It's getting harder to focus every day • Hacker News Board

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#201

Post by duplessitous » Fri, Jul 24, 2026, 2:40 PM UTC

anthonypasq wrote: post #185

duplessitous wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I worry that this whole gen-z stare thing is just millennial avocado toast under new management. I work with a ton of gen-z'ers, I think they're great and have never once experienced this gen-z stare thing you hear about so much online. They're hard workers, attentive, and less phone addicted than my latchkey parents.

gen z and even more so gen alpha is a complete bimodal distribution. The top kids are genuinely incredible.

It goes beyond my job but that is my fault for narrowing it down. Even day to day shopping at random stores, I have never seen this gen-z stare or any of the other terms we assign to them. If they are bimodal, which they very well could be, the competent mode is clearly dominant where I have lived

We went through twenty years of millennials being this or that, how none of them work, how they are moochers. Every generation gets called lazy and dumped on by the previous generations; as far as I can tell, it is mostly bull shit. I have yet to experience anything extraordinary about gen-z that I don't see in gen-y, gen-x, latchkey, boomers, greatest generation, etc.

Maybe younger gen-z or gen-alpha like you say are truly messed up, I think we have data coming out of schools that support that, but I have yet to interact with them as I don't have kids myself. Everything I have said is inherently anecdotal and no more important than what you've seen

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#202

Post by datadrivenangel » Fri, Jul 24, 2026, 2:41 PM UTC

tetha wrote: post #83

ssl-3 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's only one important thing that I miss about smoking: A smoke break was an excuse that was tolerated by others, wherein I could go outside and just let my mind wander (daydream) with no particular goal for a short period of time. Daydreaming should be perfectly acceptable either way, but people seem to think it's weird (concerning, even) when someone spends a bit of time to stand (or sit) around while appearing…

Some of my deepest architectural work honestly happened... in a hammock on the balcony, while alternating between staring at a cloud, the sun, and two magpies building a nest in the birch tree while yelling at me occasionally. Then I came back to my desk, saw that I had missed a call or two from my boss and he had a concerned message of where I was. I ignored that and sent him an architecture document an hour later.…

Rich Hickey gave a great talk on Hammock Driven Development

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#203

Post by godshatter » Fri, Jul 24, 2026, 2:42 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #136

ssl-3 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's only one important thing that I miss about smoking: A smoke break was an excuse that was tolerated by others, wherein I could go outside and just let my mind wander (daydream) with no particular goal for a short period of time. Daydreaming should be perfectly acceptable either way, but people seem to think it's weird (concerning, even) when someone spends a bit of time to stand (or sit) around while appearing…

People will tolerate a "daily run" (or walk). I noticed other co-workers going to the gym during the day and realized I could take a break as well. That's when I started to take walking breaks. No one ever said anything. (I quit smoking when my first daughter was born.)

I see a lot of concern about whether or not people will tolerate some behavior of mine that isn't harmful to anyone. I'm Gen X, so maybe it's how I grew up, but I just dgaf about whether or not my coworkers are okay with my taking a break and going for a walk. I'm not doing it to be mean to them or anything and I don't do it when I'm in the middle of something big and it's definitely nothing personal (I like my coworkers), it just helps me clear my head which is a win when someone works in a job where they need to keep lots of details in their head and switch contexts a lot.

This attitude does lead to some people being miffed because I wasn't available on Teams for 10 minutes, but anything I can do to push back against the idea of my being available to everyone at any time is a win in my book.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#204

Post by Anthony-G » Fri, Jul 24, 2026, 2:42 PM UTC

al_borland wrote: post #111

lardosaurusrex wrote: post #4

People often question me how I manage to focus for more than a few minutes and I'm always confused because back in the day I was constantly informed I didn't have any focus and needed to be treated (adhd). I'm not convinced attention spans themselves have changed; I think it has more to do with the fact that people's brains aren't defaulting to daydreaming anymore when bored. I think it's still an issue with people b…

If you haven’t read it, Cal Newport’s book Digital Minimalism is mostly about this topic. The value of giving your brain time to simply exist without any outside input, with many examples from history of people who carved out time explicitly for this, especially when needing to make big decisions or figure out answers to problems.

I haven’t read the book but I like this idea and intend to check out the book. I’m not on social media but I find Hacker News – and even Wikipedia – to be addictive enough. When I was younger, I found it very hard to just sit there without some form of external stimulation, e.g. I couldn’t sit down to eat by or have a coffee by myself without reading a magazine or newspaper at the same time – or listening to the radio. I still find it hard to do this.

Hacker News has been useful in that I’ve come across a few inspirational ideas on consuming less input (and producing more output):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44702212

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39674619

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20781463

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24582837

I’ve made some changes to my life in that listening to music is more intentional – not just a distraction to have in the background. It probably helps that I’ve also started to learn a musical instrument. I can also go for a walk without needing to have music or a podcast to listen to.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#205

Post by abhaynayar » Fri, Jul 24, 2026, 2:43 PM UTC

In terms of solutions on an individual-level: after a lot of trial and error I feel like what works for me is an absolutist cold-turkey-approach. I've pretty much banned all consumptive screen-time except some things like Hacker News, LinkedIn, YouTube (only existing subscriptions, no recommendations or shorts etc). Things I know I won't spend more than 15-20 minutes on and are not highly stimulating and made to high-jack your brain. Initially, I used to allow myself some leeway as in screen-time i.e. should be less than X duration, but it never worked.

