Ask HN: How do you focus?

I am trying to work on a side project that I have huge motivations to get started on. The problem is, I can't seem to control my focus. I'm trying to read the official Django tutorial right now and my mind wanders and gets off track before I can fully complete one step. I'm doing everything I can to do well at this - I am eating healthy, getting plenty of sleep, eliminating distractions, yet I can't complete just a few minutes of complete focus! Also, I am genuinely interested in it, in fact, I love doing it. I am studying CS in school, and I love building things - I just wish I could build a better control over my inattentiveness.

How do you all do it? Are there any tricks that help you focus for longer periods of time?

The best thing you can do is to let yourself be "pulled" by something. Intrinsic motivation beats any trick you can possible come up with.

Find something that's exciting for you to create. Create it using whatever tool you want to learn. Don't worry too much about whether you're building it The Right Way yet. You will be forced to learn enough to get the job done.

Then repeat N times for desired level of expertise. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Asymptot...

I find having a pair of headphones on with music makes all the difference; it's like getting into a bubble. Over time, I think I've associated it with the state of being focused.

I find setting personal short term goals with self made-up deadlines (ex. I want to complete this section within the next 2 hours) really helps. Bear in mind if you can't measure what you do this won't work. (ex. if you don't know how long something will take or what exactly you are trying to accomplish).

It's also important to switch off between changing focus (ex. from one project to the next, take at least an hour break).

I reckon your biggest problem at the moment is context switching. I'd suggest you allocate your time explicitly (first learn and then do - instead of trying to build something useful while still learning).

This is just my opinion but it works for me:

When I have something I am interested in doing (side project, bigger blog post, or whatever) I just get out a piece of paper, write down the basic premise, and let it percolate in my mind a little bit. I do something else, and I've found if you are truly passionate about it that you will not stop thinking about it. Even if you're eating, out and about somewhere, or doing something totally unrelated, my brain won't stop thinking about it.

I let it sit on the "back burner" and collect different ideas, trains of thought, and try to visualize what I want it to look like, or the outcome I am trying to make happen.

Then after a couple days (I like to wait about 3-5 days) I sit down late at night, about 9-10pm when everyone is asleep. I get coffee, a pack of cigarettes, my headphones with pandora playing and go at it all night and generally crash when I think I have a good "skeleton" of what I want to do.

Then after that, you have the basic outline of what you want and keep iterating from there.

Hope this helped. Again, this is just what works for me. Best of luck on your project!