Ask HN: How can I remedy scatter brain and information overload?

I'm intentionally taking 4 days to reply to your comment because I didn't feel like I allowed enough time to say. In fact, I still don't think I've waited long enough, but I do at least feel good to say that it is working.

There's a few things going on, and they're specific to me.

Primarily, I'm a judgmental person. And mostly to myself. I judge myself really hard for not doing enough or going fast enough. This book is teaching me to stop doing that, even though it may sound "heroic" to always push myself. I think I get that impression from elite athletes, and I think "well I should be doing that to myself so I can be the best at whatever I'm doing." At some point along the way, I forgot that most of what I learned wasn't the result of that type of thinking. I learned everything from speaking to programming simply by doing, and not by judging myself in the process.

I would also say I'm impatient, but I think that's the same thing as saying I'm judgmental.

This book is like written Adderall in that it causes the same calming effect. It teaches you that it's okay to slow down and just do, and not worry about anything else in the present moment. I know that sounds kind of cheesy and "Zen" like, but I definitely have (self diagnosed) ADHD and I operate on two modes: one where I'm being productive and doing, and one where I'm learning. It's really hard to context switch between the two. So it helps to know that when I'm learning, or doing certain types of activities that I'm not used to doing, it's okay to go slower and not stress out about my perceived lack of progress. The net result: my work IMO actually ends up being better, and interestingly I learn faster because I'm not trying to do that so much.

Hope this helps. Your experience may be different.

Build something. Nothing leads to prioritization like optimizing brutally for ROI on time. Is it the most pertinent thing you can be doing? When you really lock yourself into a lean-startup REPL of building, measuring, and repeating, valuable tasks float to the top and the contrast in value propositions becomes so extreme that nothing else is visible.

Ha, no, no product, it's just what I call the list.

I use IAWriter for it, but you can literally use anything.