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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

#301

Post by Levitz »

MrDrMcCoy wrote: post #257
Der_Einzige wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the many reasons why we should air drop GLP-1 over the entire country, like condoms in Bangladesh!

Please, no. GLP1s leave you worse off than when you started if you stop taking them. Weight is also not necessarily the factor that leads to sleep apnea; I got diagnosed while having a healthy weight in my 30s.

>Please, no. GLP1s leave you worse off than when you started if you stop taking them.

This doesn't seem factual, or at the very least, not that simple?

https://www.epicresearch.org/articles/two-years-after-stoppi...

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#302

Post by CollinEMac »

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/

Idiocracy's mechanism isn't as solid as it seems though even if high educated people do tend to have have less kid. The movie basically suggests "smart people have smart kids, dumb people have dumb kids, repeat forever." But you'd expect kids of very high or very low IQ parents to land closer to average in general. The "compounding" thing the movie relies on isn't really how it works in life.

And even if the premise of Idiocracy were true, less intelligent people aren't worth less than more intelligent people. That's the "eugenics-y vibe" problem mentioned earlier that makes the movie uncomfortable for some people.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#304

Post by SoftTalker »

aktau wrote: post #233
ryandrake wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been 24/7 do-not-disturb mode with all notifications disabled, for the past 10 years. It’s been wonderful for “intentionality” and agency over my time. I use my phone when I want to do something on it, not when the phone beeps and buzzes telling me to use it. I don’t even whitelist anyone anymore. If it’s important they will leave a message and I’ll get back to them.

> If it’s important they will leave a message and I’ll get back to them. I can't really do that. For some things (urgent and important), loved ones need to be able to reach me. But yes, a lot of this advice would work.

You have to remember that not that long ago it was simply impossible to reach most people who were not at home or at work. Because it was impossible, nobody felt slighted that you were unable to read their message or take their call immediately. And nobody felt any anxiety about leaving the house for a few hours to shop or go to a movie or a ball game and being unreachable. Loved ones managed and life went on.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#305

Post by amacneil »

For me, AI is a classic tale of maker schedule vs manager schedule, just at massive scale:

https://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

Many individual contributors (ICs) are getting introduced to multi-tasking for the first time. When I was an IC, I was really good at getting into flow state and getting solid work done. When I first started managing, I found it really to adjust to constantly multi-tasking.

After several years of managing, I found the opposite - I became really bad at getting into flow state, my brain had been rewired to constantly context switch every 30 seconds.

Now with AI, we're seeing many managers get back into coding again: "Hey! This fits exactly into my mental model! Delegate 5 agents at once and then keep juggling between their responses!". We're also seeing many ICs feel the opposite - much stress from needing to multi-task and constantly context switch.

I don't know if everyone's brain can be rewired for multi-tasking, but I can tell you that for me it took a couple years to adjust. Everyone is on manager schedule now.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#306

Post by [deleted] »

xorcist wrote: post #264
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…

I believe you are on to something. I like to run, which is common enough, but I never do it with a watch or phone. I always leave them at home. That is my hour of zen. Afterwards I may be exhausted but I am always full of ideas. After the first ten kilometres or so the body does all the running and the mind is set free. That's a lot like daydreaming. Every other person I meet along the trail have headphones and some…

[deleted]

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#307

Post by Anthony-G »

Barbing wrote: post #232
Anthony-G wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 radi…

Consume less, create more: “These are not the only two options. There's a third activity most of us seem to have forgotten - to simply be. For me, the very act of everyday living has become very enjoyable and fulfilling in recent years. Doing the dishes, cooking, gardening, sweeping the floor, putting out the trash. Those are not "chores", that's what life's made of. Some of it creative, some not, but the difference…

So true! I still think of these things as being chores and don’t look forward to doing them. Worse still, I sometimes procrastinate and let them build up into being much bigger jobs than they need to be.

Every now and again, I try to re-frame the way I view these tasks and try to be more positive about them. I remind myself how fortunate I am to be a (reasonably) fit and healthy adult who can physically do them. And I always feel good when I complete them.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#308

Post by SoftTalker »

jvican wrote: post #290
Aurornis wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 descri…

Informative comment, thank you. Can you elaborate on what symptoms do people with ADHD have that the ADHD “sympathizers” don’t? How can one analyze themselves “on close inspection” to know if they truly have ADHD?

ADHD has a clinical definition that needs to be diagnosed by a clinical professional.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#309

Post by iammjm »

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 screens contribute to the issues of attention and executive dysfunction. But the thing with ADHD is that there is no "treating the cause", because the cause is genetic and there is no cure, there is only management of the symptoms. As for dependency, people with ADHD report to chronically forget to take their stimulants, so there's that. For me personally, I find things like weed way more addictive, and I didn't notice any issues with sleep or sex (and I think you might be confusing stimulants with SSRIs here in regards to sex).

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#310

Post by bluefirebrand »

amacneil wrote: post #305

For me, AI is a classic tale of maker schedule vs manager schedule, just at massive scale: https://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html Many individual contributors (ICs) are getting introduced to multi-tasking for the first time. When I was an IC, I was really good at getting into flow state and getting solid work done. When I first started managing, I found it really to adjust to constantly multi-tasking. After s…

> Everyone is on manager schedule now

I think everyone is shifting between maker schedule and manager schedule constantly depending on what is going on, and that's so much more exhausting than just being in maker schedule or manager schedule full time

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