I'd love to be a contributor to this website, and I do actually enjoy reading after I'm done with them. However while reading it feels like such a chore. I had a terrible habit of just reading the title of articles for a while. I've decided to stop doing that as I want to actually be informed.
Sorry for the short rant, have any of you with small attention spans ever solved such issues?
The best established attentional training game is called dual n-back, and you can download and use the software free. You can probably tell from the name alone that dual n-back isn't exactly the instantly addictive ‘Bejewelled Blitz', but it has its charms in an oddly meditative way. The game requires you to simultaneously remember letters (spoken aloud by the computer) and locations of squares on a tic-tac-toe style grid (presented visually, obviously). At the easiest difficulty level, you need only remember the letters or locations from the previous round. At harder difficulty levels, you need to remember letters or locations from longer ago (the round-before-last, and so on). Harder difficulty levels quickly become fiendishly difficult and demanding, but you can always ease off and practice at the easier levels. On the PC, you can play the dual n-back game by downloading the open-source software Brain Workshop. On the iPad, you can download the IQ boost app (also free). Both of these versions of the game come with full instructions. It should be noted that research in this area is at an early stage, and your results may vary. Anecdotal comments on various internet sites report a range of benefits, from significant to none at all. Still, it never hurts to try. A common theme is that it takes dedicated practice to achieve significant results.
What do you want to be doing instead of reading when you're reading an article? What do you end up doing? Presumably surfing the web. Diminish your distractions. Turn off your computer. Read entire books; in small pieces if you have to. Or try sitting on your bed listening to an album in the dark, without doing anything else, for 45 minutes. Who knows, you may just enjoy it. What are your interests? Can you read an entire article on something you enjoy learning about? If so, you have the attention span -- you just need to work on translating it to subjects that don't immediately grab you.
That brings up a good point, I can read entire books and I often listen to music for hours on end. I want to be informed on politics and world news, but I guess that I don't like reading about them haha.Can you read an entire article on something you enjoy learning about? If so, you have the attention span -- you just need to work on translating it to subjects that don't immediately grab you.
I'm jumping to conclusions a bit, but it sounds more like you feel you should be more informed on politics and world news, as if there's an expectation on you to be, rather than actually wanting to be. It makes all the difference. You can listen to music for hours on end and read entire books because you want to. If you felt you should do it because of some outside expectation I bet you wouldn't be able to spend half as much time on them. You just can't feign interest in things. You're going to have to become invested in things to gain genuine interest in them. Do some background research, spark up conversation with people on the subjects, set a specified time aside to do whatever it is. But at the end of the day, if you don't have any empathy towards something or an interest in a particular area there's no point torturing yourself trying to become involved in it.
I've been following news websites and blog-ish type places (like reddit) for about 2 years now. I feel invested in political subjects, but I only ever read headlines or watched videos. A few months ago I decided that just reading sensationalist headlines wasn't giving me a proper view of things, so I vowed to start reading entire articles. My main issue is that I'm just so bored doing so. The articles are usually summed up nicely by the title anyways.