One thing which has helped me be more comfortable while reading is to slow down my eyes, and let my attention fall on each individual word. Taking my time to digest the text so to speak, as opposed to go as fast as I can.
In contrast, we tend to scan images by quickly moving our eyes across the screen, which means that people who are habitually looking at images more than text tend to move their eyes too quickly to read comfortably and deeply. Because our world is now dominated by the image and the screen, more than say text, because those are very quick to process. Even music and video are falling behind, because they require people to pay attention to a continuity, which is why less and less people listen to full albums, and young people frequently play videos on 1.5x speed.
Our world is becoming faster and faster, not because it benefits people, or because they choose to, but because fundamentally the self-informed self perceives no limits that could inform it to slow down. Temperance is the result of feedback loops, such as how our body signals to us through pain that we might be eating too much food, or not sleeping enough, but our mind doesn't have the same correcting mechanisms by default, probably because in the environments we emerged from, there was no need for those, since information used to be so scarce.
Whether you agree with those explanations or not, I think it's rather undeniable that the pace of our digital world doesn't lead to lasting satisfaction, and isn't sustainable. When people are constantly in a rush to watch more, or keep up with their feed, or cross items on their to-do list, or whatever, they are not attending to the life which is right in front of them, because they are too busy chasing.
And I think the reason why people don't slow down is not just because they have never considered it, but also because in many ways, people are afraid of unmediated experience now, experiencing life without a screen, or more subtly, the screen of your mind (thoughts). People feel inclined to constantly listen to background music, not because they are paying attention to it and enjoying it, but more so to drown out the silence and everything uncomfortable which comes with it.
I think in general, people's relationship with time has become very unhealthy, at least that's what I have experienced. The present is boring, which prompts people to fill it with distractions, or project their attention towards the future, a future full of worries about what could go wrong. Schedules are tyrannical, forcing people to plan out their energy and motivation as opposed to be spontaneous about it, which means that the person who says 'yes' to something isn't the same one who has to do it. Scheduling is also tyrannical in the way that it divides your experience of time into discrete bits, destroying the continuity of experience, and also resulting in a lack of access to long stretches of unscheduled time, where you are allowed to relax and go at your own pace.
By and large, people no longer live at their own pace, they live at the pace of the system, or their devices, or their mind. This is why a lot of people have digestive issues, because their center of awareness is no longer their body, but their mind and the system they need to survive within. When someone is constantly in a hurry to perform tasks, their body isn't allowed to stabilize back into rest. This is made even worse by the fact that most people don't really rest outside of work hours, they scroll, which is a form of background low-grade anxiety, and then they go to sleep, in a paradoxical state of exhaustion having done very little in their day.
Modern people struggle with sleep because they are so much with their head, and they carry their bundle of thoughts in bed too, and the fact that many people literally sleep with a screen on their hand doesn't help either, because artificial lights do not dim out as the sun sets down.
All of this busy-ness doesn't make people happy, nor does it make them productive, it just makes them constantly anxious. The only helpful way I have found to address all of this is to face the discomfort of silence and boredom head-on by doing nothing. I don't even meditate personally, though some people might consider "doing nothing" a form of meditation, I just do nothing and give myself permission to not engage in problem-solving mode.
What I find again and again is that my need to turn to distractions is grounded in bodily discomfort. It's as if I am so disembodied that my attention skips the sensations found in my body, and immediately reaches for a distraction to numb away the pain, preferably in my mind. Operating in this manner, dissociated and engaged in thoughts, is very toxic because it means that you constantly ignore the signals from your body, such as tiredness, pain, fear, or any form of resistance really. Unsurprisingly, over time this leads to major problems such as burnout, chronic pain and anxiety.
I don't know if there is a better method than simply scheduling time—ironic I know—to do nothing, and let your attention, mind and body reset. Silence and boredom are uncomfortable to the self in a rather subtle way, but over time you tend to tolerate those better, and even enjoy them in some way, though in my case it has taken a lot of ego resistance for me to finally start doing nothing more and more.
Why is doing nothing so important? Because I think it connects us back with a sense of time continuity which screens fundamentally rupture. Whenever someone is afraid, about something happening right now, or something which might happen, it's well known that their sense of time is distorted, totally focused on the subject of fear. I think screens can evoke that sometimes, but more often than not they lean into the opposite pole of deadened energy, which on the inside feels like time is skipping by a few hours, while your attention was somehow "away".
What sits outside of this false dichotomy of fear, which creates time tunnel vision, and numbness, which creates time skipping, is what we could call living relaxation, which infuses us with time continuity. There is a way to "relax" which is quite numb, which is why I find it helpful to add the term "living" to this experience. It's the type of relaxation that someone in a flow state experiences, where their mind doesn't interfere with their decisions, and their body only does what it needs to at each instant, but also they are exerting a lot of energy in what they are doing, but only as much as is needed.
The experience of time continuity is rare in our times for the main reason that it is not useful for our society, the same way that being conscious is at best useless, at worst a hindrance to fit in our world, or the same way that the curiosity of children is consistently destroyed by the process of schooling. To drink from the river of time means to quench your thirst from the experience of being conscious itself, rather than any specific object that might be sold to us, or state that we might endeavor to chase.
It feels good to do nothing. In fact the analogy with water is quite accurate the more I think about it. People who are deeply embodied find that their taste in food and drinks tends to settle around simple and organic foods, which means that they usually stop drinking sodas for instance, which have an incredibly harsh taste on the palate, and prefer milder drinks like tea and regular water. Water tastes good in its simplicity, and in how it quenches our thirst. And this attunement to simple pleasures, and a natural move away from overstimulation, is I think quite indicative of genuine growth in a person.
Our world doesn't care for simplicity and stillness. Technological progress requires evermore complexity, evermore energy and speed, and the feedback loop of progress is not one which is dictated by conscious human beings, but is instead a self-informed loop, the same way that an addict perpetuates their addiction because of momentum, and because they can only experience life with their coping mechanism.
So we should not expect the broader society to understand the importance of stillness. Only a conscious person can see why it's valuable to slow down and appreciate the present moment, because only consciousness is present. So will you sit down with me and do nothing for a bit?
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Introspection Time Anxiety Burnout
2025-12-17