#so I have to manually input all the info and i've been meaning to do that for a long time so everything can be more organized and look nice

[highlifeboat]

I love being productive in ways that only matter to me

[snugglesquiggle]

one of the reasons i haven't been reading as much is that i have insecurity about my reading speed. somehow i got it into my head that i'm an awfully slow reader, and i needed weird tricks to be able to keep pacing efficiently. i've tried text to speech, i've tried rapid serial visual presentation (incidentally, it's nice but works much better with two or three words at once rather than just one).

and as much as these seem like gimmicks or crutches, they're great! i'm pretty good at parsing with info rapidly when i'm not being bottlenecked by my own motivation to keep reading, which always feels fickle when i'm reading manually. the only problem is they aren't that convenient, and i keep procrastinating on programming my own proper scripts to do it Right™. and that motivation is, of course, just as fickle

anyway, yesterday i was fiddling with some ao3 enhancements, a few of them insert "estimated reading time" stats on fics, but of course this estimate requires to input your reading speed

which lead me to wonder: what is my reading speed?

i tried a reading test, thought the results must be off, so i went through half a dozen others.

my baseline reading speed is easily in excess of 500 wpm

(it's not even that much slower than what i was hitting with TTS and RSVP!)

now, reading speed tests are generally short snippets, a page or two, it's not hard at all to burst a much faster pace than you can sustain. but i spent the evening just reading for the first time in a while, glancing at the clock as i work through full chapters, and the stats seem to check out.

it turns out i might decent at this reading this, just a bit

but anyway, realizing that i dont suck has been a major boon to my confidence reading - i've been having a lot of fun with it today. it's remarkable how much difference a simple attitude adjustment can make

(and before anyone objects, yes obviously speed isn't the only thing, or even important when it comes to enjoyment or comprehension, but i have adhd, going slower doesn't mean i understand more, it means i have more chances to get distracted; momentum keeps me focused on the text. even when i'm trying to go fast, i find myself doubling back to sentences, reparsing or just savoring their feel, or pausing to laugh or cringe. i feel like, if i'm able to notice when an author writes "it's" instead of "its", i'm probably paying enough attention.)

hope this doesn't come off as a brag, it's not like i do much reading the grand scheme of things, but i'm just so relieved