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Ask HN: How do I develop focus?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I develop focus?

#161

Post by news_hacker »

Relatable. Try what I'm doing. Work your way backwards.

https://backwards.dev

Start with the final goal you're seeking (in my case it was a Pay Me checkout button) and then piece the rest of the fluff later.

A lot of the focus product is dealing with emotional barriers and your personal psychology. This shatters all this and paves a new path.

There's something sobering about starting at the end, instead of consistently getting side tracked at the beginning.

I put this up 2 days ago and some stranger has already sent me 12 cents :)

Re: Ask HN: How do I develop focus?

#162

Post by shakezula »

s0teri0s wrote: post #67

Accountability. Get at least one other person invested in your project somehow and set yourself up where you have to provide some kind of progress report or show progress to another.

This has always been the best way that I've fixed my own discipline and focus issues. Nothing pushes me more than social pressure to show up with a finished product.

Re: Ask HN: How do I develop focus?

#163

Post by shakezula »

news_hacker wrote: post #161

Relatable. Try what I'm doing. Work your way backwards. https://backwards.dev Start with the final goal you're seeking (in my case it was a Pay Me checkout button) and then piece the rest of the fluff later. A lot of the focus product is dealing with emotional barriers and your personal psychology. This shatters all this and paves a new path. There's something sobering about starting at the end, instead of consistent…

Hey I really like this idea! I have been taking a similar approach lately with something I've been calling "deployment first development".

My approach is to create a dead-simple hello world app deployed to the internet with a one-command deploy and start iterating from there. Having something to show people that is live and that I can see the feedback loop for helps me tremendously.

I might have to supplement my current side project with this Pay Me button soon though.

Re: Ask HN: How do I develop focus?

#164

Post by DiggyJohnson »

ChildOfChaos wrote: post #66
FWKevents wrote: post #23

-- Limit your time on social media to 20 minutes or less a day (LinkedIn/Facebook/Discord use that's related to work is an exception.) No studies exist yet to support this hypothesis, but it's my observation that longtime exposure to social media impedes overall focus. -- Limit your TV watching to one or two hours on the weekends, per week -- Limit video game use to one or two hours per week -- Find an activity you l…

-- Wake up early and try to accomplish something significant before 8am I always hate this piece of advice, if i wake up early, even if I am able to struggle through getting 'something significant done' before 8am i'm going to feel terrible for the rest of the day since i got up early, it's not worth it at all. This advice is nonsense and not universal, yet the same nonsense is constantly repeated. I understand it ca…

If you didn’t get a full night of sleep before rising early this advise is not for you.

That doesn’t invalidate it, though.

Re: Ask HN: How do I develop focus?

#165

Post by printscreen »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #15

Practice. Treat focus like a skill you develop, or a muscle that you train to be stronger. If you wanted to improve your weightlifting you would schedule regular gym visits and create a plan to do a certain amount of lifting each day with slightly more weight each week. If you wanted to improve your running you’d set aside time to run and try to run incrementally farther over time. Focus is the same: You need to star…

I also like to think of the individual tasks that you are trying to do as muscles that can be trained aswell. i.e. shipping is a muscle. Not super related to focus but can help with setting incremental goals

Re: Ask HN: How do I develop focus?

#166

Post by printscreen »

It can help to just steer well clear from anywhere distractions can be found. For example, install a blocking extention like Intention to forcibly remove yourself from being able to even browse youtube during focus hours. Or get your music from somewhere not prone to leading you down a rabbit hole of distractions.

Proper music selection can also really help.

At our core, we have two different types of attention: conscious and unconscious. When we have a task at hand, and want to get it done, we give it our conscious attention, and work to focus on just that task while ignoring other external distractions. But while this is happening, our unconscious attention is still at play, and is constantly looking for other things to latch onto - be it a sound in the room, an advert on the side of the page, or a distracting recommendation after an educational YouTube video.

The point at which your conscious attention gets fatigued from trying to ignore these temptations is when that lack of focus occurs. Researchers think that ADHD could be caused by a malfunctioning area of our brain which controls our conscious attention.

Music of the correct variety can help to keep that unconscious attention satisfied and stop it overriding our specific intention to concentrate on that key task. It does this by cutting out a whole area of distraction possibilities and replacing it with something just enough to keep our unconscious attention satisfied.

The reason ive looked into this is because im building a side project around focus music: https://www.flowful.app/

Re: Ask HN: How do I develop focus?

#167

Post by yumaikas »

As a matter of course, not a medical professional:

Double check against ADHD.

If you have it, it changes how you approach all of the advice you might get, because it means your brain is literally physically different in how it manager attention.

If you don't, that's also valuable intel.

Either way, you'll also want to learn what emotions are in play with your new project cycles. Emotions tend to indicate needs, if indirectly, and if whatever need is driving all of the new projects is not met in some way, it'll continue to frustrate attempts to focus on one project. This is because starting a new project is a well-worn path for you at this point. That goes triple of ADHD or other neurophysical forces are in play.

Re: Ask HN: How do I develop focus?

#168

Post by awa »

Adderall. Frankly, Get yourself evaluated for ADHD and see if prescription can help. Even just knowing has done wonders for my mental health by making me more forgiving for the mistakes/inattention commonly associated with ADHD

Re: Ask HN: How do I develop focus?

#169

Post by pmoriarty »

NylaTheWolf wrote: post #107
FWKevents wrote: post #23

-- Limit your time on social media to 20 minutes or less a day (LinkedIn/Facebook/Discord use that's related to work is an exception.) No studies exist yet to support this hypothesis, but it's my observation that longtime exposure to social media impedes overall focus. -- Limit your TV watching to one or two hours on the weekends, per week -- Limit video game use to one or two hours per week -- Find an activity you l…

These are some pretty harsh restrictions. No using the internet for more than 20 minutes a day unless it's work related? Only playing video games for an hour or two per week? This feels like it'd set OP up to burn out...You can't even have a meaningful conversation with someone in 20 minutes. It may work for you but it's not going to work for everyone. Besides, sometimes when you're sad or tired or just need a break,…

"No using the internet for more than 20 minutes a day unless it's work related? Only playing video games for an hour or two per week? This feels like it'd set OP up to burn out..."

The internet and video games didn't even exist for almost all of human history, and people didn't burn out merely for lack of access to them.

Unplug and enjoy the world.

Re: Ask HN: How do I develop focus?

#170

Post by Buttons840 »

FWKevents wrote: post #23

-- Limit your time on social media to 20 minutes or less a day (LinkedIn/Facebook/Discord use that's related to work is an exception.) No studies exist yet to support this hypothesis, but it's my observation that longtime exposure to social media impedes overall focus. -- Limit your TV watching to one or two hours on the weekends, per week -- Limit video game use to one or two hours per week -- Find an activity you l…

> Limit video game use to one or two hours per week

I would feel more focused and productive than usual if I spent a day on a video game. Games are usually focused time, whereas social media is a low level misery but not being able to stop, hoping between sites, looking for something entertaining but not finding it.

Deliberately act. If someone casually asks "whatcha doing?", you should never answer "nothing". Deliberately playing a game isn't doing nothing, taking a nap isn't doing nothing. Social media isn't necessarily doing nothing, but for me it usually is.

Ask yourself, did I decide to do this? What is my goal? If your goal is passing time, stop.

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