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Q&A What can I do to improve my concentration when reading? [closed]

(I hope this is sufficiently on-topic - couldn't find anywhere else in Stack Exchange more suitable...) Currently I am having to do a lot of reading of academic papers - some dry stuff but not exc...

2 answers  ·  posted 14y ago by Mark Gibaud‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T01:12:27Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/1448
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Mark Gibaud‭ · 2019-12-08T01:12:27Z (almost 5 years ago)
(I hope this is sufficiently on-topic - couldn't find anywhere else in Stack Exchange more suitable...)

Currently I am having to do a lot of reading of academic papers - some dry stuff but not excessively so. The problem is that, given the average length of a paper, it takes me about 90 mins to read, minimum, sometimes up to a couple of hours for the longer ones. I am having trouble concentrating throughout and my mind ends up wandering, making me lose some of the gist and waste valuable minutes over the course of reading several papers every week.

Though to a much lesser extent, I have this problem when reading normal books too (where the content is that much more engaging than your typical academic paper). So I'm looking for some techniques to improve my reading concentration (or more acutely, some way when reading of becoming aware that my mind is wandering).

(Also, any suggestions of where else to ask this question could be helpful.)

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2011-02-07T14:52:38Z (almost 14 years ago)
Original score: 3