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It's getting harder to focus every day

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Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#241

Post by ruthvik947 »

RugnirViking wrote: post #5
beschizza wrote: post #3

The author doesn’t mention it, so it seems appropriate to suggest asking a doctor for attention deficit disorder screening. The cultural forces in play encouraging us to flit and switch constantly are a perfect distraction from the possibility one’s own brain is complicit.

I would caution a little against the prevailing wisdom of diagnosis-as-panacea. I've had a diagnosis for most of my life, but never seen stimulants as worth it (admittedly I've not tried them long term, but that's because after reading a whole lot about it I don't want it in my body). I don't think the diagnosis changes anything for me other than that. It's very much a case of "now what". I suppose some people find a…

I feel similarly. I have a lot of tendencies characteristic of ADHD, but I'm undiagnosed, and I don't think I'll seek out the diagnosis either. I don't intend to take any stimulants, and the particular identity of having ADHD means little to me, so the diagnosis wouldn't change much. As you say, I'd still need to figure out how to live this life in these conditions anyway.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#242

Post by OccamsMirror »

Barbing wrote: post #216
stevenwoo wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are “Amusing Ourselves to Death”.

In the introduction to Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman said that the contemporary world was better reflected by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, whose public was oppressed by their addiction to amusement, rather than by Orwell's work, where they were oppressed by state violence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death Thanks for the reminder to read this.

¿Por qué no los dos?

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#243

Post by doubled112 »

imp0cat wrote: post #74
safety1st wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Willpower's not the solution. When we isolated cocaine from the coca leaf for the first time, the world pretty much went insane. In those first years people were injecting it into their eyeballs and spines. The most popular beverage on earth in 2026 STILL contains extract of the coca leaf as a holdover from the days when it was laced with its namesake, Coke. People were smoking cocaine, ingesting cocaine, giving it t…

Not even a smartwatch? What's your opinion on fitness trackers (the passive ones, without display)?

> fitness trackers (the passive ones, without display

Do you mean my belly when I look down? That and the answer to "can I keep up with my kids?" has always been enough fitness tracking for me.

I wear a self winding watch. I suppose if it stops going while I'm wearing it, I've been very still and might be dead.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#244

Post by afavour »

skinfaxi wrote: post #235
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.

Isn't is well-known that higher education correlates with lower birthrates? At the very least college years are prime child-rearing years. > Educated women delay the onset of childbearing and have fewer children overall compared with less-educated women https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3449224/

Yeah, Idiocracy isn't wrong on the facts about our current day scenario. The issue is where it takes that: poor, lower educated people will inevitably have poor, lowered educated children who will in fact get less and less educated as time goes on, and they will take over, leading to... idiocracy.

There's a whole conversation to have about the assumptions in that. Is the implication it's genetic? The children of lower educated people aren't capable of moving to greater things? Or is it societal, that our education system fails the poor and doesn't give them the tools they need to thrive?

The movie isn't really interested in interrogating any of that and I don't think it needs to. Like I said, I see it as a fun movie that isn't that deep. But there's a common thread of opinion on the movie that holds it up as a biting satire ("Idiocracy is a documentary!" is essentially a meme at this point) and those folks don't seem to engage with the topic either. A worrying number of people seem to have a takeaway of "poor people shouldn't procreate as much".

Anyway, to bring it back to the actual topic at hand (and why I originally replied): I think something like VAST goes directly against what Idiocracy implies. We're all potential victims to distractions that reduce our capacity for executive function. A more accurate movie might show people of all financial and educational achievement glued to endless social media feeds.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#245

Post by duskdozer »

specproc wrote: post #210
iammjm wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree that not everyone having issues today would be qualifying for ADHD. There are way too many things about the zeitgeist that are overloading everyone. But still:

1. you can't prescribe someone a fixed society

2. what constitutes "over prescription" is subjective, and some increase in prescriptions is to be expected in line with better knowledge and so ability to diagnose people who were previously missed

3. contrary to several other psychiatric medications, stimulants have a known MoA and consistently beat placebo

4. amphetamine taken recreationally is often in different forms and much higher doses than would be taken on prescription, by people who aren't in need. Things like sleep and anxiety can actually be improved by such prescriptions

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#246

Post by dofm »

specproc wrote: post #234
dofm wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ADHD is something you can rapidly develop an inability to manage at that age, though — after trauma or burnout. Or maybe following RTO after a couple of years of a more peaceful WFH environment. You can get through school without failing, you can get through university and early jobs with hyperfocus, you can be known for being the person who gets bored easily but can do incredible things. Maybe you are late paying bi…

> What the writer is talking about is so reminiscent of the early stages of my burnout that I worry for him. Except it's everyone everywhere. Hands up in the thread anyone who doesn't recognise some of these symptoms. Our jobs, tech and societies are making us ill.

It is but some people cope better than others, right? Even now, some people thrive on social media and make the best of it.

One prosaic explanation is that in many people there is a predisposition to a mixture of hyperfocus and being distracted that society used to place at least some value on ("jack of all trades, master of none", researchers, multi-instrumentalists, artists, librarians, scientists).

The stereotypical image of ADHD is hyperactive ADHD — people who can't hold down a job, get caught up in stupid outcomes or violent outbursts, have accidents, get addicted to drugs, can't settle, distract and annoy everyone.

