Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

50%
+0 −0
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 13y ago by Mark Gibaud‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

Question readers
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T01:12:27Z (over 4 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 (over 4 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 (about 13 years ago)
Original score: 3