Oh irony, a post about overcoming distraction gets 232+ comments.
How I regained concentration and focus
241–250 of 429 posts
Re: How I regained concentration and focus
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
Man, I don't get it. News is bad for you so become deliberately ignorant? Don't get distracted by the world so you can work more? It's like saying traffic lights distract you from driving.
More time to play in white water river parks and more time well wasted on ski lifts. I sometimes chat with tourists and listen when they tell me what is important to them. 'Deliberately ignorant' is your value judgment. Spend some time in rural eastern Europe, and the perspective changes for the better. Media propaganda is simply unimportant.
I don't understand this at all. Work and family restrict my travel. Reading news on my phone is inherently portable. And I'm not sure what visiting rural Easter Europe is supposed to prove. A lot of it is engulfed in war and I can't imagine those people are better off being completely ignorant of what Russia is doing. Certainly many of them are to everyone else's detriment. Media propaganda is obviously a bad thing, but reading credible news isn't. Unless you want to descend into abject solipsism
Re: How I regained concentration and focus
#243"Trivial inconveniences" are a big hurdle when trying to build a habit, but are a great tool for breaking bad ones. Anything you can do to break the dopamine loop helps, however small it may be. I've had success with: - setting long passwords to social media that aren't autofilled (saved in bitwarden) and logging out after each session - nerfing addicting parts of webapps (plugins which block the facebook news feed b…
Adding to that list: disable mobile data for Safari and Chrome so I don't mindlessly browse on the go or during lunch.
Re: How I regained concentration and focus
#244Isn’t it funny how much attention these anti-procrastination posts are getting on essentially a procrastination site? (Tongue in cheek! I love HN. I just know that I sometimes do abuse it as a procrastination device.)
Hacker News doesn't count because i am "learning something", even though i can't recall a single thing I read today
Hah. Yeah it feels like the knowledge I gain here most often is just further training of my "intuition module" with little to nothing discrete being committed to memory.
Re: How I regained concentration and focus
#245Did he regain concentration and focus? It's more like he just reduced distractions. That's not the same. What if being distracted is not a bug but a feature and his mind doesn't want to continue the path of constantly writing books? Instead of eliminating distractions, it could be more helpful to find the activities that don't create the desire for distractions.
He also says the pandemic didn't affect him, but honestly, whether it was Long COVID or an indirect psych effect of isolation, I've had extreme issues concentrating ever since 2020 that have been absolutely bullshit to manage.
Re: How I regained concentration and focus
#246Isn’t it funny how much attention these anti-procrastination posts are getting on essentially a procrastination site? (Tongue in cheek! I love HN. I just know that I sometimes do abuse it as a procrastination device.)
Hacker News doesn't count because i am "learning something", even though i can't recall a single thing I read today
My parents use the same argument about social media.
“Facebook doesn’t count because I only use it to keep track of what people I know are doing.”
That has to be right up there with the number of times I have heard “I don’t use Facebook, I only use Instagram”.
Re: How I regained concentration and focus
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Man, I don't get it. News is bad for you so become deliberately ignorant? Don't get distracted by the world so you can work more? It's like saying traffic lights distract you from driving.
Agreed. People just want their worldview spoon-fed to them. Once they realize that it's not healthy, it's too daunting to actually put in the effort needed to construct their own worldview and apply it to their life, thus the head-in-sand ignorance approach. I'm surprised Aaron Swartz, of all people, had this view.
No, they just realise it's not productive anymore. It's a time sink that pushes misery and drama into your life without any practical way to do anything about it.
I don't think the human mind is designed to absorb all the worlds ills and misery, the news amplifies the worst of what's going on in the world and delivers it to you minute by minute, the only rational way of dealing with it is to either cut it out or become unspeakably cynical about it all.
Re: How I regained concentration and focus
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's okay to say tech jobs aren't the right fit as well.
They might not be. I'm hesitant to admit that because 1) They used to be and I was a high performer at a mediocre non-tech company 2) There's nothing else I can do to earn enough to support my family.
>There's nothing else I can do to earn enough to support my family.
Honest question that I know won't be well-received on HN: I don't know your personal details, but do you think there is not anyone else in a lower paid job who has figured out a way to support their family?
Frustration stems from when reality doesn't meet our expectations. You can choose to try and bend reality to your will or change your expectations. One is significantly easier than the other.
Re: How I regained concentration and focus
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
More time to play in white water river parks and more time well wasted on ski lifts. I sometimes chat with tourists and listen when they tell me what is important to them. 'Deliberately ignorant' is your value judgment. Spend some time in rural eastern Europe, and the perspective changes for the better. Media propaganda is simply unimportant.
I don't understand this at all. Work and family restrict my travel. Reading news on my phone is inherently portable. And I'm not sure what visiting rural Easter Europe is supposed to prove. A lot of it is engulfed in war and I can't imagine those people are better off being completely ignorant of what Russia is doing. Certainly many of them are to everyone else's detriment. Media propaganda is obviously a bad thing,…
Are you going to do anything about the war in eastern Europe?
If the news causes no change in your actions, you might as well have put a small pebble in front of the phone and had it, instead of your eyes, absorb the photons emitted by the screen.
Re: How I regained concentration and focus
#250Aaron Swartz wrote a blog post about the news[1] and just how terrible it is for the brain. Reading his post had a major impact on me—since then I have always thought differently about the time I spend online. It’s interesting how people, including myself, try to justify various addictions. How am I supposed to stay informed about important topics without the news? How do I know how to help people in need without kno…
Man, I don't get it. News is bad for you so become deliberately ignorant? Don't get distracted by the world so you can work more? It's like saying traffic lights distract you from driving.
> News is bad for you so become deliberately ignorant?
I actively avoid news (to the point of changing channels on the TV and Radio when it comes on), and yet somehow I still managed to be kept aware of what's going on, and avoid being ignorant.
> It's like saying traffic lights distract you from driving.
It's actually more like saying every pedestrian in a city is going to jump in front of you when you're driving. You can be aware of pedestrians, cars, bikes, and be a careful considerate driver without needing to fear that every person is trying to jump in front of your car, in the same way that you can be an informed person without getting daily updates on the top 10 stories in the UK right now.