一息不存，道将来契

Practices 3

Last year, I read four books.

The reasons for that low number are, I guess, the same as your reasons for reading fewer books than you think you should have read last year: I’ve been finding it harder and harder to concentrate on words, sentences, paragraphs. Let alone chapters. Chapters often have page after page of paragraphs. It just seems such an awful lot of words to concentrate on, on their own, without something else happening. And once you’ve finished one chapter, you have to get through another one. And usually a whole bunch more, before you can say finished, and get to the next. The next book. The next thing. The next possibility. Next next next.

  • Harder and harder to pay attention on to book is the reason of people reading fewer books for people. To concentrate on sentences without other thing anything is fatiguing, even if people need to repeat do that until this book the reading finish, and then may be there are next book.

I am an optimist

Still, I am an optimist. Most nights last year, I got into bed with a book — paper or e — and started. Reading. Read. Ing. One word after the next. A sentence. Two sentences.

  • I called myself an optimist and my habit is that I usually got into went to bed with one book most nights last year. Maybe read one word, one sentence or two sentences

Maybe three.

And then … I needed just a little something else. Something to tide me over. Something to scratch that little itch at the back of my mind— just a quick look at email on my iPhone; to write, and erase, a response to a funny Tweet from William Gibson; to find, and follow, a link to a good, really good, article in the New Yorker, or, better, the New York Review of Books (which I might even read most of, if it is that good). Email again, just to be sure.

  • And then, I would tide me myself over by something else on my phone, such as checking my email, finding a funny response from William Gibson or following some good articles in the New Yorker. Or any other thing and so on.

I’d read another sentence. That’s four sentences.

Smokers who are the most optimistic about their ability to resist temptation are the most likely to relapse four months later, and overoptimistic dieters are the least likely to lose weight. (Kelly McGonigal: The Willpower Instinct)

  • Both smokers or and dieters who is are overoptimistic, may be relapse four months later after the decide to quit smoking decision of quitting smoke or the their weight has been may be maintained and cannot be reduced.
  • Both… and… 是固定搭配
  • Maybe 单独站句首（副词）
    May 后面跟动词（情态动词）
    May be 意思是”或许是”（动词短语）
  • the decision of… 关于…的决定

It takes a long time to read a book at four sentences per day.

And it’s exhausting. I was usually asleep halfway through sentence number five.

I’ve noticed this pattern of behaviour for a while now, but I think last year’s completed book tally was as low as it has ever been. It was dispiriting, most deeply so because my professional life revolves around books: I started LibriVox (free public domain audiobooks), and Pressbooks (an online platform for making print and ebooks), and I co-edited a book about the future of books.

  • I have noticed this problem and I have tried to solve it with two methods. One is starting LibriVox, which is means audiobooks and other one is Pressbooks which is an online print and ebooks website online. I was dispiriting when I find that last year’s completed book was the fewest. So I co-edited a book about the future of books.
  • One is… and another is…
  • 非限制性定语从句 – My cat, which is black, sleeps a lot.
    有逗号 , which – 补充说明
  • 限制性定语从句 – The cat which is black is mine.
    无逗号 – 限定范围

I’ve dedicated my life one way or another to books, I believe in them, yet, I wasn’t able to read them.

I’m not alone.

When the people at the New Yorker can’t concentrate long enough to listen to a song all the way through, how are books to survive?

  • How are can books survive when people can not pay attention to them as long as a how long the length of a song.
  • pay attention to … 固定搭配

I heard an interview on the New Yorker podcast recently, the host was interviewing writer and photographer, Teju Cole.

Host:

One of the challenges in culture now is to, say, listen to a song all the way through, we’re all so distracted, are you still able to kind of give deep attention to things, are you able to sort of engage in culture that way?”

//现在是晚上7:30，写一个半小时，9点去跑步

//Jun 30

  • It is a challenge which is the short-attention time for culture today. An example is that some people can not even focus on listening to a song. So now have there are two problems, one is “Are people still able to focus on something fully？”Another is “Are people still able to engage in culture like before?
  • which is 和 that 不能互换
  • 不要用have替代there be

//现在是7:57，摸了一会儿鱼，现在正式开始干活。

Teju Cole:

“Yes, very much so.”

