Ask HN: How can I remedy scatter brain and information overload?

Change up your metaphor. Sometimes it's best to think of your "stuff" as a stack to go through sequentially, sometimes a library to collect and browse, sometimes transactions to be budgeted on some kind of ledger of your time and attention, etc.

When you find a metaphor that works for you, the "rules" become rather intuitive. Lately I think of my information consumption habit as something of a diet: Eat when you are hungry. Stop eating when you are full. Stock only enough food for your anticipated needs. Favor nutritious foods. When possible, share meals with friends and family.

Same here. Recently my Moto G broke. It would take 3 weeks to get it fixed and I decided not to have a phone in the mean time. I did this before, people will complain about your poor availability but for me it is only friends, and mostly via Whatsapp. At Work I'm behind my PC mostly and very reachable, I have a desk phone as well so I can call people and I use Skype out...

This experience is always eye opening. It always makes me wonder what the hell I was doing with that smart phone all the time. I just got it back (!after 7 weeks!) and I do 3 days on a battery because I hardly check it. I lost the habbit. I feel much better, when I bike to work I don't have a podcast playing (Twit, No Agenda, yes I miss it, I even burned two No Agendas to a CD for a long car ride, had to dig around the attic for burnable cds :)), I'm not whatsapping during work, not reading long posts on he toilet. I have time to think. Think about what to do, what to learn, how the day will look like. This alleviates a lot of stress, just having a clear and relaxed picture of what your day will look like.

In short: Just stop it. Just Stop overloading your brain. You know exactly what is wrong but you are too weak. Stare out the window, go on walks without your cell phone, quit facebook. The world will not miss you.

I have a very strong feeling that when we stopped being bored, stopped waiting, stopped doing nothing, stopped staring and replaced it with constant consuming of information, we lost something valuable. And indeed, those apps are shortcuts to dopamine release, it is hard to stop. I admit, getting my phone back was like getting a new gadget, but I try to restrain myself from using it. One small trick is to do most thing in the browser, it does not put notifications in your notification area.

By the way, you posted your question here to find an easy way out, to get a tip like: Scratch your left nut for 3 minutes once a day and feel better. But there is no such advice. There is no shortcut. You are going to have to do something radical if you really want change. If you really want change, delete all those accounts, get a dumb phone.

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives. -Henry David Thoreau

It is hard work.

I set a simple cron job to do just this. Weekdays from 9-5, Facebook, Reddit, and a few other sites are routed to localhost. Getting around it is more of a pain than just opening an Incognito tab, which is all that's required to get around a blocking browser extension.

Just having that schedule imposed on me for a few days was all it took for me to get out of the habit of opening a new tab and heading to one of the aforementioned sites any time I ran into a difficult problem. I've noticed an increase in my productivity, and I don't really even feel the need to twiddle away that time anymore.

You are your own worst enemy.

[edit] After reading my post again it seems pretty scatter-brained, I guess that's appropriate in some way.

Back in 2011 I decided that I would teach myself all this great computer science stuff and work in information security. Apart from the fact that security in itself is an advanced topic, I had given myself a very long-term goal without realizing it.

It wasn't until a few months of research that I realized how truly enormous computer science as a topic really was. The moment I realized this I remember sitting back in my chair and thinking "fuck". So, I started with fundamentals and went from there. Thus far I've learned enough to hold my own and have the confidence that I can make it in information security once I get there.

I can't tell you how many articles, blog posts, and comment threads I read about being productive. Books I've put on my list to read and am currently reading (about 4 right now) is virtually always growing. It wasn't until the last month or so that I realized a pattern in my behavior; I will focus intensely on one thing for a variable period of time and then lose interest in it.

A few tactics against myself that have proven useful:

- Blocks all websites that waste my time between the hours of 0800-2200.

- Uninstall all games and their respective clients (done this many times).

- Keep work/studies on screen/desk 24/7; the idea here is to have to stare at what you're supposed to be doing right now, as you do not do it.

I still procrastinate terribly and go around my own countermeasures on a regular basis, but I've improved nonetheless. Hang tough buddy, you're only fighting yourself so identify your weaknesses and exploit them.

lol you know, unless were on HN where people know about the hosts file :P

I kid. It still works, although I use rescuetime now and it's pretty useful seeing how much time you waste on certain things. Costs money though.