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Ask HN: How do you get work done while there is a war in Europe?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you get work done while there is a war in Europe?

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, I am not doing it for my amusement - it's something else. More like a need/urge to stay in the loop. I had the same sensation when Covid hit in 2020.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out

I know what Fomo is, and no, it's not like that. Maybe it's more a feeling of "wanting to know first" so I can be mentally prepared when things turn to the worse. Not sure.

Re: Ask HN: How do you get work done while there is a war in Europe?

#33
If it’s just twitter then just keep a smallish window up somewhere with whatever the most trending thing is. If there’s a word bubble that kinda thing. Anything really pressing will rise on those fast enough. Otherwise carve out time for “just work” and “breaks to see what’s going on in the world.”

Re: Ask HN: How do you get work done while there is a war in Europe?

#34
post #22

I don't glue myself to the news. What's the point? Do you really need minute by minute updates of every operation or event? What actionable difference will it make?

You’ve clearly never worked nor lived somewhere high on the list of places a hostile would want to destroy. When I worked in a very tall building (tallest for thousands of miles) I would keep an eye towards the news “just in case”. Right now any such place is probably on high alert regardless of whether it would seem an obvious target to randos on the internet.

Maybe they haven't, but OP didn't make that part of their statement, so responding as if they did is disingenuous. You seem to be going for the epic own rather than making an effort to take the hospitable interpretation of GP's statement.

Re: Ask HN: How do you get work done while there is a war in Europe?

#36
I'm struggling with this too. I find that on any given day, once the "seal is opened" on the news, so to speak, it's very hard to close it. As soon as I start reading and doomscrolling, it becomes an incredible compulsion that's hard to break myself away from. But if I can just pull myself away from it for about an hour, the compulsion starts to fade. So I'm trying to restrict my news reading to 15-30 minutes once per day. That fulfills the urge to "be informed", while not endlessly scrolling through millions of uninformed opinions.

Re: Ask HN: How do you get work done while there is a war in Europe?

#37
How did you keep your focus on working for the last several years, while the war has been raging in Yemen? Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in Yemen, with a millions displaced and starved to death - many orders of magnitude greater than the death and suffering that has taken place in Ukraine.

Unfortunately it is because "new sources" generate your outrage and decide what you are going to focus on. This is not to say what's happening in Ukraine isn't a tragedy or that we all shouldn't be concerned, but it is to say that there are tragedies and wars raging around the world all the time that are far worse than what is happening in Ukraine today. Many are familiar with Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" which details exactly this issue. If you are obsessed with Russia's war on Ukraine and barely give a passing thought to the much more deadly and horrific Saudi/US war on Yemen you ought to consider why exactly that is.

Re: Ask HN: How do you get work done while there is a war in Europe?

#38
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ve clearly never worked nor lived somewhere high on the list of places a hostile would want to destroy. When I worked in a very tall building (tallest for thousands of miles) I would keep an eye towards the news “just in case”. Right now any such place is probably on high alert regardless of whether it would seem an obvious target to randos on the internet.

If the OP is in Ukraine, it's a different story. They didn't say so, and it's unlikely. If they're in, for example, the United States, they do not need to be on high alert at the moment.

I live in Europe.
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