The withdrawal-symptoms of going cold-turkey are intense but you get over them eventually and then once you've powered through a few weeks, and you try and go back and look at any type of "content" you see how much trash it all is. Even the "good ones" or things you tell yourself is "educational". Another important note is to have some replacements in place so that when you start seeing that new void of so much time on your hands, you don't feel empty/hollow but as a reminder to yourself that you had so many cool things to do.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#206

Post by afavour » Fri, Jul 24, 2026, 2:43 PM UTC

jahnu wrote: post #199

afavour wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d argue Idiocracy is actually quite the opposite of what the OP was talking about. It has a mildly eugenics-y vibe where the world is bad because poor, stupid people have poor, stupid kids that outnumber the smart ones. OP is talking about something environmental that can affect anyone.

Honestly, as fun as the film is I’ve noticed people very rarely mention that disturbing premise.

Yeah I don't hate the movie by any means I just think it isn't as deep as people often credit it as being.

…and if you do credit it with incisive societal commentary you kind of have to engage with the weird implications of what it's saying rather than just come away feeling superior about not being one of the dumb underclass.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#207

Post by duskdozer » Fri, Jul 24, 2026, 2:44 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #135

Melonai wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think the difference is between "using your phone", meaning calling someone and audibly talking to someone, thus disrupting the movie for others, and "checking your phone", which is just looking at it, though inaudibly, though there might be some amount of light pollution depending on the screen brightness. First one has and will continue to be taboo, second one however, in my experience, used to be viewed with dista…

As someone who miraculously doesn’t feel this urge to constantly “check” his phone, I have to ask: what are you people “checking” for, exactly? It’s still there—it hasn’t gone anywhere. Is it the notifications? Why not just turn them off? I can assure you that there’s nothing on your phone that can’t wait an hour or so until the movie is done. Out of 10,000 people “checking” their phones, probably around 1 of them is…

Everything wants to hijack your attention via your phone now, whether it's apps spamming notifications or companies spamming SMS. And arguably every once in a while there is something you would like to know quickly, but any channel that comes on just gets abused by cruft.

If it's addiction, it's addiction through exploitation.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#208

Post by rapnie » Fri, Jul 24, 2026, 2:46 PM UTC

tetha wrote: post #83

ssl-3 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's only one important thing that I miss about smoking: A smoke break was an excuse that was tolerated by others, wherein I could go outside and just let my mind wander (daydream) with no particular goal for a short period of time. Daydreaming should be perfectly acceptable either way, but people seem to think it's weird (concerning, even) when someone spends a bit of time to stand (or sit) around while appearing…

Some of my deepest architectural work honestly happened... in a hammock on the balcony, while alternating between staring at a cloud, the sun, and two magpies building a nest in the birch tree while yelling at me occasionally. Then I came back to my desk, saw that I had missed a call or two from my boss and he had a concerned message of where I was. I ignored that and sent him an architecture document an hour later.…

Rich Hickey, creator of clojure, literally calls this "Hammock driven development" and has a great talk on the matter (multiple actually):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc

(oops, cross-posted with a similar comment.. well, shows the vid is watchworthy)

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#209

Post by stevenwoo » Fri, Jul 24, 2026, 2:48 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #162

projektfu wrote: post #157

Hallowell and Ratey, who write about ADHD, suggested a new entity for the current world: VAST, the variable attention stimulus trait. It is like ADHD but it is culturally induced and not presumed to be due to an innate deficiency in executive function. "Beyond the sources of biologically based ADHD, there are a lot of people who act as if they have ADHD but on close inspection turn out not to have the diagnosable con…

If somebody told me 25 years ago that in the future we all would have a TV on our office desk with 100 channels I would not have believed them. Yet ... the current situation is worse! Thinking of it in terms of mental disorders, I don't think that is going to help much.

We are “Amusing Ourselves to Death”.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#210

Post by specproc » Fri, Jul 24, 2026, 2:50 PM UTC

iammjm wrote: post #41

specproc wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FFS. The solution to our machines eating our brains should not be "just take amphetamine, bro".

Except ADHD was there long before the machines, and stimulants have been scientifically proven time and time again to be helpful in treating ADHD at a very minimal sides effects cost.

TFA links attention on one hand, and social media and LLM use on the other. I'm not making any points about the scientific validity of those conclusions, but that's the context in which this discussion is taking place.

Personally, I find a very strong link between my devices and my ability to focus, as they're the space in which I spaff my time. I do not believe myself to have ADHD, I believe that the machines I use offer limitless ways for me to lose track when I'm tired.

I'm deeply skeptical of pharmacological solutionism, particularly in the domain of mental health. A variety of drugs can be a boon, life-saving to many, but are over-prescribed and treat symptoms not causes.

With regard to amphetamines in particularly (we called it 'whizz' where I'm from, back in the day), we're talking about a class of drug that can cause dependency, problems with sleep and sex, anxiety and plenty more. I would not say they're not without side effects in the slightest.

Sure, great if this sort of stuff helps, but I find the "just get a diagnosis" line utterly inadequate and borderline disturbing.