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We live in an age of distractions, dealing with constant mental stimulus

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Re: We live in an age of distractions, dealing with constant mental stimulus

#71

Post by [deleted] »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #58
fxtentacle wrote: post #33

I wonder if we see a rise in ADHD in kids nowadays because it is an increasingly useful adaptation to our environment. "Hyperfocus is the experience of deep and intense concentration in some people with ADHD. ADHD is not necessarily a deficit of attention, but rather a problem with regulating one’s attention span to desired tasks." I don't know, but "hyperfocus" on a hobby you love sounds exactly like what most peopl…

> I wonder if we see a rise in ADHD in kids nowadays because it is an increasingly useful adaptation to our environment. We like to think of focus and attention span as innate abilities encoded by our genes, but the truth is that genetics are only a part of the story. Focus and attention are learned skills that can be trained and developed over time. Likewise, focus and attention can be diminished over time through c…

[deleted]

Re: We live in an age of distractions, dealing with constant mental stimulus

#72

Post by tluyben2 »

fxtentacle wrote: post #33

I wonder if we see a rise in ADHD in kids nowadays because it is an increasingly useful adaptation to our environment. "Hyperfocus is the experience of deep and intense concentration in some people with ADHD. ADHD is not necessarily a deficit of attention, but rather a problem with regulating one’s attention span to desired tasks." I don't know, but "hyperfocus" on a hobby you love sounds exactly like what most peopl…

I wonder what the officially diagnosed number for adhd is and it it is rising over the decades; literally all my kids of my friends and acquaintances 'have adhd'. Most are not diagnosed by a medical professional but self diagnosed. A lot of people I talk with (people over 35-40) have self diagnosed themselves as having adhd to explain their issues in life.

Did the actual number increase? Did the definition broaden? Why does it seem like a plague now?

Re: We live in an age of distractions, dealing with constant mental stimulus

#73

Post by bquest2 »

thewarrior wrote: post #60

Glad I found this useful post while refreshing HN for some mental stimulus. A book I found silly when I read it was Future shock. It said that change and information would be so rapid in the future that people would be in permanent state of shock. Seemed like a ridiculous notion at the time but not anymore. 22 year old me read about the Jewish tradition of Sabbath day and found it so silly. A day where you’re not sup…

I fed your addiction by giving you an upvote. I hope you enjoy that number next to your username, representing Karma go up. You should try to get the high score.

Re: We live in an age of distractions, dealing with constant mental stimulus

#74

Post by tluyben2 »

It seems though that people like this kind of thing, so it will get worse. Even in jobs that require focus like software development. Many people seem to like the bustle of constant chats in Slack instead of pre arranged meetings, face to face adhoc talks, open offices, living in a big city, notifications etc and then on a more technical level: setting up and configuring things that have nothing to do with the task at hand (which is writing code to answer to a business demand), spending strange amounts of time on 'automating their pipeline and processes' (which appears to be never finished and so is a perpetual distraction), checking out or even changing their stack/tools every week to adhere to the latest hype (which came from distractions like reddit and hn) etc etc.

Not saying good or bad but not sure if people will ever like a life without these things even though they feel it is far from optimal, productivity wise.

Re: We live in an age of distractions, dealing with constant mental stimulus

#75

Post by Ralo »

Every time I see a post like this, I like to remind myself of a quote from Blaise Pascal in the 1600s,

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone,"

This has been an internal battles for most, for much longer than smartphones have been around.

Re: We live in an age of distractions, dealing with constant mental stimulus

#76

Post by godmode2019 »

warent wrote: post #17
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #7

It is interesting how manufactured distraction-free sessions like yoga, meditation, paid retreats, have emerged to fill the demand for idle time. We’re forgetting how to unplug unless it’s a product or service that we can buy. The distraction issue is the number one issue holding back most of the young people in the mentorship group I’m part of. They’re so glued to their phones to check minute-by-minute updates about…

> Bitcoin is especially distracting right now, as they’re all nervously watching the real-time changes of their $1000 portfolios to see if they need to be sad about losing money because it’s crashing or sad about not investing more money because it’s going up. Great way to articulate this! This very experience is relatable although in my case with normal stocks, and something very interesting happened. I sold some st…

If you set a small algo to buy $50 every day when you see down days you feel happy because you get a discount.

