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It's getting harder to focus every day

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Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#341

Post by rc5150 »

douglasq wrote: post #274
polotics wrote: post #25

Advice that works: - Watch the Robert Sapolsky human behavior lectures. - Learn about basic neuropsychology, to at least have a working understand of the triad Default-Mode-Network, Salience-Network, Executive-Network. - Watch your ambient CO2, also at night. - Sleep so that you always wake up with no alarm.

Hey, about the lectures, do you mean these ones https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D ?

Can't speak to the previous comment's intent, but I find that all of Sapolsky's lectures and interviews are fantastic to listen to, as well as his podcast with his daughter called Father-Offspring interviews where she poses a submitted question to him and he answers in brief (or not so brief) about the biological/psychological/sociological implications of the question. Fascinating stuff.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#342

Post by Noumenon72 »

moebrowne wrote: post #200

It seems to me that lots of people consider the ability to focus as some kind of innate ability which we are all born with, it's not. It's a learned skill which requires practice. Stop practising and it atrophies. We all understand this for physical exercise, I think we need to understand the same principles apply to skills.

Working at a gig where I couldn't have my phone really put me on a painful dopamine fast, but helped me remember that I actually can focus. So I started working at the library and leaving my phone at home.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#343

Post by bluefirebrand »

thewebguyd wrote: post #292
rubyfan wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The VAST thing speaks to me. I am capable of deep focus work but often am subject to constant interruption and multiple concurrent urgent demands. During a work week I get a lot done but often feel pulled in a lot of directions like I imagine ADHD might feel like. During the weekends when I am not occupied with a task I often fall asleep. This happens on the first day or two of vacation also. After a few days my brai…

> like I imagine ADHD might feel like. Definitely feels like that, with the exception of task initiation. I am capable of deep focus work, but I can't control when (or where). I can block out time on my calendar all I want, if my brain says "Nope, we're not doing work today" then I'm not doing work, interruptions or not. It becomes a real disability in the workplace when everything is defined by more or less rigid sc…

> I always tell people, its not a deficit of attention, I have plenty of that. Its an inability to direct where and what that attention is on

Yeah, ADHD is very poorly named unfortunately. It really is not an attention disorder, it's an executive function disorder

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#344

Post by mrloopex »

You’re doing the engineering thing and focusing on the trees instead of the forest. It sounds to me like you have other things going on in your life that you aren’t acknowledging. Often stress and anxiety are primary sources of attention deficit. As we get older more and more stress is piled on us and it becomes even more important to manage it in a healthy way. I encourage you to reflect on your mental health because it might have some clues.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#345

Post by kyle-rb »

afavour wrote: post #176
stronglikedan wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current situation was foretold 20 years ago in the prescient documentary named Idiocracy.

I’d argue Idiocracy is actually quite the opposite of what the OP was talking about. It has a mildly eugenics-y vibe where the world is bad because poor, stupid people have poor, stupid kids that outnumber the smart ones. OP is talking about something environmental that can affect anyone.

I agree that the overall premise is somewhat eugenics-y, but I overlook that on the basis that it's a comedy movie from 2005 and it's easier to swallow than something like "aliens abducted all the world's smart people"[0] or something. There are still some good themes on over-reliance on automation without understanding it.

The Idiocracy line that I think about the most these days is "Brawndo stock dropped to zero and the computer did that auto-layoff thing to everybody."

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lllrpcd8vbk

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#346

Post by tezza »

stronglikedan wrote: post #165
amelius wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If somebody told me 25 years ago that in the future we all would have a TV on our office desk with 100 channels I would not have believed them. Yet ... the current situation is worse! Thinking of it in terms of mental disorders, I don't think that is going to help much.

The current situation was foretold 20 years ago in the prescient documentary named Idiocracy.

I would add that Brazil (1985) foretold this 41 years ago.

The civil servants are addicted to their personal TV and only pause watching it compulsively when the boss comes around. As soon as the boss is out of sight they resume their fixation.

From memory it is a loop of a cowboy galloping on a horse.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#347

Post by coffeefirst »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #127
coffeefirst wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's smart. It's also revealing. It was a choice to make technology that absolutely hammers you with information. It was not the right choice. I want to build and use stuff that promotes focus. I only have a vague inkling of what this means, but it's quieter, less instantaneous. And it's going to be an uphill battle because everyone else is doing the opposite.

A lot of the choices were to be fair quite accidental. Computers didn't use to be like this, but a lot of the reasons they weren't were properties of how the technology worked. A low-DPI 15" CRT monitor simply can't display very much information at any given moment. A slow single core CPU just doesn't permit browsing the web while your code is compiling. As that changed, we simply piled on multitasking capabilities w…

Oh 100%.

On their own, browser tabs, notifications, and IM at work all make sense on their own and are not evil at all.

Taken together, there are now 8 people trying to talk to me all day every day, constant alerts unless you go out of your way to severely restrict what and who can message you, and you find yourself with 60 tabs across 3 windows doing 7 things at once but also doing nothing because... your brain was not built for this computer.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#349

Post by jltepw45 »

jvican wrote: post #290
Aurornis wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are a lot of people who act as if they have ADHD but on close inspection turn out not to have the diagnosable condition This is an interesting way to try to put a label on someone’s behavioral conditioning. One of the common, and growing, problems with Internet discussions of ADHD is that they’ve expanded so much that most young people growing up in a connected world can identity with some influencer’s descri…

Informative comment, thank you. Can you elaborate on what symptoms do people with ADHD have that the ADHD “sympathizers” don’t? How can one analyze themselves “on close inspection” to know if they truly have ADHD?

ADHD usually runs in families. There will likely be a direct relative who went undiagnosed, but who fits the ADHD criteria. Also symptoms from early childhood onwards - it's not something that just happens one day. It's a lifelong pattern of behaviour.

If you're concerned I strongly recommend you speak with a professional. Everyone's ADHD manifest in slightly different ways and nobody on the internet can diagnose you.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#350

Post by johanam »

It feels pretty obvious at this point that overstimulating ourselves with a multitude of different apps, social media, short form video, and so on, is hollowing out our capacity to focus. Cal Newport had a great opinion article in the NYT recently that spoke to this, and how reading might help us "train" our minds when so many media are adversely affecting our attention.'
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