I used to read properly. Then somewhere along the way it turned into skimming: a half-read article here, three tabs I swore I'd get back to, a Kindle I charged once a quarter. Reading became another thing on a screen, which is to say another thing competing with everything else on that screen.
So I bought a paperback. An actual one, with a spine that creaks and a cover that gets a coffee ring on it within a week. No notifications. No "you have 4 hours left in this book" progress bar quietly judging me. Just the page in front of me and the next one after it.
The surprise wasn't that I enjoyed it, I expected that. The surprise was how much slower I read, and how much more of it stayed. Turns out the friction of turning a page is the point. There's nothing to swipe to, nowhere else to be, so you just carry on.
I've settled into a small ritual now. Coffee, twenty minutes before the laptop opens, no phone in the room. It is the least productive part of my day and easily the best. I'd forgotten that a hobby doesn't need to optimise anything or become a side project. Sometimes you just read the book.