Stitching My Focus Back Together: How Crochet Saved My Reading Life

I picked up a hook to make a scarf, but I ended up fixing my attention span.

For the last few years, my relationship with reading has been… complicated.

I used to be the person who could inhale a 500-page novel in a weekend. But recently? I’ve become the person who reads the same paragraph four times, realizes I absorbed none of it, and then instinctively reaches for my phone to scroll through social media. My brain felt fragmented, constantly jumping to the next distraction. I wanted to read, but I just couldn’t stay in the book.

Then, on a whim, I picked up a crochet hook.

I didn’t expect much—maybe a lopsided scarf or two. But as I spent my evenings counting stitches and wrestling with yarn tension, I noticed something shifting. The quiet, repetitive focus required to turn string into fabric was training my brain to slow down.

Surprisingly, the more I crocheted, the better I got at reading again. It turns out that working with yarn is the perfect physical therapy for a distracted mind. Here are the top three ways crocheting helped me rebuild my reading skills.

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1. It Re-Trains the “Sustained Attention” Muscle

In our digital lives, we are conditioned to multitask. We watch TV while texting; we listen to podcasts while checking email. Reading, however, demands monotasking. You cannot read a book and do something else at the same time.

Crochet demands this same exclusivity. If I try to scroll Instagram while working a complex row, I drop a stitch. If I look away to watch a TikTok, I mess up my count.

Crocheting forced me to get comfortable with doing one thing for thirty minutes at a time. It rebuilt my tolerance for stillness. Now, when I sit down with a book, the “itch” to check my notifications is quieter. I’ve re-learned how to just sit and be present with the task at hand.

2. It Teaches the Consequences of Skimming

I had developed a bad habit of “speed reading”—or more accurately, skimming—where I would glaze over descriptions to get to the dialogue. I was consuming books, but I wasn’t really reading them.

In crochet, you cannot skim. If a pattern tells you to “single crochet, chain one, skip one,” and you decide that the “skip one” part isn’t essential, your scarf will turn into a trapezoid. You have to pay attention to every single instruction, or the whole structure falls apart.

This intense attention to detail has bled over into my reading. I’ve started slowing down, actually reading the descriptive passages I used to skip. I realized that just as a skipped stitch ruins the pattern, skipping paragraphs ruins the narrative's nuance.

3. It Quiets the “Monkey Mind”

Often, my trouble with reading wasn’t a lack of interest; it was anxiety. I would sit down to read, and my brain would immediately start listing chores, worries, and forgotten emails.

The repetitive motion of crochet—insert, yarn over, pull through—induces a “flow state.” It is a fidget tool that occupies the restless part of my brain (the hands) so the thinking part can calm down.

I found that crocheting for 15 minutes before opening a book acts as a warm-up. It clears the mental static. By the time I put the yarn down and pick the book up, my heart rate is lower, my mind is quieter, and I am ready to slip into a story without the mental chaos following me.

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Have you found any unexpected hobbies that helped you get your reading groove back? Let me know in the comments!