world differently, often filtering our experiences based on our own ‘love language’. Cue epic miscommunications and mayhem when we realize we aren’t speaking the same language!

Chapman uses vignettes as gentle case studies to help illustrate how easy it is to misunderstand each other and how frank discussions and diligent efforts might mend the hurt. Having sold over 11-milliion copies worldwide, translated into 50 languages, and a #1 New York Times Bestseller for over 8 years the book has now spawned a series distilling the message for children, teens, singles and scores of other demographics. He must be on to something.

Chapman’s observations caught my attention in relationship to empathy in our transactional world. Are people ‘meaner’ because our world is more about transactions than relationships? Especially given that relationships take diligent communications in the right language and transactions do not. In Jamil Zaki’s piece “What, Me Care? Young are Less Empathetic”^[1] he explores two studies examining our changing attitudes. Using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, Konrath and colleagues noted, “almost 75 per cent of students today [2011] rate themselves as less empathic than the average student 30 years ago.”^[2]  With a decline in empathic skills between 34% and 48% in the past decade ^[3], it’s unsurprising the world feels grumpy. More alarming to me was a small aside – Jean M. Twenge noticed “during the same period student’s self-reported narcissism has reached new heights.”^[4] Zaki suggests several possible reasons, including what information we consume and how we engage with it, noting work by Raymond A Mar demonstrating “adults who read less fiction report themselves to be less empathic.”^[5] Cue flashing master alarm…

P.J. Manney observed in her Op-Ed “Is Technology Destroying Empathy?”^[6] that “We learn to be in the shoes of another person through real-life observations or storytelling” with communication being at the center of empathy creation. For me, Chapman’s ‘love languages’ distilled this idea – if I communicate more deliberately (not just with a partner) based on how others may experience the world, maybe just maybe a little bit of positivity will follow. Obviously, there are no guarantees, but I’d rather have a relationship over a transaction any day, regardless of the effort required. And, read more fiction!

Next on the reading pile are two books – end of summer popcorn fiction Ernest Cline’s ReadyPlayer One; and a work-related non-fiction volume Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. Tweets will center on the later so as a not to ruin the storyline in the former. Until then...

Do you know your primary love language? Take the quiz! How might learning a new language change your daily transactions into relationships?

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1: Zaki, Jamil. “What, Me Care? Young Are Less Empathetic” Scientific American, Springer Nature America, Inc., 1 January 2011, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-me-care/

2: Konrath, S.H., O'Brien, E.H., and C. Hsing. "Changes in Dispositional Empathy in American College Students over Time: A Meta-Analysis." Personality and Social Psychology Review 15.2 (2011): 180-198. Print.

3: Caprino, Kathy. “Is Empathy Dead? How Your Lack of Empathy Damages Your Reputation and Impact as a Leader” Forbes, Forbes Media LLC., 8 June 2016, https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathycaprino/2016/06/08/is-empathy-dead-how-your-lack-of-empathy-damages-your-reputation-and-impact-as-a-leader/#162034093167

4: Twenge, Jean M. and W. Keith Campbell. "The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement." Free Press, 2009. https://www.narcissismepidemic.com/

5: Mar, R.A., Tackett, J.L. and C. Moore. "Exposure to Media and Theory-of-Mind Development in Preschoolers." Cognitive Development (2009), doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2009.11.002

6: Manney, P.J. “Is Technology Destroying Empathy?” LiveScience, Purch, 30 June 2015, https://www.livescience.com/51392-will-tech-bring-humanity-together-or-tear-it-apart.html