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

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

#131
post #8

You might be INTP. FInd out and if you are, find a community of them. It helped me. And to put it succinctly, minimize your information firehoses and reject the notion that you need to keep abreast of everything even if it is not relevant to you. Purge all of your reading lists and resist building them. If you keep any lists or bookmarks, require that they be things you HAVE read and want to keep as reference for lat…

> You might be INTP. FInd out and if you are, find a community of them. It helped me.

I took one of those self tests and it came back ITSJ

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

#132
Here's my advice if you want peace.

"And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." Eccl. 12:12-14

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

#133

For a long time I felt (and now feel) the same as you. I just wanted to share an experience that, while completely anecdotal, is perhaps atypical, and has been one of the defining experiences of my life. I got the Internet as a birthday present on my 8th birthday, and pretty much disappeared from normal society for the next few years. The Internet was (and is) fascinating - I could learn anything, interact with peopl…

wow that's some great advice. Thanks so much.

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

#134
I've gone through that. What you need to do is some time management techniques. One of the most important is prioritization. It's great that you want to read all those articles, but set a time frame after which they are no longer relevant. At the start of every day make sure you have a list of tasks that you MUST get done. Do those first, nothing else. Aside from getting things done, it will give you a sense of accomplishment. For longer term tasks/projects I right the top 3-5 on post-it notes and put them in an area I see them every day. A constant reminder that those are my priorities. Most of this is based on the Daily Planner technique by Brendan Brushard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLYwz3JUsLw Be aggressive about purging. If it's really important, it will come up again. Also, remember that email is someone else's to do list for you, not your to do list.

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

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://selfcontrolapp.com/ Works well. It cannot be turned off and you can set it for a specific amount of time. You choose the websites you would like to block. Your phone is obviously a weak point, but it's a start.

> It cannot be turned off and you can set it for a specific amount of time I almost stopped using the app due to the lack of an off button, after my boss asked for some data and I could not get it on time because the website was not on my whitelist. Luckily, there is a way of turning it off. If you don't want to know it skip the rest of this comment, and otherwise here it is, in case someone needs it: the app uses th…

No way to disable things is a dealbreaker for me.

It should be possible (if slightly annoying) to disable restrictions, but it should only ever be temporarily disabled.

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

#137

For a long time I felt (and now feel) the same as you. I just wanted to share an experience that, while completely anecdotal, is perhaps atypical, and has been one of the defining experiences of my life. I got the Internet as a birthday present on my 8th birthday, and pretty much disappeared from normal society for the next few years. The Internet was (and is) fascinating - I could learn anything, interact with peopl…

What was your age when you went to ukraine. How old are you now?

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

#138

For a long time I felt (and now feel) the same as you. I just wanted to share an experience that, while completely anecdotal, is perhaps atypical, and has been one of the defining experiences of my life. I got the Internet as a birthday present on my 8th birthday, and pretty much disappeared from normal society for the next few years. The Internet was (and is) fascinating - I could learn anything, interact with peopl…

> So now I spend a lot of time on very strict information diets.

What helped me was signing up to newsletters. Once a week I get newsletters summarising the most interesting links for HN, and also ones about Python, Big Data and Data Science.

I redirect HN/Reddit/Facebook to 127.0.0.1 in my hosts file, because going to these sites is an automatic reaction in a browser, and all I need is a 404 to remind myself why I no longer visit them all day.

Lastly, I only use Facebook for chat but I get distracted by the feed. So I unfollowed everyone on my feed and now I don't have one.

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

#139

( Continued From Below -> Sorry again for the length) You have to be tough. You say you want an opinion? You like to communicate with people and discuss things? You want to be well established in your beliefs and thoughts? Start with being well established in your actions and your own thought process. As it seems to hold contradicting opinions to what you believe needs to be focused on or done. I too was diagnosed wi…

You are not alone.

Some words I took from your post were that “[T]there is only one truth. You […] ALLOW yourself to be distracted.” and “It will never be up to anyone other than yourself[.]”

There is a theory that our default state of mind is that “racing state” that coned88 described, that most people are like that most of the time. Only few people, like both you are coned88 notice that it is happening. Fewer still learn, internalize, and practice noticing when their mind wanders and bringing their focus back to the task at hand, or as you put it, being a man.

So in short, yes coned88, you just purge thoughts, actions, and literature that are not moving you towards accomplishing the task at hand.

This can be taught. Or, as you put it, “[P]hysiologically as a human you are designed to adapt” and, more or less, we all have the same basic physiology.

In response to coned88’s first question “Any advice on what I should do?”

coned88’s, I’m tempted to tell you about my personal story, but I will focus on the advice and try to rely on my credibility as a stranger on the internet and citations for credibility.

There are secular meditation techniques based on Tibetan Buddhism has been shown to increase the practitioners ability be aware of shifts in focus. I’m primarily citing personal experience.

I’d like to recommend a book, a course, with instructions to help you increase your focus, but I don’t know of one. The books I have read focus on managing stress and healing emotional wounds instead of improving mental performance. The vast majority of stuff out there uses a lot of poetry, jargon, and generalizations I cannot recommend, but this lifehacker article was the best I found[6]. I hope it helps you.

My secular interpretation of Buddhism is that they used fables to codify knowledge before they had writing. Information is easier to memorize that way[4]. Monks were trained to decode the knowledge from the fables. Or at least that is my understanding.

Considering the short history of psychology in the West[5], as well as the cults, self help gurus, and experiments with drugs in the 60’s, it is still hard to find credible sources that validate meditation. Advances in neural imaging, as well as a growing psychological literature, as well as my personal experimentation has lead me to believe that specific meditative practices lead to increased awareness and control of mental focus.

“Our data indicate that meditation training makes you better at focusing, in part by allowing you to better regulate how things that arise will impact you.” –Christopher Moore, Associate Professor of Neuroscience, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT as quoted by the MIT Press[1]

A lot of the current research[2] focuses on using fMRI machines to see what is happening in the brain during meditation.

"What we're trying to do is basically track the changes in the networks in the brain as the person shifts between these modes of attention," Dr Josipovic says, according the BBC article. How you use your brain has been shown to physically change over time based on how it is used. "One thing that meditation does for those who practise it a lot is that it cultivates attentional skills," Dr Josipovic says.

[1] http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2011/meditation-0505

[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12661646

[3] http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallaci...

[4] http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_...

[5] William James, Link to Harvard.edu http://bit.ly/1yrbVVD

[6] http://lifehacker.com/5895509/train-your-brain-for-monk-like...

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

#140

For a long time I felt (and now feel) the same as you. I just wanted to share an experience that, while completely anecdotal, is perhaps atypical, and has been one of the defining experiences of my life. I got the Internet as a birthday present on my 8th birthday, and pretty much disappeared from normal society for the next few years. The Internet was (and is) fascinating - I could learn anything, interact with peopl…

"... now I spend a lot of time on very strict information diets ..."

I can see this happening in the near future. People using some technique to measure and restrict their Internet binge.

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