Your time horizon is set at 10 years so any gains or loss is just a paper loss.

If you need to check just do it once per day to get a idea if the market. But not in the morning because if your port is big enough it might affect your day. Try for lunch time to not affect your sleep.

Good luck!

Re: We live in an age of distractions, dealing with constant mental stimulus

#77

Post by djrobstep »

alsetmusic wrote: post #55
rubicon33 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People seem to have a strange way of 'investing'. For me, it falls into 2 categories: 1) Long term investements which I almost never look at. Regular scheduled deposits going into an index fund. 2) Bets. Fun little side gambles which I always do for one purpose - aquiring something in the real world. Example: I want a new M1 macbook, but rather than drop $1k, I gamble $3k bitcoin. If it makes enough profit for the ma…

> which I am OK losing. This is the most important concept of investing. You should never place an amount you wouldn’t be ok losing. If losing every cent of an investment could cause financial ruin, you’re investing too much.

But there is a risk in not taking risk too. If you had taken this advice over the last ten years (my grandmother did, for instance) you’d have missed the greatest decade in stocks and property for many years, and are much poorer because of it.

Re: We live in an age of distractions, dealing with constant mental stimulus

#78

Post by aserafini »

lrossi wrote: post #46

Sorry to say this, but HN is a problem as well. I’m looking for that 1% of the posts that interest me, and when I find them it’s fantastic, since it’s info I would not be able to find anywhere else. But going through the other 99% is a waste of time. These two combined have a harmful effect on me. I don’t know if there’s a name for it, but it’s the same as the one causing addiction in gambling/bets/games. Gathering e…

The name for this is ‘variable reward’, and yes it is the root of gambling addiction as well.

Re: We live in an age of distractions, dealing with constant mental stimulus

#79

Post by raister »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #68
warent wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin is especially distracting right now, as they’re all nervously watching the real-time changes of their $1000 portfolios to see if they need to be sad about losing money because it’s crashing or sad about not investing more money because it’s going up. Great way to articulate this! This very experience is relatable although in my case with normal stocks, and something very interesting happened. I sold some st…

I posted something recently here about a similar epiphany. We really do get to decide what we believe to be true, and we even get to decide how we respond to the truth. We can change how we feel about things over time. None of this is static. What sent me down that rabbit hole in a big way was stoic philosophy. I’m not 100% on board with it, but when it comes to this it has literally changed my life. I now take an ac…

Me too. I understand what you mean. I'll leave here a classic Stoic passage:

After being told (of his exile), “Your case is being tried in the Senate,” Agrippinus responded:

“Good luck betide! But it is the fifth hour now” (he was in the habit of taking his exercise and then a cold bath at that hour); “let us be off and take our exercise.”

After he had finished his exercise someone came and told him, “You have been condemned.”

“To exile,” says he, “or to death?”

To exile.

“What about my property?”

It has not been confiscated.

“Well then, let us go to Aricia and take our lunch there.”

Re: We live in an age of distractions, dealing with constant mental stimulus

#80

Post by baxtr »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #7

It is interesting how manufactured distraction-free sessions like yoga, meditation, paid retreats, have emerged to fill the demand for idle time. We’re forgetting how to unplug unless it’s a product or service that we can buy. The distraction issue is the number one issue holding back most of the young people in the mentorship group I’m part of. They’re so glued to their phones to check minute-by-minute updates about…

> I always wonder how much more they could accomplish if they’d simply pick four hours each day to turn off their phones.

I think most of them sincerely wouldn’t know what to do in those 4 hours. Working on their laptops? I guess I wonder: How can people “accomplish things” nowadays without being on a device?

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