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Phones and apps reduce your ability to focus even when they don’t distract you

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Re: Phones and apps reduce your ability to focus even when they don’t distract you

#201

Post by chrisweekly »

balfirevic wrote: post #173
chrisweekly wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am living proof that it's possible to change from a night owl to an early riser. I used to stay up till midnight or 1am as often as not. By nature? and lifelong habit, for over 40 years I was in the "stay up late, sleep in to compensate" camp. But a couple years ago someone I respect and admire challenged me to reset the pattern. I started setting a daily alarm and jumping into a brief ice-cold shower at 5am. It on…

> I used to stay up till midnight or 1am as often as not. That's not a night-owl (midnight I mean, 1am might barely be).

Fair enough. But FTR the 12-1a habit was itself a form of restraint against my prior tendency to stay up much later than that -- as a parent of school-aged kids, w/ no plausible option to sleep past 7a or so. Staying up till 3 or 4 and getting less than 4h sleep would've been a non-starter.

Re: Phones and apps reduce your ability to focus even when they don’t distract you

#202

Post by yodelshady »

wccrawford wrote: post #33
temp0826 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work." I really like this for a different reason. It’s one of the reasons I can appreciate flat-earthers (or other discordian-ish reality tunnels) from a slightly more philosophical standpoint: it really doesn’t matter

That quote has always bothered me. He uses incredibly small details to deduce incredible things, but thinks the solar system will never have any influence upon his casework. I can imagine scenarios where people thought the wrong things because of what the sun was doing, how far the sun was from the earth at the time, etc etc. It does matter, just not often... Much like the rest of what he uses to deduce things. It's…

Right. Even within the UK, there are observable differences in the day between southern and northern points. If, say, someone from Kent was to fabricate a story in Glasgow set around twilight, you'd immediately notice their timescales are off.

You could technically remember that without knowing why, but for real people organising facts like that under "things that are true because the earth goes round the sun, is tilted, and is round" is easier. A skilled worker organises their knowledge.

Re: Phones and apps reduce your ability to focus even when they don’t distract you

#203

Post by Psype »

Get a smartwatch. Not kidding.

It might sound stupid, but since I have a smartwatch and only filter the mot important notifications on it (calls, SMS), all other notifications can sit on my phone & wait for hours. Whatever. I still can be reached in an emergency.

I don't event check my phone to get the time, duh, that's a watch !

Re: Phones and apps reduce your ability to focus even when they don’t distract you

#204

Post by tremon »

pc86 wrote: post #88
vegetablepotpie wrote: post #8

> Cal Newport said it best in his book Deep Work: the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive. The people who cultivate that skill, stay up late at night while everyone is asleep so they don’t get distracted. T…

You're making huge assumptions that a) people who cultivate this skill are late night folks and not morning people; b) people who cultivate this skill are unable to do deep work during the day; c) even ignoring the fallacies in A and B, that these folks' counterparts are blind to their accomplishments and assume they're lazy because they come in late; d) that someone cannot be capable of both completing meaningful de…

b) people who cultivate this skill are unable to do deep work during the day;

For me, it was the other way around: inability to do deep work during the day (due to all the distractions already mentioned) forced me to cultivate a 10h-19h work schedule, with the accompanying sleep schedule (roughly from 01h-09h).

Re: Phones and apps reduce your ability to focus even when they don’t distract you

#205

Post by prawn »

Swizec wrote: post #12
vegetablepotpie wrote: post #8

> Cal Newport said it best in his book Deep Work: the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive. The people who cultivate that skill, stay up late at night while everyone is asleep so they don’t get distracted. T…

> Do you spend your time marketing your self to others and letting people know your accomplishments, or do you spend the time doing work that will benefit others? I like the luck surface area analogy for this. Take a rectangle. Side A is "Quality of work". Side B is "How many people know about it". The surface area – A*B – is your luck and opportunity. If you do amazing work and nobody knows about it, your luck is ze…

Completely true. It's a serious risk to be creating great things, impressing yourself but never making time to share with anyone else. In the modern world, you can't assume that your potential audience will see what you put out either - you need to repeat the news with a bit of variance, catch different timezones or people who don't see everything in their feed. Share a behind-the-scenes, share the finished product, a recap or case study, etc.

Re: Phones and apps reduce your ability to focus even when they don’t distract you

#206

Post by whiddershins »

tbwriting wrote: post #31
whiddershins wrote: post #4

may These articles really should qualify their claims more, especially in the headlines. Otherwise countless people absorb things semi-consciously as facts, rather than hypotheses that may have some data to support them.

Truly curious: do you think every article based on a study showing strong evidence for something should have a title that implies "it can go either way"? Personally I would trust readers to click on the article and decide for themselves. Otherwise, it's a bit infantilizing, no?

Note how many upvotes this article has, and how long it has been on the front of HN.

How many people have skimmed the the headlines and had this assertion register semi-consciously as a fact, whether or not they even looked at the article or comments.

Misinformation noise.

Re: Phones and apps reduce your ability to focus even when they don’t distract you

#207

Post by [deleted] »

freebuju wrote: post #190
ldbooth wrote: post #17

I tried a flip phone for a week but got tired of explaining to people why I didn't receive the picture they texted me, and I was carrying my no-SIM smartphone around for the audiobooks anyway. It does feel like taking the proverbial digital leash off, and rather than text replying I was calling everyone back for convenience. I sure have strayed socially. I shall find this middle ground and report back.

The best part of using a flip phone is that you slowly realize that none of the notifications we are constantly distracted by are that urgent. It's a good way of cutting down the social media fat. Most of the digital interactions we have in our day-to-day are really because you were online at the time, which could be interpreted as you are available for some têtê-à-têtê.

[deleted]

Re: Phones and apps reduce your ability to focus even when they don’t distract you

#208

Post by neop1x »

Psype wrote: post #203

Get a smartwatch. Not kidding. It might sound stupid, but since I have a smartwatch and only filter the mot important notifications on it (calls, SMS), all other notifications can sit on my phone & wait for hours. Whatever. I still can be reached in an emergency. I don't event check my phone to get the time, duh, that's a watch !

Or a fitness band like MiBand. It works similarly and battery lasts almost a month.

Re: Phones and apps reduce your ability to focus even when they don’t distract you

#209

Post by jonS90 »

mrmuagi wrote: post #163
2ion wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have my phone in do not disturb mode 24/7. The only exceptions are "VIP" contacts from close family...everything else can wait until next morning 8am when I'm checking personal stuff first thing or until around 8pm when I have my evening distraction session. So. If I do get an audible notification, it's almost always urgent, bad news.

> The only exceptions are "VIP" contacts from close family. Curious how you configured this? I'd be interested in this as well.

In Android you can configure Do Not Disturb to allow notifications from specific apps. I'm very curious if iPhone can do this.

Re: Phones and apps reduce your ability to focus even when they don’t distract you

#210

Post by michaelcampbell »

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #8

> Cal Newport said it best in his book Deep Work: the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive. The people who cultivate that skill, stay up late at night while everyone is asleep so they don’t get distracted. T…

> The people who cultivate that skill, stay up late at night while everyone is asleep so they don’t get distracted.

cite? Your implication as stated above I believe has not been proven. Doesn't Cal go into some detail about people who have cultivated this skill; perform deep work, and then only do it for "normal" (or even more often, far less than "normal") work hours and thus have the rest of the working day to do whatever else they enjoy?

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