Something that's helped me with this is having my phone nearby so I can use voice commands to get word definitions. No need to touch the device and get sucked in but all the ease of an ebook. Of course this only works in more private locations I suppose.

Good idea, but I think it might work better if you had an Android device. Siri is not great at definitions and you often have to literally spell things out for her. (if she hears you at all and doesn't start randomly calling your aunt instead of providing a definition)

The danger with arguing from first principles is that a lot of real-world failures sound pretty fantastic. Take communism, or the satirical "A Modest Proposal".

If you thought “A Modest Proposal” sounded pretty fantastic, you must have read a different essay by that title than I did. And saying that communism sounds good in theory is also a pretty superficial reading of Marx and others.