University of Kwazulu-Natal

Struggle To Read Here S Why Finishing Books Is A Superpower

Bonisiwe Shabane
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struggle to read here s why finishing books is a superpower

It used to be easy. You’d sit down with a book and get swept away—chapter after chapter, lost in a world built from nothing but ink and imagination. Now, your bookmark hasn’t moved in weeks. You pick it up, read a few pages, and put it down. You’re distracted. You’re restless.

And you’re not alone. If you’ve ever wondered why finishing a book feels harder than it used to, the answer isn’t just “you got busy.” There’s a deeper reason—rooted in psychology, neurochemistry, and cultural conditioning. First, let’s clear something up: this is not about laziness or lack of discipline. People who struggle to finish books today are often: The issue isn’t desire—it’s cognitive fragmentation. Our brains are being rewired by habits, environments, and technologies that prize skimming over depth, speed over immersion.

Reading long-form content like books requires: What's behind the decline of reading? Getty Images hide caption Data from Gallup and the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that Americans are reading fewer books and spending less time reading than ever. There's been reporting on college kids struggling to finish longer texts. And earlier this year, in a viral post, one user lamented their loss of concentration for reading, which led to a larger online discourse about how to approach books again.

Brittany revisits her convo with Elaine Castillo, author of the book How to Read Now, and Abdullah Shihipar, Research Associate at the People, Place and Health collective at Brown University, to get into why... This episode was produced by Liam McBain, with additional support from Corey Antonio Rose and Barton Girdwood. It was edited by Jasmine Romero. Our Supervising Producer is Barton Girdwood. Our Executive Producer is Veralyn Williams. Our VP of Programming is Yolanda Sangweni.

You've been there: halfway through a dense book, your eyes glaze over, and the temptation to switch to something easier is overwhelming. But what if that very struggle is the key to unlocking a cognitive superpower? The science of neuroplasticity shows that our brains physically change when we challenge them. This process is a form of deliberate practice, pushing you beyond your intellectual comfort zone. The renowned psychologist Daniel Kahneman explained how this effortful thinking strengthens our analytical abilities. Understanding why should you always finish reading difficult content is not just about gaining knowledge; it's about rewiring your brain for deeper comprehension and overcoming the intellectual blind spots described by the Dunning-Kruger effect,...

Image taken from the YouTube channel Justin Sung , from the video titled If studying is boring, you’re doing it wrong . Have you ever stared at a page in a book, your eyes scanning the same paragraph for the third time, yet the words refuse to form a coherent thought? You feel the magnetic pull of your phone, the easy comfort of a TV show, or the simple desire to just close the book and admit defeat. It’s a familiar struggle. We’re often told to read more, but what about when the reading gets hard? When the concepts are dense, the language is complex, and the story is challenging?

This is the moment of truth. Putting the book down is easy. Pushing through, however, is where a quiet, life-changing transformation begins. Finishing difficult content isn't just about checking a box or winning a silent battle of wills with an author. It's about developing a genuine superpower in a world that increasingly favors the easy and the immediate. Think of your brain as a muscle.

Just as you can't build physical strength by only lifting the lightest weights, you can't build mental acuity by only consuming simple, bite-sized content. Difficult reading is the heavy lifting your brain needs. Have you ever found yourself staring at a bookshelf overflowing with titles you couldn't wait to read but never started or finished? Don't feel bad; you're definitely not alone—even the most avid reader has a few unfinished novels on their shelf! We all have those books we just had to have and then something happened along the way. We got caught up in another book, a coffee date, or life in general.

There are so many of us who have those half-read books, and we even mentally add them to a to-do list. As if our brains really need something extra to remember! But don't worry we have got you covered with some great strategies for turning those half-read books into tales of triumph. We often wonder why some books feel like marathons with no finish line in sight. It can be so frustrating when that initial excitement wanes as you turn each page. It's like you just can't get into the book.

Sometimes, it's because of the complete mismatch between our expectations and the book's direction. Then, of course, we are all faced with what can only be described as life's endless distractions, which just don't appreciate our need to keep our noses stuck in a book. And let's be honest; some books demand a level of energy and concentration that's hard to muster after a long day. Thank you for sharing this insightful post. I am currently making use of the tips you shared and it’s helping me. May God continue to bless you and give you wisdom to write more helpful articles.

