Are You Blocked by the 400-Word Wall?

Are You Blocked by the 400-Word Wall?

Thinking about: Thinking more and better

William B. Irvine

Oct 12, 2026

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Thinking is hard, which is why many people avoid doing it. Instead of engaging in evidence-based reasoning to reach their conclusions, they rely on their heart and gut to feel their way; and when thinking is unavoidable, they

outsource it to someone

willing to think on their behalf. Writing is hard as well, in large part because

writing

is

thinking

. Reading is also difficult. It takes years to learn how to read, and lots of subsequent practice to become adept at reading fast and with comprehension, the way you currently are.

When reading longer documents, however, another ability comes into play: the ability to focus your attention for an extended period. It is possible for a fluent reader to lack this ability, in which case they might struggle to complete a book—or even a thousand-word essay like this one.

If you are of a certain age, you have likely, over the course of your life, read many books. There might have been a time when you read a book a month or even a book a week. Chances are that this is no longer the case. It might be because your reading has been displaced by other activities. You might, in particular, be spending considerable amounts of time on social media. If this is the case, you will still be doing lots of reading—and writing as well—but it won’t be books or even essays that you read; it will instead be tersely written posts. There is also an excellent chance that you are doing a lot more

watching

than you used to; in particular, time that could have been spent reading is instead spent watching TikTok or YouTube videos.

Spending your time watching something doesn’t impair your reading ability—you will remain a fluent reader—but it can have a significant impact on your ability to focus your attention. As a result, you no longer have the patience to read a book—or even a lengthy article. If you consume Substack content, you might spend your time reading “notes” rather than longer-form “articles” (like this one). And if you do read an article, there is an excellent chance that you don’t read it to the end.

I can quantify this last claim by sharing the reader-engagement data for my More Better Thinking Substack. I currently have about 760,000 subscribers. (Thanks!) They will all be emailed this article, but judging from my previous 100+ posts, only about 20% of them—152,000 people—will open that email. Another 6,000 people will encounter this article on the Substack app or on a web browser, where Substack will keep track of how far into the article they scroll. Add these numbers, and we can surmise that about 158,000 people will start reading this article.

Judging from the reader-engagement data for my previous articles, about 70% of these readers will abandon this article halfway through, and only about 17% will read it to the end. (Ouch!) In absolute terms, that is still a lot of people—about 27,000, far more people than I encountered in my entire teaching career—but it raises the question of why people bail out. It could be that readers think the article is poorly written, is not providing them with the information they had expected, or is too deep for them. They might instead find that the article is not sufficiently amusing or, given their interests, is downright boring.

Another reason might be that they hit the

400-word wall

. I came across this term while listening to

an interview with James Marriott

, author of

The New Dark Ages

. Marriott argues that, largely as a consequence of our exposure to social media, we have lost our ability to focus our attention for an extended period. Indeed, after about ninety seconds—what it takes to read 400 words—our minds get restless. We start itching for novelty, an itch that we scratch by abandoning what we are doing in search of new sources of stimulation. This same phenomenon plays a role in videos, which is partly why so many YouTube Shorts and TikTok videos are under two minutes long.

In this Substack, I have argued that with effort and guidance, you can transform yourself into a Thinker, someone who habitually relies on evidence-based reasoning to reach conclusions. I would similarly argue that with effort, you can punch through the 400-word wall. You will need to simultaneously limit your access to brain-rotting social media and make a conscious effort to read longer documents. For Substack users, this might mean

reading fewer notes and reading more articles

.

If you are of a certain age, you know that you are capable of focusing your attention for extended periods, the proof being that you routinely did so in the past. If you are a member of Generation Z, however, there is a good chance that you didn’t

lose

this ability; you

never fully developed it.

Indeed, it could be that you have

never

read a book cover to cover,

not even in school

. If this is the case, your efforts to improve your mental stamina will feel like you’ve entered boot camp for your brain. Keep at it, though, and your stamina will improve.

A closing thought: If you are reading this sentence, you are an intellectual outlier. Congratulations! Why not celebrate by picking up a book and reading it cover to cover—maybe my

How to Think More and Better

? Or if that seems overly ambitious, by reading (or rereading)

my previous Substack essays

.

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