But it's increasingly clear to me that hidden "inattentive" ADHD is a normal human attention type, and yet those who have it, apart from being chatterboxes, tend to experience the downsides less visibly.

Another question is: is it really "everywhere" evenly, or do we see it more in "knowledge work" careers like IT and research where ADHD people (who are easily bored but highly attentive to interesting subjects) used to thrive?

That is, are we seeing it over and over in the tech industry because inattentive ADHD and the aptitudes (multiple talents, micro-expertise) it tends to foster drove us to this in the first place?

It would be good if society went back to a lower-distraction model, but it is not going to. Some of us are going to need to understand how to keep our brains under control, and some of us are going to need medication or stimulants. GLP-1 is normalised for another societally-driven illness, after all.

And again, it's not that he is distracted like everyone is, that I'm pointing out — it is that it is deteriorating in a way that worries him and he now needs external monitoring (buddy/honour systems) to cope at all. He is, I fear, heading towards burnout that can be life-changing.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#247

Post by boogieknite »

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…

at my first office job my coworkers quickly informed me i had a bizarre habit of staring at the ceiling before performing a burst of effort. i find loosening my visual focus helps me visualize concepts and idea, no idea when or how i picked up that habit

sometimes when i "space out" i am fully daydreaming, other times i am (in generous terms) "composing my thoughts". when its a daydream after snapping back to it ill think along the lines of, "guess i needed to process that"

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#248

Post by sitkack »

afavour wrote: post #244
skinfaxi wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't is well-known that higher education correlates with lower birthrates? At the very least college years are prime child-rearing years. > Educated women delay the onset of childbearing and have fewer children overall compared with less-educated women https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3449224/

Yeah, Idiocracy isn't wrong on the facts about our current day scenario. The issue is where it takes that: poor, lower educated people will inevitably have poor, lowered educated children who will in fact get less and less educated as time goes on, and they will take over, leading to... idiocracy. There's a whole conversation to have about the assumptions in that. Is the implication it's genetic? The children of lowe…

The number one goal in a functioning democracy should be to have the highest possible education rate.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#249

Post by Aurornis »

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…

> there are a lot of people who act as if they have ADHD but on close inspection turn out not to have the diagnosable condition

This is an interesting way to try to put a label on someone’s behavioral conditioning. One of the common, and growing, problems with Internet discussions of ADHD is that they’ve expanded so much that most young people growing up in a connected world can identity with some influencer’s description of ADHD. Working with young, tech-interested students is worrying right now because across every group you will find most of them saying some variation of believing that they have ADHD. Their basis is usually a combination of Reddit posts and something from a streamer or content creator they follow.

Yet most of them don’t have anything resembling focus or executive function problems. I think those with ADHD diagnoses from youth just don’t talk about it much. It’s the people who discovered it on social media who are bringing it up the most in this context. The basis for their belief that they have ADHD is more about feeling that self-discipline is easy and enjoyable for “normies” and the fact that they have to put in some effort to study and keep their room clean instead of watching YouTube and playing video games is indicative of a condition.

The old way of trying to draw a line between people who are neurodivergent and neurotypical doesn’t really work on those who came up reading those terms on the internet. For various reasons, the majority of them have come to view themselves as neurodivergent in some way, even when they clearly don’t meet any intended definition of that word. In the teenage years it has almost become an extension of the youthful belief that nobody understands you because you’re different and you see the world uniquely. Along come all of the TikTok creators to explain that these feelings are abnormal and come with all these labels you should apply to yourself. Now they believe that they are neurodivergent and start collecting self-diagnoses.

Having a different set of labels could be an interesting way to try to change this dynamic. Instead of one label that’s supposed to represent the entire spectrum from people who cannot function in normal life to the guy who is getting As in all of his classes but feels like studying isn’t as easy as it should be, it might be time to offer some labels for the lighter end of the spectrum so we can get back to using the heavy medical diagnoses to mean something significant.

There’s an entire other conversation about how the dilution of diagnoses like ADHD is causing harm to those with serious ADHD because the term doesn’t mean as much any more. Extra labels for mimic conditions or behavioral/personality variants could be a good way to relieve some of that pressure.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#250

Post by athorax »

mordae wrote: post #212
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…

Please also note that ADHD-like symptoms can present from sleep Apnea/UARS-induced sleep deprivation and the probability of having Apnea/UARS rises with age. Smoothly for men and a with a sudden jump after menopause for women. So if you feel like you are getting more ADHD-like issues, do consider a sleep study. Early tells are easy: you often feel like shit in the morning.

I recently went through this. I was diagnosed with ADHD 15 years ago and have been managing it, but over the last 2-3 years I had been experiencing increased levels of brain fog, fatigue, and by ability to focus had deteriorated to the point I wasn't sure if I would be able to continue working. I had a sleep study done 10 years ago that only found Night Terror Disorder, but no signs of sleep apnea. I did another sleep study about 6 months ago and it turns out while I wasn't having apnea events I had constant and persistent hypopnea. Started using a CPAP and it feels like I've been given a second lease on life. FWIW, I am a very active and in shape individual within a healthy weight range. Don't wait to get tested if you have even the slightest worry you may have it.
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