Ask HN: How can I remedy scatter brain and information overload? • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by neltnerb » Sun, Dec 07, 2014, 6:00 AM UTC

Bare minimum, don't visit news websites of any kind. They're designed to attract clicks and be sensational and make you think it matters. Really, almost no news story has any impact on your life. You would be exactly as happy and able to live your life without knowing anything about the story.

Anything truly important you'll hear about from other people. If you want, get a subscription to the atlantic or something where they have long form articles that are well researched and most importantly... delayed from the events. The delay puts things into a perspective that makes it much easier not to get drawn into feeling a need to "keep up". The story, if it's worth knowing about, will still be a story in a month.

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

#152

Post by chdir » Sun, Dec 07, 2014, 6:04 AM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #144

I worry that the people who really have the answer to this probably aren't going to see this or post a comment.

In its own hilarious way, this could be closer to truth than most of the stuff here.

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

#153

Post by useful » Sun, Dec 07, 2014, 6:15 AM UTC

I rock climb because when you are in fight or flight, you don't think about anything but that next hold. It lets me reset and turn off everything else for a short time. Participating in endurance sports gives me time to think to myself and prioritize/concentrate what I want to do during the rest of the day. A list of daily goals helps when I'm really overloaded.

I also don't watch TV and I've removed most infinite scroll apps from my phone.

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

#154

Post by jodrellblank » Sun, Dec 07, 2014, 6:25 AM UTC

lucaspiller wrote: post #147

I used to be similar and here is what I do now: - Avoid the news. 99% is rubbish and the other 1% isn't going to have any effect on you. If anything is important enough you'll hear about it anyway (from talking to people, Facebook, etc). I only read HN and a few Reddits regularly now, but even most of that is rubbish. If you hear about a news topic that is interesting to you, sure go read into it, but you aren't goin…

Don't care about TV / movies / books / articles. Nothing you read / watch is going to dramatically change your life

Then what will? How will you escape any local maxima without input from far away - far away in location, far away in time, far away in concept and ideas, far away in political, social, economic, artistic, &c. worldview from where you are?

Why would you skip the lessons other people took decades to learn, to refuse to learn from history and from others outside your immediate contacts, on principle?

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

#155

Post by journeeman » Sun, Dec 07, 2014, 6:46 AM UTC

coned88 wrote: post #101

journeeman wrote: post #41

Relax, it's okay. :-) I went through the same thing. I realized that it is neither possible nor important to know a lot of stuff. It is more important and a much more satisfying experience to follow one's own interests and learn what one needs to in the process, as this kind of knowledge stays with you and does not clutter your mind. Knowing stuff is not at all as important as being able to apply logic and ask the ri…

Thanks a lot this was great advice.

Glad I could be of help. :-) Thanks for asking the question.

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

#156

Post by hagope » Sun, Dec 07, 2014, 7:01 AM UTC

Here are a few things I'm trying and it seems to be working well: - Delete Facebook account - Block time wasters using browser extension (reddit, news sites etc) - Block these sites also on my wifi router - Keep a daily log of all the habits I want to build/break (actually I've hacked a rails app to do this, it only runs on my machine tho :)

I've whitelisted only a few time wasting sites (HN and Twitter) but generally I don't read news articles anymore, I just get news in chunks from Twitter (good enough for me).

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

#157

Post by teekert » Sun, Dec 07, 2014, 7:44 AM UTC

coned88 wrote: post #108

teekert wrote: post #53

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 al…

You say i wrote this to get the easy answer but I got yours which is a big help and really put things in perspective. I think if I just stopped reading reddit I'd be fine. Thanks so much.

Ok, I shouldn't have put it that way.

What I mean is that I get the distinct feeling that you know what to do, you say you like to be informed but you are getting an overload of info. It is so extremely easy to conclude you should reduce the amount of information you consume that you already know that. So why don't you do it? Because you don't know how. I'm saying it will take a lot of work indeed, and a lot of willpower. There is no other way than to indeed just stop reading reddit.

Imo, what you need (and me too) is more time to let your thoughts wander, to let your brain connect dots on its own without distraction, to let your brain relax. So you reduce the amount of info. Why is this hard? Because you seek immediate satisfaction, that is what you get from all that information. But all this info is not satisfactory in the long run, hence your cry out to HN. The process of undoing these tendencies is not rewarding at all in the short term, but it will be in the long run. That is why it is hard, especially for someone like you (and me.) Hard problems require focused willpower, not changing /etc/hosts, you'll find something else to distract you.

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

#158

Post by girvo » Sun, Dec 07, 2014, 7:54 AM UTC

hanoz wrote: post #111

1. Give up news. Not necessarily Hacker News, although it's an idea, but mainstream newspaper, television, radio etc. news. It's remarkably easy to cut out completely in one fell swoop and can make an enormous difference to your mental real estate. You won't miss it, you won't miss out (the big stuff will find its way to you regardless) and it can actually be an entertaining challenge to be religious about avoiding i…

I can whole heartedly second these recommendations, it's basically exactly what I did a couple of years ago and it's helped me tremendously.

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

#159

Post by girvo » Sun, Dec 07, 2014, 7:59 AM UTC

hoggle wrote: post #89

wkmeade2 wrote: post #72

GTD. GTD = David Allen's book GETTING THINGS DONE which has been mentioned below already. I've lived the splatter-gun-to-focus process that GTD can create, if you stick with GTD. I blog about GTD on and off. Here is my before/after with pictures: http://restartgtd.com/gtd-journey-after/ and, here is my 5 year GTD time lapse of refactored desks and trusted systems: http://restartgtd.com/gtd-time-lapse/

Thanks for the links, very insightful. As somebody who unfortunately is only a fairly recent GTD convert I was wondering if you could elaborate more on why Omnifocus wasn't for you? I was thinking of buying it for both my Mac and iPhone but I am still undecided as I don't know if it really is the right solution for me. GTD to me most of all is about honestly taking stock of our own shortcomings as human wetware (and…

Personally, following Allens instructions to the letter made GTD "stick", when all the digital tools I tried had failed for me over and over again. Having a physical reminder of everything made building a habit far easier and avoided distractions that come with a computer and a screen.

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

#160

Post by zokier » Sun, Dec 07, 2014, 8:09 AM UTC

hanoz wrote: post #111

1. Give up news. Not necessarily Hacker News, although it's an idea, but mainstream newspaper, television, radio etc. news. It's remarkably easy to cut out completely in one fell swoop and can make an enormous difference to your mental real estate. You won't miss it, you won't miss out (the big stuff will find its way to you regardless) and it can actually be an entertaining challenge to be religious about avoiding i…

> You won't miss it [news], you won't miss out (the big stuff will find its way to you regardless)

Maybe it is different in the valley or wherever, and of course highly dependent on your social circles, but not being able to comment any current affairs can make some conversations quite awkward. Personally I'd find that it would not reflect well on the person.

Also I would say that it is far better to choose your own news sources rather than rely on random regurgitations.

And this is coming from a person who does not follow news, and hasn't done so for most of his adult life. Ignorance is a bliss, but it is still ignorance.