//8:18 刚摸完鱼，这回真的正式开始干活了

//9:01 家里有点事，忙了一会儿，没摸鱼啊。运动去了。一个小时应该够用，运动完洗个澡10点开始干活，争取11点之前搞定

//6:36了，5:30的闹钟，睡到6:00，起来后又拖延了一个半小时

When I heard this, I felt like hugging the host. He couldn’t even listen to a song all the way through, before getting distracted. Imagine what his bedside pile of books does to him.

  • The host is too distract so that he couldn’t even to listen to a song completely. When I heard this, I want to hug him, because I can imagine how many useless those pile of books are put on his bedside.
  • too… to… 如此…以至于（自带否定）
  • so… that… 如此…以至于（详细描述）
  • so that 因此
  • want to do sth.

I also felt like hugging Teju Cole. It’s people like Mr. Cole who give us hope that someone will be left to teach our children how to read books.

  • Our society needs Teju Cole to teach the next generation how to read books and he is a kind of hope so that I want to hugging him, too.

Dancing to distraction

What was true of my problems reading books — the unavoidable siren call of the digital hit of new information — was true in the rest of my life as well.

  • The digital hit of new information is hard to refuse. And that question is not only happens when I am reading books but also happens in the rest of my life.
  • not only… but also 不止…还有

// 五个

My two-year old daughter, dance recital. Pink tutu. Cat ears on her head. Along with five other two-year-olds, in front of a crowd of 75 parents and grandparents, these little toddlers put on a show. You can imagine the rest. You’ve seen these videos on Youtube, maybe I have shown you my videos. The cuteness level was extreme, a moment that defines a certain kind of parental pride. My daughter didn’t even dance, she just wandered around the stage, looking at the audience with eyes as wide as a two-year old’s eyes starting at a bunch of strangers. It didn’t matter that she didn’t dance, I was so proud. I took photos, and video, with my phone.

  • Maybe I have showed you that video, or you have watched it at Youtube, or you can image that my two-year old daughter stood on a stage to perform a dance with five other same age children, in front of about 75 parents and grandparents, with pink tutu and cat ears. I am proud of her just a kind of parental pride, not about whether she do did it good or not. My daughter just wandered around the stage and looking looked at the audience, that enough remarkable cuteness, I took photos and video, with my phone.
  • 注意：时态一致
  • //微信打开看时态那几页
  • //2025年7月8日

//7:04 一切顺利，但是我得提前去公司了

//8:00 到公司了，开始干活，8:45上课

And, just in case, I checked my email. Twitter. You never know.

I find myself in these kinds of situations often, checking email or Twitter, or Facebook, with nothing to gain except the stress of a work-related message that I can’t answer right now in any case.

  • I often check my email, Twitter or Facebook, even though I get nothing out of it. Maybe I know that maybe it just bring stress from work to me and I can not answer quickly in any case.

It makes me feel vaguely dirty, reading my phone with my daughter doing something wonderful right next to me, like I’m sneaking a cigarette.

  • It feels like sneaking a cigarette when my daughter play and feel wonderful around me while I am reading my phone. It make me feel vaguely dirty.
  • while 当…时候
  • while 后面只能接可持续性的动作，句式：be + V.
    • when 可以替代 while，但while不能替代when
    • when 后面既可以接可持续性，也可以接瞬间动作

Or a crack pipe.

One time I was reading on my phone while my older daughter, the four-year-old, was trying to talk to me. I didn’t quite hear what she had said, and in any case, I was reading an article about North Korea. She grabbed my face in her two hands, pulled me towards her. “Look at me,” she said, “when I’m talking to you.”

  • One time My four-year-old daughter try tried to talk to me when I was reading an article about North Korea on my phone, I didn’t quite hear clearly. She grabbed my face by with her two hands and pulled me towards her. “Look at me”, she said, “when I am talking to you”.

She is right. I should.

Spending time with friends, or family, I often feel a soul-deep throb coming from that perfectly engineered wafer of stainless steel and glass and rare earth3 metals in my pocket. Touch me. Look at me. You might find something marvellous.

  • 这句话就没有reword的必要了吧

// 十个

This sickness is not limited to when I am trying to read, or once-in-a-lifetime events with my daughter.

