Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Four Hours of Concentration

johndcook.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 93 posts

Re: Four Hours of Concentration

#31

Post by jules »

solarmist wrote: post #14
droithomme wrote: post #8

Back in the old days when I was in school, I didn't do well with more than 3 classes in a row in college. Not just me though, nearly everyone started with 2 Tu-Th 1.5 hr classes and 2 M-W-F 1 hr classes. That was a full time 12 unit load, but I always took at least 16 units, and sometimes as many as 24, which was up to 3 more classes a week. 16 units was a full time job, the semesters I took 20 and 24 were very speci…

Most of that work isn't that cognitively demanding though. If you're reading research papers or textbooks most of the time the really hard parts have been done for you. You just need to follow along. Also, with most work there's lots of things that need to do that require relatively little concentration once you've made the cognitive shift. I think the four hour limit applies to design/creative work or work that requ…

If reading research papers is not cognitively demanding, that just means that you're not reading fast enough, or you're not truly absorbing the content. Or are you saying that the speed at which you read research papers is limited by the speed at which your eyes can move?

Re: Four Hours of Concentration

#32

Post by thingification »

solarmist wrote: post #14
droithomme wrote: post #8

Back in the old days when I was in school, I didn't do well with more than 3 classes in a row in college. Not just me though, nearly everyone started with 2 Tu-Th 1.5 hr classes and 2 M-W-F 1 hr classes. That was a full time 12 unit load, but I always took at least 16 units, and sometimes as many as 24, which was up to 3 more classes a week. 16 units was a full time job, the semesters I took 20 and 24 were very speci…

Most of that work isn't that cognitively demanding though. If you're reading research papers or textbooks most of the time the really hard parts have been done for you. You just need to follow along. Also, with most work there's lots of things that need to do that require relatively little concentration once you've made the cognitive shift. I think the four hour limit applies to design/creative work or work that requ…

I don't know what the empirical evidence from psychology really says. But I think that programming requires immense attention to detail.

Re: Four Hours of Concentration

#33

Post by yuhong »

stephengillie wrote: post #7
flexie wrote: post #4

That's what I have always said about law. I can do about 4 hours of legal work a day. Then I am absolutely done. I have no idea how my colleagues can clock in 8 hours. Yes - there are days I can do more. But there are also days I do less than 4 hours. In the long run I do about 4 hours a day. That's it.

Your colleagues likely work 4 like you, then bill for 8. Scott Adams (maker of Dilbert) once said this is extremely common in the corporate world, and my experience largely agrees. Much of the other 4 hours may be spent in meetings, lunches, relocating, gossiping, or internet browsing. You're largely paid to be on-site and aware for 40 hours a week, not to necessarily produce anything. One of Adams' books has a story…

Reminds me of this: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45776/why-do-...

Re: Four Hours of Concentration

#34

Post by rdtsc »

LearnYouALisp wrote: post #27
ojbyrne wrote: post #11

In my experience this is what happens with programmers in corporate environments and produces excessive hours - 2 hours concentrating in the morning, 2 hours concentrating in the evening, and 8 hours of bullshit in between.

Incidentally, would the 2 hours of concentration take place at home? See: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-09-15/?CmtOrder=Rating&...

No joke. Sometime the only time I get un-interrupted stretch of 2-3 hours is at home, at night.

Re: Four Hours of Concentration

#35

Post by jonmc12 »

stephengillie wrote: post #3

If you practice something 4 hours per day, 365 days per year, you'll hit the legendary 10,000 hour mark in about 6 years and 10 months. --- Does this mean that each of us has a reservoir of about 4 hours of intense concentration per day? When we perform a less-intense task, like driving or facebooking, are we using those 4 hours at a reduced rate? This sounds like it could feed into another idea - that each human has…

In 'How to Create a Mind', Kurzweil states that Kasparov could simulate 100k board positions in parallel. Which was roughly same working knowledge as, say, Shakespeare with 100k word senses (http://books.google.com/books?id=FCcXiBPurdEC - search for 'board positions' and read next 3 pages).

Further, he suggests that each of the 100k may require 100 pattern recognizers in neo-cortex. That means, the brain needs to configure 10 million patterns in total - these are either newly observed, or new relations formed with existing patterns.

I'm sure its not linear, but if you divide 10M patterns by 10k hours, that means the neocortex needs to add an average of 1 pattern every 3.6s, or 4k patterns per every 4 hours (ie, limit for day). Thats about 400k neurons / day re-purposed for learning through deliberate practice to learn 40 board positions / day in chess.

__________________________

Continuing the conjecture, what we know about about spaced-repetition and mass-repetition might provide some nice bounds for upper limit on how these neurons can be exposed to learning material over 4-hr period to optimize their use as pattern recognizers.

Could make a nice illustrative simulation to speculatively address your question about limits of concentration / learning reservoir.

Re: Four Hours of Concentration

#36

Post by artursapek »

Malcolm Gladwell said in an on-stage interview I witnessed that he can only write for two to three hours a day. The rest of his time he spends doing less demanding work like research and setting up interviews with people.

From what I've seen, most employed programmers only spend about this much time (maybe a bit more) actually programming.

Re: Four Hours of Concentration

#37

Post by dyno12345 »

rthomas6 wrote: post #18

Are there any peer-reviewed studies on this? This looks like purely anecdotal evidence. It makes sense on the surface, but I don't think I can trust that four hours of intense concentration per day is some sort of "cognitive limit" without an actual scientific study.

There are lots of studies that show this actually

http://www.uvm.edu/~pdodds/files/papers/others/everything/er...

Re: Four Hours of Concentration

#38

Post by vertr »

artursapek wrote: post #36

Malcolm Gladwell said in an on-stage interview I witnessed that he can only write for two to three hours a day. The rest of his time he spends doing less demanding work like research and setting up interviews with people. From what I've seen, most employed programmers only spend about this much time (maybe a bit more) actually programming.

Gladwell is a poor example.

Re: Four Hours of Concentration

#39

Post by artursapek »

vertr wrote: post #38
artursapek wrote: post #36

Malcolm Gladwell said in an on-stage interview I witnessed that he can only write for two to three hours a day. The rest of his time he spends doing less demanding work like research and setting up interviews with people. From what I've seen, most employed programmers only spend about this much time (maybe a bit more) actually programming.

Gladwell is a poor example.

Why, because he bullshits? I'm not citing him as a scientific authority but he certainly is a prolific author.

Re: Four Hours of Concentration

#40

Post by nandemo »

ojbyrne wrote: post #11

In my experience this is what happens with programmers in corporate environments and produces excessive hours - 2 hours concentrating in the morning, 2 hours concentrating in the evening, and 8 hours of bullshit in between.

Wow, 2 hours of concentrated work in the morning sounds exceptional to me. With open plan offices -- the norm in Brazil and Japan -- it's damn near impossible to have 20 straight minutes of uninterrupted work: phones ringing, people talking to each other from afar, people interrupting you, etc.
Post reply on HN