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Why it is so hard to stay focused these days—and what to do about it

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Re: Why it is so hard to stay focused these days—and what to do about it

#21

Post by jseliger »

dgallagher wrote: post #9

Rob May* wrote this three years ago about the same topic: Is Concentration the New Competitive Advantage?: http://www.businesspundit.com/is-concentration-the-new-compe... He goes onto saying how reading every Digg post, or looking at every new Web 2.0 startup is basically a complete waist of time. You feel like you're actually learning something, but in reality the info you're learning is "junk" knowledge (unless you…

I'm the original submitter and also wrote about the distraction issue in the context of students and laptops in this post: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2008/12/28/laptops-students-di... . I've just bookmarked May's post for future reference.

Re: Why it is so hard to stay focused these days—and what to do about it

#22

Post by dgallagher »

jseliger wrote: post #21
dgallagher wrote: post #9

Rob May* wrote this three years ago about the same topic: Is Concentration the New Competitive Advantage?: http://www.businesspundit.com/is-concentration-the-new-compe... He goes onto saying how reading every Digg post, or looking at every new Web 2.0 startup is basically a complete waist of time. You feel like you're actually learning something, but in reality the info you're learning is "junk" knowledge (unless you…

I'm the original submitter and also wrote about the distraction issue in the context of students and laptops in this post: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2008/12/28/laptops-students-di... . I've just bookmarked May's post for future reference.

I didn't mean to post Rob's blog to discredit your submission of the link in any way. Sorry if I came across like that. Thanks for posting the link, I enjoyed reading it! And great article on your blog too! :)

Re: Why it is so hard to stay focused these days—and what to do about it

#23

Post by frossie »

keopi wrote: post #11
dgallagher wrote: post #9

Rob May* wrote this three years ago about the same topic: Is Concentration the New Competitive Advantage?: http://www.businesspundit.com/is-concentration-the-new-compe... He goes onto saying how reading every Digg post, or looking at every new Web 2.0 startup is basically a complete waist of time. You feel like you're actually learning something, but in reality the info you're learning is "junk" knowledge (unless you…

Yeah, I had a similar thought thinking how Hacker News was distracting me from the work I should be focusing on.

The HN "noprocrast" feature is there for a reason. Use it.

Re: Why it is so hard to stay focused these days—and what to do about it

#24

Post by FlorinAndrei »

My recipe for efficient writing:

- Put laptop in backpack

- Go someplace where you can be "lonely in a crowd" (e.g. local coffee shop)

- Log out of your Google home page, so all those applets won't claim your attention all the time

- Don't even think of touching anything in the bookmarks

- Keep the email client turned off

- Turn cell phone off too if you must

- Get a nice large latte (either regular or decaf)

- Fire up the text editor

- Let your mind take off

Voila, instant productivity. I get into the "flow" pretty quickly that way.

Re: Why it is so hard to stay focused these days—and what to do about it

#25

Post by rjett »

On a similar, yet somewhat unrelated note,I often catch my own mind working like a search engine. When there's something that I'm trying to recall, for instance the contents of an article I read a couple months ago, I know exactly where I can find the article and I remember whether I thought the article was good or bad, but I often times find that I don't remember a lot of the details of the article. In short, I remember the location, the subject, and the relevance of stuff, but I find it hard to remember specific contents.

Re: Why it is so hard to stay focused these days—and what to do about it

#26

Post by FlorinAndrei »

silentbicycle wrote: post #12
thalur wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know what you mean - I have the same problem. For me, it's worst with television: I can't have a conversation with someone if there's a TV on in the same room. I'm not sure if this is the opposite to the flashlight simile, or just an example of an inability to direct it at will.

Well, television (particularly ad-supported television) is actively trying over and over to grab your attention, so it's not terribly surprising. I have a hard time focusing when there's a tv in line-of-sight, too, and it gets worse when I haven't watched broadcast tv for a while. I remember hearing somebody (Douglas Rushkoff, I think) suggest that ADD-like behaviors might be an adaptation to a childhood in which one…

One more reason why TV-delivered news are fodder for morons.

Re: Why it is so hard to stay focused these days—and what to do about it

#27

Post by trapper »

mahmud wrote: post #19
gcheong wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm beginning to think the value of HN is to give you something to do after you've sold your startup.

For me it's before and during. HN is a deadly weapon in the hands of a shrewd business opportunist with kickass hacking team/skills. It has been an MBA for me.

What have you learned here that you didn't know already?

Re: Why it is so hard to stay focused these days—and what to do about it

#29

Post by FraaJad »

s_baar wrote: post #28
FraaJad wrote: post #2

tl;dr

Hmm, I better scroll down to make sure no one else posted this... What font color is that? -8?!? Oh thank god...

:)

Contrived efforts to keep the conversation serious had made people zealous with their down buttons.

Re: Why it is so hard to stay focused these days—and what to do about it

#30

Post by mahmud »

trapper wrote: post #27
mahmud wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it's before and during. HN is a deadly weapon in the hands of a shrewd business opportunist with kickass hacking team/skills. It has been an MBA for me.

What have you learned here that you didn't know already?

The transformation from a shrink-wrap industrial software developer to doing web-startups. It takes two different minds; previous projects were hard and very demanding, and they were sold via word of mouth and ads in trade publications. Web business is entirely different.
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