At work, my concentration is constantly broken: finishing writing an article (this one, actually), answering that client’s request, reviewing and commenting on the new designs, cleaning up the copy on the About page. Contacting so and so. Taxes.

  • At work, my concentration is always fragmented but I have too many tasks to do: I need to finish writing this an article, answering client’s request, reviewing and commenting on the new designs, modification modifying the words on the About Page or contact with someone.

All these tasks critical to my livelihood, get bumped more often than I should admit by a quick look at Twitter (for work), or Facebook (also for work), or an article about Mandelbrot sets (which, just this minute, I read).

  • All these tasks is are important parts to keep my work, these they can be fragmented by a quickly use my phone: look at Twitter, Facebook or an article about Mandelbrot set. And I was told to myself that I do it for work or just one minute then I would back to work.
  • （没保存啊可恶）

//7月1日 8:24，已经在考虑下面要备注什么了，真是只要想摸鱼什么都能摸

Email, of course, is the worst, because email is where work happens, and even if it’s not the work you should be doing right now it may well be work that’s easier to do than what you are doing now, and that means somehow you end up doing that work instead of whatever you are supposed to be working on now. And only then do you get back to what you should have been focusing on all along.

  • The worst situation is happen in the email, but not because too many recreations in there, the worst thing is work, easier work. And then you would to do that work but not the thing that you are focus on, even if it is not the work you should do it now.

Dopamine and digital

It turns out that digital devices and software are finely tuned to train us to pay attention to them, no matter what else we should be doing. The mechanism, borne out by recent neuroscience studies, is something like this:

  • A neuroscience neurologist‘s study show that why we pay attention to digital devices in almost every time even if we should do something else:

// 十四个

//以上是周末作业

//其实无论作业有多少对我来说都差不多

//反正都是拖到最后写

//这段话是提前写好的

//如果最终你看到了这段话但是作业并没有完成

//说明周一的工作重心不在reword上，以至于明天的我认为多拖延一天不会被发现

//都说人无法共情过去的自己，不要意思，我甚至无法共情明天的自己

//就像是工作日的我无法共情周末的我，周六的我无法共情周天的我，周天上午的我无法共情周天下午的我，周天下午的我无法共情周天晚上的我，想要熬些写作业却一直刷手机的我无法共情隔天早上起来赶作业的我，在早上认真写作业的我无法共情明明早起却一直拖延时间直到写不完作业开始找理由不写作业的我。

//2025年6月29日上午

//2025年6月29日 下午

//我已经把口语作业完成了，所以哪怕明天的我没写完Reword，至少现在的我已经完成了一半的作业。

//2025年6月30日 早上

该说了解自己还是该说我没有自知之明呢

//2025年7月1日 早上 8:32 我终于周末作业了，接下来是周一的10个reword，希望能在8:45之前搞定（怎么可能）

//没搞定也没关系，我昨天生病了嘛，情有可原

//至于为啥周末的没写完……当我没说

//8:36 出去上厕所撞上671了，暴露，少写10分钟

//反正上面也有三页的两，不一定能讲完

New information creates a rush of dopamine to the brain, a neurotransmitter that makes you feel good.

The promise of new information compels your brain to seek out that dopamine rush.

With fMRIs, you can see the brain’s pleasure centres light up with activity when new emails arrive.

//现在是7月1 8:43 先写个1小时，9:43休息

//别问我为什么下午没写，因为感冒，一睡睡到三点半，回家就四点多了

//然后摸了会儿鱼，不过这不重要

So, every new email you get gives you a little flood of dopamine. Every little flood of dopamine reinforces your brain’s memory that checking email gives a flood of dopamine. And our brains are programmed to seek out things that will give us little floods of dopamine. Further, these patterns of behaviour start creating neural pathways, so that they become unconscious habits: Work on something important, brain itch, check email, dopamine, refresh, dopamine, check Twitter, dopamine, back to work. Over and over, and each time the habit becomes more ingrained in the actual structures of our brains.

  • The reason which why people refresh email or other applications constantly is that human’s brain would discover how to get more dopamine. The specific situation is, for example, each new email you get can give you a little flood of dopamine would. And then each little flood of dopamine be remembered by your brain. Finally it become a unconscious habit and each time you repeat this make the habit deeper in your mind. The consequence is that each time you focus on something, your brain feels uncomfortable and gains dopamine by checking applications on the phone.
  • 固定搭配：the reason why …的原因
  • would 是 will 的过去式，将要、将会

How can books compete?

