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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

#411

Post by dofm »

lrvick wrote: post #402
dofm wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

I would not say I am depressed. Despairing at what the world is, sometimes (with much more detachment than before). Not at what I have become; that just is what it is.

I am burned out rather than sad. I can’t get across that I will struggle to travel because that requires planning and initiative that I cannot functionally sustain, or that my previously quite busy social life is gone because I fail to manage an ordinary day, let alone one that will need me to meet people. These are things I am unable to do.

It ultimately doesn’t matter what I would like to do or could fleetingly imagine doing: within an hour I will have lost focus on it or on the drive to do it. I certainly don’t have sustained aspirations because I can’t focus on them. Most days I definitely have an hour or so where I feel like it would be better if it was my last day, but I get distracted from that too.

Everything I achieve happens in these very short windows of time; sometimes maybe I can spend a couple of hours in any day on one thing if I am lucky, but I may not feel the impetus to return to it the next day.

I am lucky if I complete tasks for others that have purely external impetus or a deadline.

It is not about cutting out more compelling or distracting stimuli; my house is quiet and I can also lose focus by falling asleep if I am too comfortable.

I still don’t want hyperfocus back because hyperfocus did this to me! But it’s difficult to envisage things getting better when I can see they are getting worse.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#412

Post by bluefirebrand »

cjjuice wrote: post #400
bluefirebrand wrote: post #356

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 This is actually something that is pretty misunderstood about ADHD. People with ADHD don't actually struggle with attention. They struggle with executive function, because their brains don't produce/consume/manage dopamine correctly Somewhat ironically, Hyperfocus is also…

As a fellow ADHD.. increase your threads... while the agent is working on one thing, prompt another thread to work on another project. Keep a bunch of them in the air at one time. But make sure you are still interested in what you are building. If you don't think what you are building is important coding agent or not it's going to be very hard to do that thing.

I dunno. Sounds like trying to keep many plates spinning with breaking any, to me.

I'll give it a try though. Thanks

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#413

Post by tomhow »

spdionis wrote: post #364

I think placebo is a very strong effect most people underestimate.

Please don't post shallow dismissals on HN, especially when someone sharing their experience of a medical condition. It's just not kind, and the guidelines ask us to be kind in comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49040212 and marked it off topic.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#414

Post by tomhow »

WindyTree wrote: post #406
spdionis wrote: post #364

I think placebo is a very strong effect most people underestimate.

[flagged]

Please don't reply like this on HN. The comment you replied to was unkind and I've replied to the comment pointing that out. But this comment escalates terribly. It's not OK to infer political positions based on such little information that's available in their comment. That's unkind to the individual and disrespectful to the community. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#415

Post by Barbing »

Anthony-G wrote: post #307
Barbing wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consume less, create more: “These are not the only two options. There's a third activity most of us seem to have forgotten - to simply be. For me, the very act of everyday living has become very enjoyable and fulfilling in recent years. Doing the dishes, cooking, gardening, sweeping the floor, putting out the trash. Those are not "chores", that's what life's made of. Some of it creative, some not, but the difference…

So true! I still think of these things as being chores and don’t look forward to doing them. Worse still, I sometimes procrastinate and let them build up into being much bigger jobs than they need to be. Every now and again, I try to re-frame the way I view these tasks and try to be more positive about them. I remind myself how fortunate I am to be a (reasonably) fit and healthy adult who can physically do them. And…

Heck yeah!

Heard the theory to limit dopamine releasing activities, like not listening to music while exercising to avoid stacking the dopamine hits? Then listening to music after is supposed to feel a little better, or that’s my understanding.

Easier learned than practiced :)

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#416

Post by makyavelist »

WindyTree wrote: post #361
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…

I was formally diagnosed with ADHD and it continued into adulthood. The only way to suppress it is a diet of raw veggies fruits and meats, combined with like 3 hours of exercise a day and time in nature with silence which my evolutionary ancestors presumably did to survive. The way to make it worse is the combination of sugars, processed foods and flashing stimulus. Point is I think MOST mental illness is the modern…

Agreed

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#417

Post by maguay »

jrmg wrote: post #65
maguay wrote: post #15

Strangely I think it's why I like roadtrips so much. Sitting doing absolutely nothing for even 15 minutes is difficult for me, but I can drive for hours doing nothing but watching the world go by, even without music or podcasts on, and it's fine. And that feels good.

Plane flights. I hope the ‘free internet all the time’ era that airlines have been threatening us with for a decade now never arrives.

Ahhh this too. Love flights without WiFi.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#418

Post by tmoertel »

torlok wrote: post #147
tmoertel wrote: post #95

Here's something that worked for me: put your phone in your pocket and go on a design walk . While walking, design the next step in whatever you're working on. Design walks work great with more than one person, too. Aristotle was on to something when he adopted a peripatetic approach to thinking.

I don't think this is a solution. I do this often naturally, I walk around and "plan", and it feels like I'm just avoiding sitting down and doing the actual task. The author talks about it; when facing a difficult problem, they go get a glass of water, and get distracted. That's what this is. Anything but doing the actual task. If you're going to take a break, take an honest break and rest, but then go back to work.…

I'm not talking about using a walk as a way to avoid doing real work. I mean doing real work, putting your focus in it, while you walk for, say, at least twenty minutes to really get the blood moving.

But don't wait until you're mentally exhausted to do it. It's not a way to recharge, not a substitute for rest. It's a way to remove distractions and get your whole body into an exercise that requires your attention.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#419

Post by projektfu »

WindyTree wrote: post #361
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…

I was formally diagnosed with ADHD and it continued into adulthood. The only way to suppress it is a diet of raw veggies fruits and meats, combined with like 3 hours of exercise a day and time in nature with silence which my evolutionary ancestors presumably did to survive. The way to make it worse is the combination of sugars, processed foods and flashing stimulus. Point is I think MOST mental illness is the modern…

I don't disagree, especially with depression, anxiety and ADHD. But many people with more fulminant mental disorders in tribal societies would have been lucky to become shamans, more likely they would be outcast or killed.

Re: It's getting harder to focus every day

#420

Post by lazide »

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!

Talk about a terrible indictment of western culture if I ever heard of one!
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