It's getting harder to focus every day

There’s this great post about „The Death Of Day Dreaming“: https://www.afterbabel.com/p/on-the-death-of-daydreaming

This was a central plot point of the film adaptation of "Johnny Mnemonic". From Wikipedia:

> In 2021, society is driven by a virtual Internet, which has created a degenerative effect called "nerve attenuation syndrome" or NAS.

Even more hilariously given the purveyors of the distractions we're discussing in this thread:

> Megacorporations control much of the world, intensifying the class hostility already created by NAS.

Bread and circuses, etc. I believe that given our cultural trajectory one's ability to lint their cognitive intake (that is keep TikTok/Insta/YouTube/podcast garbage viewership to a minimum) will be a large predictor of success. The next generation of doctors and Nobel Prize winners probably won't be watching boobies videos and Minecraft play-throughs.

No offense intended by my initial reply, I understand how I may have came off in that way however.

On the 'extreme' bit, this might certainly be along the lines of personal experience- but I find LinkedIn, HN, and Reddit to be among the worst offenders in the basket of attention hogs / dopamine sinks.

My reasoning there is mainly rooted in the fact that these platforms all present a couple dozen or so items that are one click away from soaking your brain (whether that be comment sections, or the parent item itself.)

Social media being work related doesn't necessarily mean that the platform lies on either end of the spectrum here, to me. I work on AI things, and work related social media is certainly an avenue thats detrimental to me- in the fact that the aforementioned platforms produce more content that I can reasonably say I have the ability to consume in a healthy manner.

Again, your experience may be different; but I wouldnt put those platforms anywhere near what cold turkey might mean for me. For me, still consuming relevant work stuff while dialing down away from the extreme would probably be sticking to one or two newsletters, which post ~monthly or so.

I think if the platform is designed in such a way that the goal of the average post is aligned with whats detrimental to attention/focus/dopamine-response, then it can't possibly be used in a straightforwardly healthy manner.

It's funny, I googled VAST and the AI search insisting that it's the same as ADHD, it's just a reframing of it

It sounds similar but almost coming at it from the opposite angle. ADHD is when your brain's baseline is not producing or using dopamine properly. VAST almost sounds like a sort of burnout, where your brain is overwhelmed and cannot process stuff anymore. The symptoms are the same, the effects are the same, but the cause is different.

ADHD root cause is internal lack of stimulation, VAST root cause is external overwhelming stimulation. That's how I understand things anyways

I gave up my smartphone 6 years ago because I concluded the conveniences it offered came at cost of too much of my attention, freedom, and privacy. My ability to focus was just gone, and this magic device was not making me happy or productive anymore.

Within a year, my hyper-focus abilities I remember having as a teen starting flowing back. In the last 5 years I have done the best work of my career, including creating the first fully deterministic Linux distribution, building a community around it, helping start 3 companies, learned endless new skills.

I am not reachable or able to reach the internet every second of every day, and in the modern world that sounds scary. Yet I have a family, an active social life, frequently travel, meet new people every week, co-running two companies while actively developing new tech with daily progress, etc.

All of those things were -accelerated- by me being intentionally offline whenever I am not at a desk.