I stopped watching 24-hour news channels in 1991 when I saw how the Gulf War coverage was turning so many into zombies. By 2010 I had stopped regularly reading a list of news web sites I'd constructed. HN is about the only thing I read regularly online, and I'm getting less regular with that. I watch local news sometimes but only to sneer at the local weatherman who's job here in central Texas could be performed by one of my pugs. If I'm going to starve to death pushing a pleasure lever it ain't gonna be one connected to the infotainment industry.
How I regained concentration and focus
111–120 of 429 posts
Re: How I regained concentration and focus
#112Block websites will help definitely. another "threat" is when you have a few kids, your daily life is cut into pieces with random and sometimes strong background noises 24x7x365, not much you can do there. personally, that impacts my focus the most and there is no cure, and it usually lasts for about 20 years when kids are finally into colleges. obviously there are many good stuff out of raising kids, and I enjoyed i…
I’m curious because I’ve had kids early. Will I ever be able to catch up with peers who’ve decided their focus would be on their job and forego having children later in life?
It's really up to you and depends on what you want your career to look like.
Also, be careful of playing games where people are willing to give up more than you are. For me, I don't derive as much meaning from a career as I thought I would, probably because I put too much expectation that it would provide that.
Re: How I regained concentration and focus
#113> Install a swipe keyboard app
iPhone keyboards have built-in swipe typing now.
Re: How I regained concentration and focus
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks. I have tried talking to her, but the results weren't great. I do try to learn things outside of work. The main problem is if you don't use it, you lose it. Without constant practice it's hard to build and retain skills. I don't even have an hour a day free for that due to work and home responsibilities.
You don't lose it completely, though. And it's easier to relearn and get back on track than to learn it the first time. I learned C like ten years ago and then I moved on to PHP and then to JavaScript. I'm sure I forgot most of it. But thanks to that, I'm now learning Golang and when it came to pointers it clicked almost instantly.
True, the concepts transfer. But for me the concepts are always easy. The implementation/syntax/libraries are harder for me. I know at least I can go back and use prior projects as a guide... if I ever return to that tech. That's probably a big one for me, that I feel like the work ends up being thrown away if i never use it again. Although things like Android development has changed significantly with things like apk to aab, Java in Eclipse to Kotlin in Studio (Jet Brains), etc.
Re: How I regained concentration and focus
#115Block websites will help definitely. another "threat" is when you have a few kids, your daily life is cut into pieces with random and sometimes strong background noises 24x7x365, not much you can do there. personally, that impacts my focus the most and there is no cure, and it usually lasts for about 20 years when kids are finally into colleges. obviously there are many good stuff out of raising kids, and I enjoyed i…
I’m curious because I’ve had kids early. Will I ever be able to catch up with peers who’ve decided their focus would be on their job and forego having children later in life?
I don’t think you will. I don’t think I will either. I’ve stopped caring about career advancement because it’s a fools errand for me.
Competing with single people is incredibly depressing. (I have to find a way out of this hell hole, I hate tech)
Re: How I regained concentration and focus
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you that it's possible. It's just been my experience that the people who take that mindset tend to slack off once they realize they can get the same paycheck to provide for their family while also doing less work. If your internal utility function is to maximize money and minimize effort, that's going to occur more often than not. To buffer that, management needs to hold them accountable, but that's easi…
"It's just been my experience that the people who take that mindset tend to slack off once they realize they can get the same paycheck to provide for their family while also doing less work." I think it's mostly the people who realized the company has deceived them, either in the company values/mission or the "pay for performance" scheme being BS. There shouldn't be anything wrong with someone just doing their job fo…
I think you hit on some very important points, but there's a couple issues. For one, not every singular duty can clearly defined. That's why many job descriptions will have a clause like "and other duties as assigned." Ultimately, we're hiring teammates in order to solve problems. I want to work with people who try to solve those problems irrespective if it adds to their personal identity or was meticulously defined in their job posting. If people are actively seeking out and solving problems, that's not the same as the transactional mindset I'm talking about. That mindset tends to actively avoid problems because they are work or "not their job". That's also not the same as framing the issue of "if you work X more, you'll get paid Y more".
That time-transaction mindset leads to exactly what you alluded to. "If I spend 13% more time here, I should get 13% more pay." What that doesn't say is if those 13% more hours were spend solving previously unsolved issues for the organization.
Re: How I regained concentration and focus
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately, it is a mistake to think that just because you are only presented with high quality facts (statements that are very likely to be true), that you are getting an objective view of the story. You would be surprised how unrepresentative a story can be made purely through omission or selective emphasis, and Wikipedia is very guilty especially of the latter. The talk pages are usually very revealing of what…
This is something a lot of people don't understand. It is impossible to have an objective and bias-free source of information, simply because the amount of information that exists is unimaginably enormous. It's impossible for any single human mind to absorb everything that's happening, so we have to rely on services whose job is filtering that information into a small set of important bits. By selectively choosing wh…
I learned this when I dated a law student while in college. They teach an entire class to the first year students dedicated to presenting the facts of the case, the way lawyers do in their opening statements. They actually had to create the set of facts for each side. It was really interesting how you could totally bias it by what you emphasized or left out and the different words used (i.e. word connotations).
Re: How I regained concentration and focus
#118So basically block the entirety of Reddit, which I agree would be good for all humankind.
> which I agree would be good for all humankind. I disagree with that statement. I know it's fashionable on HN to spit on Reddit, but for all its flaws, Reddit also birthed fantastic communities that are hard to replicate somewhere else due to the network effect, e.g. /r/WarCollege, /r/hoggit, /r/AskHistorians, /r/Rust, /r/LinguisticsHumor, etc. – come for the dumb memes, stay for the niche communities.
But surely these are just commercialized versions of forums, the latter being a far more versatile medium to have discussions on? Reddit has monopolized the entire forum industry and ruined online communities.
Re: How I regained concentration and focus
#119I did not see it listed here, so I will mention Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, who, among other things, discusses news in particular, but digital distractions in general and proposes a way to deal with it by changing our relationship with technology.
I am currently going through the steps proposed by him and while not easy, it generally supports the point of the article.
That said, it is not just news.
edit: Just in case. No connection to the author other than being a happy reader.
Re: How I regained concentration and focus
#120Turning off all notifications on my personal phone was a life changer. No longer I feel like I'm wearing an electronic collar. Giving everyone who has your contact information access to your attention is poison to the ability to concentrate. Another big thing for me was cutting down on infinite scrolling, blogs and videos and spending a lot more time with long form content (mainly books). Attention is our most precious resource and we should guard fiercely against attempts to monetize it.