Lots of good possibilities here. My own experience has been that when I'm more physically fit (eating, sleeping, etc), I'm better mentally fit. And when I'm more mentally fit, I'm more spiritually fit (for whatever definition of "spirituality" you want). When I feel one is lagging, I usually find part of the problem in the layer below. And that fixing that causes the next layer up to flourish better. Irrationally, emotional fitness seems to weave in and out of those three in irrational ways. :)
Ask HN: How do I overcome mental laziness?
21–30 of 272 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do I overcome mental laziness?
#22exercise!
Re: Ask HN: How do I overcome mental laziness?
#23Some things that have been extremely useful for me:
Play video games that require intense focus for prolonged durations to perform well like Starcraft 2, CSGO, DOTA 2 helped me build mental endurance.
Reduce social media. I’ve found that this was the most productive. Social media was fragmenting my attention by making me anxious and addicted. After I reduced Reddit and Facebook usage, my mental discipline increased drastically.
Keep a journal. I’ve found verbalizing my thoughts in a simple and concise manner is hard and requires a lot of focused thinking.
Aerobic exercise helps; more circulation for your brain means it can work better
I’ve been dealing with the same problem too so I’ve been finding ways to engage myself.
Re: Ask HN: How do I overcome mental laziness?
#24There is the potential that you have ADHD, because what you're describing sounds similar to my situation. I eventually ended up on stimulant medication to help, but there's non-stimulant medication available (if you're opposed to eating amphetamines for breakfast), as well as counselling and other treatment options that don't involve medication. Even if you don't want to seek professional treatment, you could look up…
Fellow ADHD sufferer here to second this. Thinking about ADHD as a deficit of motivation, which is much more accurate than an attention-oriented view, tends to clarify this sort of situation.
Re: Ask HN: How do I overcome mental laziness?
#25you might have trauma (little t trauma), which feels weird to call trauma because its not obvious trauma (death, car accident, abuse etc) but still affects you a lot and your feelings are still just as valid and they are there and real. Try to allocate a long time, like 2 hours to focus on something that you know you have to do. Observe how it feels physically, in your body. For me, my throat tightens up and my chest…
My “laziness” was caused by little t trauma from childhood. I would stare at my editor and just start to cry at how I couldn’t bring myself to write code. I’m still working through it, but what has helped for me is taking space away from work, therapy, and the book The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck. Good luck.
Re: Ask HN: How do I overcome mental laziness?
#26Some things that have been extremely useful for me: Play video games that require intense focus for prolonged durations to perform well like Starcraft 2, CSGO, DOTA 2 helped me build mental endurance. Reduce social media. I’ve found that this was the most productive. Social media was fragmenting my attention by making me anxious and addicted. After I reduced Reddit and Facebook usage, my mental discipline increased d…
Genuinely curious, does playing video games really improve focus etc.? Is this anecdotal, or did you read some paper somewhere?
Re: Ask HN: How do I overcome mental laziness?
#27This could be because you were told you're a smart kid. Kids who are praised for intelligence over effort have been shown in some studies to pick easier problems and give up quickly if a problem is too hard. Check out Carol Dweck's research. Here's an early article: [ https://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/14/science/praise-children-f... ]. Note that there are some criticisms of her work, and like many other studies in psyc…
Oof, I feel that. Any ideas towards improving focus on more difficult efforts? I end up with a lot of unfinished tasks and it's been notably counterproductive.
Re: Ask HN: How do I overcome mental laziness?
#28Is is really laziness or perceived inadequacy? It is super easy to fall into the trap of you are lazy. Instead ask, is the expectation that you feel justified or are you measuring yourself against something that is not sustainable.
Re: Ask HN: How do I overcome mental laziness?
#29I have a tough time concentrating on hard problems too. I don't have ADHD, I'm just scatterbrained and easily distracted. When I do hit that "zone" I can stay in it for hours, but I rarely get to that point on any single problem. Here are some things I do:
Go for a walk. Don't face the problem head on specifically, just absorb the gist of the problem and then go for a walk and let your sub conscious deal with it, then about half way through your walk, start talking out loud about it. This works well for me when I'm stuck on something.
Learn what real problem solving is. Look up the Wikipedia article on Troubleshooting, it's fantastic and has some great insights.
The main thing about problem solving is not to be overwhelmed by the entire problem. Break it down into its most basic forms, and then solve a part of it, then work toward the solution. Don't try to build all of the solution at once. Iterate toward it. It works.
HTH YMMV.
Re: Ask HN: How do I overcome mental laziness?
#30There is the potential that you have ADHD, because what you're describing sounds similar to my situation. I eventually ended up on stimulant medication to help, but there's non-stimulant medication available (if you're opposed to eating amphetamines for breakfast), as well as counselling and other treatment options that don't involve medication. Even if you don't want to seek professional treatment, you could look up…
Someone doesn’t have to have ADHD to shirk from hard problems.
Expecting technical/intellectual problems to be easy to solve is something that is drilled into most people by the school system, which rarely if ever present problems that take more than a few minutes to solve, and pretty much never expect students to try tackling problems that require weeks of effort.
The result is that when many people encounter a hard problem, if they can’t make progress after spending a bit of effort on it, they give up and conclude that either the problem is too hard or they are too stupid to keep going.
There is probably an influence from inherent personality differences, but I would speculate that building up stamina for tackling hard problems comes down substantially to practice.