Ask HN: How do you focus on work for long periods of time?

Yeah I totally get that part and I’ve likely done that over the years, but now those same playlists aren’t working for me. They were good while in Uni and first few years of working, but it seems their effects have worn off lol. So I’m always open to finding new obscure niche "focus" playlists or genres. Thank you though!

I also pour bulletproof coffee on my balls several times a day, then snort some crushed adderall. Helps a lot...really feel like I'm closing in on 11x.

> I don't think ADHD is a thing in Europe

Mental illness doesn't respect borders. Of course it's "a thing".

See for example: https://adhdeurope.eu https://www.eunetworkadultadhd.com

It sounds like you don't have ADHD, so you experience normal things like procrastination. That's fine, but ADHD is something else entirely. It's a neurodevelopmental disorder that results in executive dysfunction. A lot of ADHD symptoms are things people without ADHD do encounter occasionally, just less often and to a lesser extent.

> Call it ADHD if you will, but then pretty much everyone who spends time online has it.

While everyone may experience times that are similar to what is described as ADHD, it only affects about 5% of the general population (and about 8-10% in our industry based on the stackoverflow developer survey).

OP if the meds helped and you find long concentration hard, it could be worth investigating. Worst case you confirm it’s not.

If it is, this isn’t the only place it will affect. And it won’t be recent you’ll have been dealing with this since before you were 12.

Despite its name ADHD isn’t an issue with attention, it’s an executive function disorder. The bigger challenges are with starting, stopping and switching tasks.

Someone with ADHD can be perfectly capable of completing a task, but their brain will not let them do it. No matter their strength of will.

This is a double edged sword with hyperfocus, where you get into a task that you go deep on, and it’s damn near impossible to pull you out of (in some cases, you might not even want to be doing it anymore).

> It's healthy and "normal" to take a breather / quick break every so often.

Yep, Pomodoro is based on this. Depending on the task everyone needs a break.

> Really? I don't think ADHD is a thing in Europe;

ADHD is a thing in humans, not countries or cultures.

It’s honestly still very early days in terms of research and understanding, as for the longest time they thought people grew out of it. You don’t grow out of it, you just get taught by society how to hide it—unless you’re lucky enough to put the piece’s together and get diagnosed.

> I know plenty of people (including) myself that would struggle to focus on things their genuinely want to be focusing on.

ADHD isn’t really an issue with focus. We can spend a day wanting to focus on something, but not. And we can spend a day fully focussing on one thing and forgetting to eat. It’s an executive function disorder. Deploying focus is hard. Switching focus is hard.

Everyone struggles with focus from time to time, especially when the world or life gets stressful.

We’re currently in (hopefully) the tail end of a global pandemic, watching what may be later referred to as WWIII, going through the second major economic downturn in as many decades, and watching some western countries’ democracies under threat.

I know there’s always a lot on in the world, but recent times do seem more stressful than the years before. So it’s reasonable for everyone to have issues with focus, and yep I agree with you that’s not reason enough to suspect ADHD.

> Sometimes, though, I won't wash the dishes because I just don't feel like it.

I just want to point out, as someone with ADHD when I don’t wash the dishes it’s almost never because I don’t feel like it.

Rather, I might be doing one task when I notice the dishes need to be done but doing them at that moment would involve an expensive and painful task switch.

Then when I’ve finished the task, I have a good chance of forgetting the dishes, and might only catch them again in the middle of another task.

I always watch something (often a tech talk from a conference on YouTube), because even with meds dishes a woefully under stimulating.

I wanted to add this context because those with ADHD are often blamed as being lazy, but that not the case. It’s more like you and your mate are going for a run, and you’ve got an invisible 100lb rucksack on and you just can’t keep up. Meds is like someone removing most of the weight from that rucksack.