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Ask HN: I feel like I've destroyed my attention span. How do I get it back?

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Re: Ask HN: I feel like I've destroyed my attention span. How do I get it back?

#11

Post by bproven »

soulbadguy wrote: post #4
closeparen wrote: post #2

Reading novels seems to help for me. More directly, there’s always meditation.

Meditation is frequently mentioned in this context, is there a specific meditation design for for attention span ?

I like Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche and the Shambhala approach. Some of his best books IMO: Turning the Mind Into an Ally and Running with the Mind of Meditation.

I like his approach since it has a more modern appeal and his writing is very approachable for those new to meditation (at least to me).

Re: Ask HN: I feel like I've destroyed my attention span. How do I get it back?

#12

Post by andrei_says_ »

Attend a 10-day vipassana retreat. They are donation-based and all over the world.

https://www.dhamma.org/en-US/locations/directory

This will bring back + tremendously improve your attention span, in 10 days, guaranteed.

Once you leave the retreat, you will encounter the same environment and habits which robbed you of it. Which you will need to address.

Knowing that social media is being intentionally weaponized to extract attention from its users is helpful as your attitude toward social media and internet usage is likely a big part of it.

Re: Ask HN: I feel like I've destroyed my attention span. How do I get it back?

#14

Post by markwhalen »

I went to local bookstore bought 15 books. Tried one at a time to read them instead of playing with laptop/iPad/ iPhone . By 7th ( not making it through 7th one I could enjoy reading 8th book again and enjo reading now to still my brain at end of day . Not a cure all but it helped me regain a bit of focus . Hope this helps

Re: Ask HN: I feel like I've destroyed my attention span. How do I get it back?

#16

Post by SanderSantema »

I feel like I'm struggling with this problem to. Somewhat luckily my attention span was never that big so I haven't lost a lot.

I think most of the things we do in day to day live consist of habits combined with choices we make. I think our attention span is mostly a habit.

The things I do in day to day live ingrain some habits. I like to read a lot on the internet, learn about things. However a lot of the content on the internet currently focuses on short attention spans, things like reddit (clicking on a few pictures, opening an impressive title) and social media. They focus on short attentions spans because it's easier to keep someones attention that way. For me this formed some habits which fit short attention spans like opening up a lot of pages and reading small parts of them. For me this lead to fast short term rewards.

Reversing this habit of a short attention span is like an exercise. Staying away from sites which cater to short attention spans and only opening one page at a time which I read completely. In that way I try to learn a new habit. I don't use reddit a lot anymore and I try to use hackernews instead because there are a lot more longer articles here of greater quality, requiring longer attention spans. Maybe that could help you. But all of this is obviously completely personal and anecdotal.

Some things which I found helpful: Charles Duhigg: The Power of Habit (Book about habits) The Coursera course: Learning How to Learn (Since learning requires a long attention span)

Ask HN More Like Hackernews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3734303 Contains a lot of sources like longforms.org, https://aeon.co and https://aldaily.com websites which have content which requires long attention spans.

Possibly there are some things in this post which are a bit unclear I've got a bit of trouble writing English since it's not my native tongue. If you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them.

Re: Ask HN: I feel like I've destroyed my attention span. How do I get it back?

#17

Post by CookieCats »

floatingatoll wrote: post #10

This will sound sarcastic, but it’s not. Stop visiting HN more than once a day. Repeat this for every “news”/“feed” site and app that you use. It sounds completely nuts, but it forces you to stop slicing up “read the news” (a focused activity) into “read the news distractedly” (a timesliced activity). Shut off push notifications for anything that is not money/shipping related or a direct IM with individuals. Email no…

I started doing this about a week ago, and it's nice to hear it took you a month, because it's kinda been painful this past week.

I still unlock my phone and look at the homescreen only to realize "oh yeah, I removed that stuff so there's nothing to do here". I'd thought that by removing social/news feeds, I would find something else to do with my thoughts by necessity, but really nothing has replaced the "open phone for 30 seconds to find something briefly entertaining".

I was expecting to be bored, but it's more of a low-level frustration at all times except when I'm focused on something, like I know I could be finding some trivial but interesting thing.

Re: Ask HN: I feel like I've destroyed my attention span. How do I get it back?

#18

Post by amoorthy »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #12

Attend a 10-day vipassana retreat. They are donation-based and all over the world. https://www.dhamma.org/en-US/locations/directory This will bring back + tremendously improve your attention span, in 10 days, guaranteed. Once you leave the retreat, you will encounter the same environment and habits which robbed you of it. Which you will need to address. Knowing that social media is being intentionally weaponized to e…

I did this retreat and found it to be extremely valuable (http://www.curiousjuice.com/blog-0/bid/141396/Vipassana-10-d...).

However, its value only carries if you continue meditating daily, at least for 30min, which I haven't done and I suspect most of us will struggle to do after the retreat.

I agree with the last point that most tech is aimed to get your attention and few things are actually worth it. I'm working on a model for news/media that addresses this shortcoming.

Re: Ask HN: I feel like I've destroyed my attention span. How do I get it back?

#19

Post by liamcardenas »

Nutrition.

I have struggled quite a bit with attention. The single most effective thing I can do (more effective than medication) is to improve my diet by cutting out carbs. I find if I am in a mild state of ketosis (greater than 0.3), I can concentrate way better. I am not advocating that everyone go on a ketogenic diet, but cutting out refined sugar and eating only healthy nutrient-rich carbs does wonders for my brain, i.e. salad, blueberries, kale, etc

Re: Ask HN: I feel like I've destroyed my attention span. How do I get it back?

#20

Post by mr_overalls »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #12

Attend a 10-day vipassana retreat. They are donation-based and all over the world. https://www.dhamma.org/en-US/locations/directory This will bring back + tremendously improve your attention span, in 10 days, guaranteed. Once you leave the retreat, you will encounter the same environment and habits which robbed you of it. Which you will need to address. Knowing that social media is being intentionally weaponized to e…

This is a bit like recommending a marathon to someone who is sedentary. Building a daily meditation habit of at least 20-30 minutes of sustained attention might be a good preliminary step.
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