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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

#401

Post by SubmarineClub »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #237
mordae wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please also note that ADHD-like symptoms can present from sleep Apnea/UARS-induced sleep deprivation and the probability of having Apnea/UARS rises with age. Smoothly for men and a with a sudden jump after menopause for women. So if you feel like you are getting more ADHD-like issues, do consider a sleep study. Early tells are easy: you often feel like shit in the morning.

One of the many reasons why we should air drop GLP-1 over the entire country, like condoms in Bangladesh!

No thanks, don’t need it, don’t want it!

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#402

Post by lrvick »

dofm wrote: post #385
lrvick wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have at various points of my life been diagnosed with downs syndrome, chronic depression, anxiety, ADD, tourettes. Almost certainly undiagnosed PTSD and tests indicate maybe mild autism. I do not think anyone actually knows, and I stopped letting such fuzzy labels define me. I can say for me the drugs never fixed the root causes. They just made me care less about having control. A passenger in my own life. Once I r…

I am not a doom scroller. Like I say, I try to regulate my news intake to things that are valuable and I have for years. I use social media only for creative-interest-based groups — I have no "friend feed" at all and I haven't in more than a decade. I have some places where my limited focus is enough to share expertise, and that is more or less it. Unfortunately my ability to focus declined precipitously three years…

> As much as I try to learn about that AI future I will need to return to, and try to prepare to return to work, there is no returning to who I was

Changing the way I have worked for decades in a fundamental way has been hard, depressing even, but then exciting. My way of taking control of the AI story is racking GPUs at home and doing all my work from those. I have found those with experience programming before AI actually have a major advantage to steer things into exactly the right shape.

> I will likely just potter around for a couple more years until I no longer want to.

Community tends to help. #!:matrix.org welcomes anyone not spamming :)

No replacement for IRL hanging out with other humans. Board game nights and forcing myself to do weekly social events really helped with my overall motivation for reasons I cannot fully articulate. Just made me feel like I existed as more than a handle on a screen, you know?

Traveling also really helped. Maybe give yourself the chance to try the things you have never tried before and ramp up that novelty part of your brain again.

I know depression and desperation. At one point in my career all I could find for work was minimum wage telemarketing and day labor while fishing leftovers out of garbage cans, taking sponge baths in gas station bathrooms, and spending nights sleeping in the trunk of a scrap car in a snowy winter trying not to freeze to death.

Really really glad I kept going, and kept taking risks, moving, and changing things until something worked. I have good and days like anyone, but am on average happy now, and trying to enjoy every hour of my life I have left.

It can absolutely get better if you decide you want it to be.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#403

Post by hightrix »

driverdan wrote: post #374
ckdarby wrote: post #223

It's really not that hard but people are addicted and don't want to admit it. Buy an Amazfit 6 watch, has alarms, clock, health stats, memos, weather, maps, and GPS workout. Turn off nearly all phone notifications. Do not allow any phone to AmaZfit notifications. Don't have your phone physically attached to you. You need your phone with you? Backpack. Never in pockets. All sudden it is incredibly easy to focus.

> Turn off nearly all phone notifications. You should do this regardless, no watch needed. The only phone notifications that should be turned on are ones that could be urgent. Phone calls, maybe text messages, alarms, and calendar reminders. No email, no social media, no stupid random apps telling you about some discount.

I suggest doing this everywhere, not just your phone. On your laptop, disable Teams notifications, remove email notifications, etc... Leave on Meeting notification if you need the reminder to join.

Notifications are absolutely abused by everything. Phone calls from known numbers, texts from known numbers on my device and then meeting start reminders on my laptop are the only notifications enabled.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#404

Post by canibal »

yifanl wrote: post #363
palmotea wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've noticed my ability to get work done is hampered when I am at higher doses of my ozempic. You should be using LLM agents anyway. It's the solution to every problem.

Can I have LLMs replace my GLP-1?

Bruh, you're not using ChatGLP?

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#405

Post by canibal »

rubyfan wrote: post #178
projektfu wrote: post #157

Hallowell and Ratey, who write about ADHD, suggested a new entity for the current world: VAST, the variable attention stimulus trait. It is like ADHD but it is culturally induced and not presumed to be due to an innate deficiency in executive function. "Beyond the sources of biologically based ADHD, there are a lot of people who act as if they have ADHD but on close inspection turn out not to have the diagnosable con…

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…

My vicious cycle is that the optimal time to work is overnight, when the world is asleep and the notifications and the chatter finally cease. Then, of course if I'm able to keep myself awake through the early evening I'm up hard-focused all night. Then you wake up exhausted and the focal deficiency during the day is even more pronounced per the above discussion re: lack of sleep, etc. Rinse and repeat.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#407

Post by inigyou »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #272
sitkack wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number one goal in a functioning democracy should be to have the highest possible education rate.

Number one? Highest? I disagree with the extremes. Why wouldn't self defense be number one, in many cases/times? Why wouldn't we simply stop spending on education at break even ROI? (to be clear that's not the same as the education creates a salary bump equal to the tuition ... there are Nth order effects of education that should be priced into my point)

Maybe it's number one because it's a prerequisite of everything else

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#408

Post by inigyou »

Rumple22Stilk wrote: post #394
CollinEMac wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idiocracy's mechanism isn't as solid as it seems though even if high educated people do tend to have have less kid. The movie basically suggests "smart people have smart kids, dumb people have dumb kids, repeat forever." But you'd expect kids of very high or very low IQ parents to land closer to average in general. The "compounding" thing the movie relies on isn't really how it works in life. And even if the premise…

>less intelligent people aren't worth less than more intelligent people Yes, they obviously are? Just an absurd thing to state.

How do you measure a person's value?

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#409

Post by inigyou »

SoftTalker wrote: post #308
jvican wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 has a clinical definition that needs to be diagnosed by a clinical professional.

That doesn't mean everyone who hasn't been tested doesn't have it. If they haven't been tested they don't know

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#410

Post by SoftTalker »

inigyou wrote: post #409
SoftTalker wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ADHD has a clinical definition that needs to be diagnosed by a clinical professional.

That doesn't mean everyone who hasn't been tested doesn't have it. If they haven't been tested they don't know

Certainly. I was more responding to the "How can one analyze themselves ... to know if they truly have ADHD" question.
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