Ask HN: What helps you focus and get things done?

Other than treating what is possibly ADD, what has helped you focus and just get your fingers on the keyboard?

Edit: perhaps I should add, I’m not really distracted by exernal things but perhaps the complexity of the problem / poorly engineered code just adds so much inertia to getting the fingers typing away. I’m a prototyping research scientist so producing well written code is not my strong suit, it’s more like let’s build something new and see if we can get it to work.

Not a helpful answer since you have excluded seeking treatment- but putting it out there: Atomoxetine

Are you interrupted by your cat ? By noise ? Smells ? I discovered once that perceiving road traffic out of the corner of my eye shot my ability to focus. Whenever I needed to focus on a job I grabbed a windowless meeting room and worked there.

I suggest every time your focus is stolen by something you write down what the cause was. After a few days there should be repeat offender. Among these which one(s) can you change ?

I am a pianist; so my work is with a different sort of keyboard but the issues are similar. Interruptions/distractions are of two types - external sensory distractions and my own internal thoughts. The former are more easily recognized and remedied. In my practice room there is a window off to the side where the flash of a passing car might distract me. Easy fix.

The internal tugs on my focus are harder to pin down. But one seminal observation is that thoughts that distract are often recurrent; so writing them down, along with a brief plan about when you will deal with that thought and how, can help. There is evidence that this reduces distraction.

I completely disable wifi for most of the day :)