Here's a fun little cycle I used to run on repeat: buy a book, open it, read ten pages, feel great about myself for approximately four minutes, then check my phone "real quick." Three hours later I'm deep into a compilation of strangers falling off treadmills and I have no idea how I got there.
Sound familiar? Yeah. Thought so.
At some point I had an uncomfortable realization. You know how every biography of every successful person has that one annoying detail? They all read. Like, a lot. Constantly. Meanwhile, my reading habit was best described as "theoretical."
So I forced myself into a system. Every weekend, I read. I started taking notes. Writing little reviews. Highlighting things like some kind of functioning adult. It felt fake at first. Then it felt less fake. Then — and I'm not entirely sure this isn't just my ego talking — I think it actually made me smarter.
But here's the part I'm less proud of.
I'm still hooked on the garbage. YouTube rabbit holes. Reels. That infinite scroll of absolutely nothing. I know it's making me dumber. I know it while I'm doing it. And I keep doing it anyway. Because that's how cheap dopamine works — it doesn't need your permission.
Think about the difference between reading a book and watching reels. One is like having dinner with someone brilliant. The other is like overhearing a screaming match on public transit. Both technically involve words. But one leaves you with something. The other just leaves.
Books cost you something. Not money — attention. Real, sustained, uncomfortable attention. The kind your brain has been trained to avoid. Reels cost you nothing upfront. They just silently torch your imagination on the way out.
Here's what broke my brain, though.
When I work with AI, I'm meticulous about context. I clean the input. Remove noise. Structure everything carefully so the model can think clearly and make better connections.
And then I look at what I feed my own neural networks all day.
Junk. Absolute junk.
The hypocrisy is almost impressive.
What finally worked for me was joining a couple of book clubs. Not because book clubs are glamorous — they're not. But because when other humans are expecting you to show up having read the thing, you read the thing. Accountability is annoying like that. It works precisely because you can't weasel out of it.
So if you've been telling yourself you'll "get back into reading eventually" — consider this your sign. Not a gentle nudge. A blunt one.
Because "eventually" is a lie you tell yourself while the algorithm picks your next thirty-second distraction.