Pleasing ourselves to death

//9:52 我在干嘛？我刚才干什么了？我丢了个垃圾洗了个澡。为什么一小时就过去了？我干啥了？

//认真干活，每天早上5:30起来，今天写到11点就睡，争取写完所有

There is a famous study of rats, wired up with electrodes on their brains. When the rats press a lever, a little charge gets released in part of their brain that stimulates dopamine release. A pleasure lever.

  • ‘Pleasure lever’ this concept is form a famous study of rats, scientist wired up with electrodes on rats’ brains and it give a little charge to stimulates rats’ dopamine when they rats press a lever.

Given a choice between food and dopamine, they’ll take the dopamine, often up to the point of exhaustion and starvation. They’ll take the dopamine over sex. Some studies see the rats pressing the dopamine lever 700 times in an hour.

  • The dopamine is more important than the food and sexy even if they there are exhaustion and starvation. Some studies find that the rats pressing the lever about 700times in one hour.

We do the same things with our email. Refresh. Refresh.

（这里应该有一张图片）

//我写了两段我太棒了

//看两眼漫画好了，新发现的也不知道好不好看

//7月1 晚上 10:05

//加载好慢再写一段

//破网路

Choices: Part 1 (xkcd)

There is no beautiful universe on the other side of the email refresh button, and yet it’s the call of that button that keeps pulling me out of the work I am doing, out of reading books I want to read.

  • The email refresh button keeps pulling our our us from working and reading, but we all know that there is not no beautiful universe on the other side of the button.
  • 核心含义差异： not 表示对动作、状态或性质的否定（“不做”、“不是”、“不怎么样”）；no 表示对名词所指事物存在或数量的否定（“没有”、“无”）或对问题的否定回答。

//踏马的把手机反过来就自动锁屏了

//再写一段应该能加载好

//加载好了诶

//就看一话，诶嘿

Why are books important?

When I think back on my life, I can define a set of books that shaped me — intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. Books have always been an escape, a learning experience, a saviour, but beyond this, greater than this, certain books became, over time, a kind of glue that holds together my understanding of the world. I think of them as nodes of knowledge and emotion, nodes that knot together the fabric my self. Books, for me anyway, hold together who I am.

  • Overall, book shaped me intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. In detail, book is a kind of escape, experience and a saviour, in deeper, book is how I understand this world. Greater than this, book is who am I.

//再看一章

//踏马的加载不出来

//再写一段

Books, in ways that are different to visual art, to music, to radio, to love even, force us to walk through another’s thoughts, one word at a time, over hours and days. We share our minds for that time with the writer’s. There is a slowness, a forced reflection required by the medium that is unique. Books recreate someone else’s thoughts inside our own minds, and maybe it is this one-to-one mapping of someone else’s words, on their own, without external stimuli, that give books their power. Books force us to let someone else’s thoughts inhabit our minds completely.

  • Books force us to walk through another’s others’ thoughts, read another’s others’ mind, one word at a time. Books force us to share the our minds with writers’ when we are concentrating on it, read slowly and think deliberately, may this give the power to book to force us to let another other thoughts be recreated in our minds.

//好他妈难啊

//我写完五段了太好了

//休息一下

//7月1日 晚上 10:36

// 11:04，我在干嘛？

//还剩13个，每天早上起来写

//一定能写完的，相信我

Books are not just transferrers of knowledge and emotion, but a special kind of tool that flattens one self into another, that enable the trying-on of foreign ideas and emotions.

  • books are not translation to a information and situation, but a effecial lot of kink is that myself into another, that enable the trying-on of foreign ideas and position.

This suppressing of the self is a kind of meditation too — and while books have always been important to me on their own (pre-digital) merits, it started to occur to me that “learning how to read books again,” might also be a way to start weaning my mind away from this dopamine-soaked digital detritus, this meaningless wash of digital information, which would have a double benefit: I would be reading books again, and I would get my mind back.

  • This support in the one of the first lot of mechine to a white books to a it also an aw to start weaning our mind leave from that

And, there are, often, beautiful universes to be found on the other side of the cover of a book.