I love reading. For me, imaginatively inhabiting Tolkien’s Middle-earth offers profound comfort, where good and evil are dichotomous, and the protagonist, Frodo Baggins, knows with certainty what he must do if he can summon the courage. Aside from providing epic adventure or alien exoticism, fiction can help reveal magic in the everyday of this world. But why are people so powerfully affected by stories, and how does reading contribute to personal (and social) wellbeing? Storytelling is globally ubiquitous and ancient, with our tendency to narrativise beginning spontaneously in childhood. Stories likely serve several adaptive functions:1 first, in facilitating human cooperation by the establishment and broadcasting of social norms; and, second, in effectively disseminating survival-relevant information, as we remember facts better when woven into...

Added to this, a skilled storyteller makes for a preferred social partner and has greater reproductive success, ‘providing a pathway by which group-beneficial behaviours, such as storytelling, can evolve via individual-level selection’.1 Combined with the power of stories to persuade and manipulate, by emotionally engaging us, it is understandable why stories are used extensively to teach children important life lessons. Storytelling further satisfies the human artistic need to express personal concepts of complex meaning.‘So I wonder what is this need to tell’, questions Hig, protagonist in Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars. He answers himself: ‘to animate somehow the deathly stillness of the profoundest beauty. Breathe life in the telling.’ Reading’s restorative power has long been recognised, with the ancient Theban Library of Pharaoh Ramses II bearing the inscription ‘house of healing for the soul’.

When reading immerses you via your imagination, it induces a state of deep focus, transiently releasing the mind from bustling or teeming thoughts and thus providing an active form of relaxation. However, the therapeutic value of reading exceeds escapism. Stories can assist by confronting and exploring issues relevant to everyday life. We watch safely as the protagonist (who could be a memoirist) fails, adapts, and perseveres through challenge and adversity, often providing gems of wisdom and inspiration directly transferable to our own lives. Using functional MRI, Berns et al 2 found that reading a novel induces increases in neural connectivity dispersed bilaterally in the somatosensory cortex, suggesting that the reader is effectively placed in the body of... The activity enables us to vicariously experience ‘other’ states of being, exposing us to alternative world contexts and perspectives.

As author Anne Bogel explains: Be honest: when was the last time you finished a book cover to cover — without checking your phone every ten minutes? If you’ve got a half-read novel on your nightstand or a stack of “to-be-read” books collecting dust, you’re in good company. Many of us who once devoured books now find ourselves skimming, scrolling, or abandoning them halfway through. It’s not because we’ve suddenly become lazy or lost interest. It’s because the way we consume information — and the world around us — has rewired our attention.

Johann Hari, in Stolen Focus, puts it plainly: deep reading is collapsing, and it’s not just our fault. Until recently, reading anything felt straight-up strainful. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to read. I kept buying more books, my TBR had grown like bamboo on fertilizer, and, as a writer and philosophy student, reading is part of my job. And yet, reading patiently — let alone finishing books — had become as tough as opening a pickle jar with greasy hands. But then, something changed.

I went from abandoning books after a single sentence to devouring hundreds of pages in one go. I fell back in love with reading. I finished the books I started long ago. And it all came down to cultivating one small skill: patient reading. Patient reading (or reading patiently) is the skill of consistently making progress on any text without the constant craving to distract yourself. What this means becomes clear when we look at the opposite: impatient reading.

Which is how I used to read (and sadly, still do sometimes). It goes like this: Posted on October 6, 2024October 6, 2024 A book is an investment of your time, and that’s likely why you struggle to finish them. In today’s world, we’ve shifted from deep investments of time to craving soundbites, summaries, and videos played at double speed. We believe that speeding up will somehow make everything fall into place.

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And you’re not alone. If you’ve ever wondered why finishing a book feels harder than it used to, the answer isn’t just “you got busy.” There’s a deeper reason—rooted in psychology, neurochemistry, and cultural conditioning. First, let’s clear something up: this is not about laziness or lack of discipline. People who struggle to finish books today are often: The issue isn’t desire—it’s cognitive fr...

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