Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later

Take a step back and think about the environment you were in when you were the most productive. When your mind was the sharpest it has ever been and you were knocking shit out left and right.

Maybe that was in high school or college, or during your first few years in your career. Ask yourself: What was different back then? What was your daily routine? What did you eat? Did you play sports or stay active?

A lot of people suffer from low dopamine levels. You've essentially trained your brain to crave short term reward vs long term reward, which affects your attention span and ability to focus on anything that doesn't provide instant gratification.

http://mentalhealthdaily.com/2015/04/02/low-dopamine-levels-...

Get enough sleep, exercise every day, clean up your diet, stop fapping, don't drink for a while, detox from caffeine, try meditation.

You want a radical lifestyle change to rewire your brain and fix any chemical imbalances and/or dietary issues you might have.

Attack from all angles!

Your life will change in a matter of weeks if not days.

It's pretty bad for me, I dream about bailing to a blue collar life because then I can focus and work with my hands, and not click around online procrastinating.

All that talk did was talk about the symptoms of what it's like to be a procrastinator. Including the link in another comment. Who wants to talk about how to fix it other than "stop procrastinating!"

Many people procrastinate on both large and small tasks. It's especially hard to get going on large tasks due to, as others have mentioned, a lengthier span of time before you get a sense of completion/accomplishment instead of a quick fix reward. Different methods exist for combating this and tricking your mind into getting its quick fix sooner.

One such method I would suggest trying is 'timeboxing': dividing up tasks into smaller pieces and forcing yourself into 25 or so minute windows that are uninterruptible. This forces you to get into a flow state and also feel accomplished by the end, knowing that you've made progress on any given task. Given enough 25 minute periods, you'll have done more work than you may have otherwise.

The biggest pattern amongst productivity methods is to predetermine a calendar or pattern to stick to for when you do work. In general, when it comes time to doing work without a plan, it's quite easy to get distracted by a quick fix activity instead. Extrapolate this over a long enough period of time, and you'll feel like you never get anything done until the last minute.

I think you're underselling this TED talk. The entire 14 minutes is about OP's exact problem.

I'm procrastinating right now reading this post.