The problems with digital stuff

Recent neuroscience confirms many of the things we sufferers of digital overload know innately. That successful multi-tasking is a myth. Multi-tasking makes us stupider. According to psychologist Glenn Wilson, the cognitive losses from multitasking are equivalent to smoking pot. (UPDATE: thanks to Liza Daly for pointing out that Glenn Wilson has publicly stated that this study was part of a paid PR gig, and misrepresented in the media. See: http://www.drglennwilson.com/Infomania_experiment_for_HP.doc)

This is bad for so many reasons: it makes us less effective at work, which means either we get less done, or have less time to spend doing other things, or both.

//以上是周一的作业

//现在是晚上7:30，也不知道往后一个半小时我会干嘛

Being in a situation where you are trying to concentrate on a task, and an e-mail is sitting unread in your inbox, can reduce your effective IQ by 10 points. (The Organized Mind, by Daniel J Levitin)

// 10

It’s worse than that though, because this constant hopping from one thing to another is also exhausting.

My least productive days, the days when I have spent the most time jumping between projects and emails and Twitter and whatever else, are also my most exhausting days. I used to think that my exhaustion was the cause of this lack of focus, but it turns out the opposite might be true.

It takes more energy to shift your attention from task to task. It takes less energy to focus. That means that people who organize their time in a way that allows them to focus are not only going to get more done, but they’ll be less tired and less neurochemically depleted after doing it. (The Organized Mind, by Daniel J Levitin)

The problem defined

And so, the problem, more or less, is identified:

I cannot read books because my brain has been trained to want a constant hit of dopamine, which a digital interruption will provide

This digital dopamine addiction means I have trouble focusing: on books, work, family and friends

Problem identified, or most of it. There is more.

Oh, and don’t forget about television

We live in a golden age of television, there is no doubt. The stuff being produced these days is very good. And there is a lot of it.

For the past couple of years, my evening routine has been a variation on: get home from work, exhausted. Make sure the girls have eaten. Make sure I eat. Get the girls to bed. Feel exhausted. Turn on the computer to watch some (neo-golden-age-era) television. Fiddle with work emails, and generally piddle around while that golden-age-era TV consumes 57% of my attention. Be bad at watching TV and bad at getting emails done. Go to bed. Try to read. Check email. Try to read again. Fall asleep.

//15

Those who read own the world, and those who watch television lose it. (Werner Herzog)

I don’t know if Werner Herzog is right, but I do know that I would never say about television — even the great stuff, of which there is plenty — what I say about books. There are no television shows that exist as nodes holding together my understanding of the world. My relationship to television is just not the same as it is to books.

And, so, a change

And so, starting in January, I started making some changes. The key ones are:

No more Twitter, Facebook, or article reading during the work day (hard)

No reading of random news articles (hard)

No smartphones or computers in the bedroom (easy)

No TV after dinner (it turns out, easy)

Instead, go straight to bed and start reading a book — usually on an eink ereader (it turns out, easy)

The shocking thing was how quickly my mind adapted to accommodate reading books again. I had expected to fight for that concentration — but I didn’t have to fight. With less digital input (no pre-bed TV, especially), extra time (no TV, again), and without a tempting digital device near at hand … there was time and space for my mind to settle into a book.

What a wonderful feeling it was.

I am reading books now more than I have in years. I have more energy, and more focus than I’ve had for ages. I have not fully conquered my digital dopamine addiction, though, but it’s getting there. I think reading books is helping me retrain my mind for focus.

//18

//7月1 晚上9:54，才13个，其实不多，看来我之前写了不少嘛

//明天不用早起来，今天11点之前肯定能写完

//签字画押：王承志

//要是没写完我把姓倒过来写

//先去装点水做点准备

//新西兰金黄奇异果真好吃

And books, it turns out, are still the same wonderful things they used to be. I can read them again.

Workday email, however, remains a problem. If you have suggestions for that, please let me know.

//其实上面那一大段备注都是我周一早上现编的

//我五点多就起来了来着，然后一直，拖拖拖，拖到写不完也不想写作业了

//咱的下一篇文章就是如何解决拖延症

//希望有用

//2025年6月30日 7:59