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Does your mind jump around, stay on task or get stuck?
- pklausler 10y agoDepends on the environment around me, more than anything else, I guess. Noise is death on concentration.
- maxxxxx 10y agoSame here. The problem is that after a while I don't even notice the noise anymore but it still hurts my concentration. When I am in a quiet place focusing on something is suddenly really easy. It's not only people talking but the whole white noise like air conditioning. I also get really tired sitting the whole day in a cube farm. In my home office I can go for 8 hours straight and am still fresh at the end.
- ryan-allen 10y agoWhite noise SHOULD help as long as it's consistent and uninterrupted. Aircon coming on and off will get your attention but a constant drone should be eventually ignored by your brain. You could try some active noise cancellation headphones with something like http://rain.today http://rain.today or http://mynoise.net http://mynoise.net, I use this all the time at work to generate non-musical noise at low volumes and it blocks out all the office noise. Recommended headphones would be the Bose QC series or the AudioTechnica ones. I'm sure there are others!
- pklausler 10y ago> it blocks out all the office noise. Our office would look at those 'phones and mutter "challenge accepted".
- jacobolus 10y ago> White noise SHOULD help as long as it's consistent and uninterrupted. Aircon coming on and off will get your attention but a constant drone should be eventually ignored by your brain. My anecdotal evidence from talking to friends and coworkers is that this varies from person to person. Some people can work very well in a crowded coffeeshop with loud random background chatter, and find complete silence to be distracting. Others like working to a sound like rain or ocean waves. Others like a rhythmic sound like fast-paced electronic music. Others need complete silence, and can’t deal with pure white noise. My speculation is that it has a lot to do with past experience/practice.
- goodcanadian 10y agoStudies have shown that background noise increases stress even when we are not consciously aware of it. The best reference I could find with minimal effort is about halfway down ("How does background noise affect our concentration?"): https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ask-the-brains-background-noise/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ask-the-brains-ba... Several studies have indicated that stress resulting from ongoing white noise can induce the release of cortisol . . .
- maxxxxx 10y agoNot to stereotype people but the white noise thing seems to be very American. Same as having TVs run everywhere so there is some background noise. Personally I want it just quiet. I also don't want to have headphones on my ears for an extended period.
- alasdair_ 10y agoAgreed. It drove me insane (almost literally) with the number of people that insisted on having a loud fan or a tv on just for the notice once I moved to the US.
- alasdair_ 10y agoAgreed. It drove me insane (almost literally) with the number of people that insisted on having a loud fan or a tv on just for the notice once I moved to the US.
- ryan-allen 10y agoI'm Australian :) Quiet is very elusive. The only place I can get absolute quiet is at home.
- neltnerb 10y agoI did a little unintentional experiment about this. I worked at a lab in a basement where there was a lot of constant basically white noise. Nothing stood out, it was just a lot of things like ventilation ducts. I noticed after a few months that I couldn't figure out how to solve some problem until I was walking home. Curious if it was the timing or the noise, I got some hardcore machine shop ear protection that I wore from then on. Suddenly I was dramatically better able to focus at work. The dull roar in the background was definitely just sort of consuming attention unconsciously and seriously slowing me down. It was really loud in there though, every place I've worked since it's always conversations and sudden noises like doors opening that distracts me. I would never have heard a conversation a few desks away at the earlier place.
- mgkimsal 10y agoThis works for me quite well - qc20 running whitenoisefree - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/white-noise-free-sounds-for/id292987597?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/white-noise-free-sounds-for/... using "brown noise" and "grey noise" mix, running quiet. However, now that I'm reading other comments, I'm wondering if it's still a concentration breaker like others are saying. I def don't feel I can concentrate as much as I did a year ago, but I've got literally 3x as much work as I used to have, so I can't really tell if it's the noise or just too much on my mind... :/ Been wanting to try the QC30, but reviews indicate the noise cancelling is less than the QC20, not more.
- Broken_Hippo 10y agoIt truly depends with me. I'd rather have music than a bunch of things shuffling in the background - studying in the library as a kid was just torture. I'd hear folks turning pages and dropping things and any murmur people did. And it was just absolutely horrible. I'd lose my place reading and stuff like that. Quiet class time was the same. This has decreased a little with age: Yet it comes back just the same while meditating or doing some other tasks. Sometimes it is nearly painful. Yet I find actual quiet - the type I get at night when the neighborhood is sleeping - quite wonderful at times.
- infiniteparamtr 10y agoWhenever Elon Musk answers questions about how to learn as effectively as he has over the years, he routinely says "my process isolation isn't what it used to be." I don't think I've ever had or ever will have any capacity to isolate a process and complete a large project.
- NhanH 10y agoWhat does process mean in this context?
- simplemath 10y agoSome people are just more optimized for multithreading I can hardly fathom the solar Babylon Musk has conjured up in his head
- slowmovintarget 10y agoMy mind went for a walk the other day. It returned after a time with such mixed company, That I thought maybe it had lost its way. The new notions, though, they mixed with old. They composed and compiled, assembled and then beguiled, Until I saw my mind had been quite bold. It went off in willing pursuit with glee, The shadows and crisp light of wanton understanding. I am quite glad it brought such back to me.
- ianstubbs 10y agoWho wrote this?
- slowmovintarget 10y agoMe, 19 hours ago. :) Took a second pass to get the syllable count right.
- elorant 10y agoWhen I get stuck I go for a long walk. As for focusing I started meditating and it helped a lot.
- girzel 10y agoIt think it's important to acknowledge the effect the body has on the mind. If I sleep early, sleep well, rise early, and do some physical exercise first thing in the morning, I'm essentially a different person: I feel like I double my work output, yet am still essentially calm. Beyond that, I think the next step is doing something active and intentional to improve the mind-body connection -- sleeping and exercising is essentially only refraining from damaging yourself. Meditation, yoga, taiji, breathing exercises -- I don't think you can go wrong with any of those. Especially for people who sit in front of computers all day, minds in the ether, it's important to remember that you're also a body, always also a body.
- ge96 10y agoWhat kind of exercise? I kind of envy people who bust out 10 miles on a 7.5min pace
- mgiannopoulos 10y agoExact numbers don't matter. It depends on your physical status. I find that 20-30' of exercise totally changes my mood and stress levels without exhausting me, allowing me to do actual work afterwards.
- girzel 10y agoIt's amazing how little exercise it takes to do the trick. Personally I feel like it's important to do something that opens the lungs and gets the heart beating, so cardio of some sort is what I choose (sometimes skipping rope). But some sort of all-body stretching (yoga sun salutation or similar) is actually enough.
- curun1r 10y agoPersonal anecdote, so sample size of 1 and YMMV, but 5 months ago I started doing exercise in the mornings that has done wonders for my concentration and has helped me drop 25 pounds without changing much else in my life. It takes 15-20 minutes, 3-4 times per week and I literally don't have to get out of bed to do it. After being frustrated by my air consumption on a scuba dive, I got interested in free diving (apnea) training. I found an iOS app called Apnea Trainer that looked promising and started doing the breathing exercises. I've gone from being able to hold my breath for just under 90 seconds to breaking 6 minutes for the first time last week. It also revved up my metabolism (like I said, I'm down 25 pounds) and I've gone from having borderline hypertension (with a family history of stroke) to having blood pressure that's almost worryingly low (usually around 100/50). And, like I mentioned above, it's been good for concentration and stress levels as well. Wet training (in a pool or body of water) requires instruction and a partner, but dry training is pretty safe to do on your own as long as you don't push yourself beyond your limits on a regular basis.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- 6stringmerc 10y agoYes [1]. [1] Varies based on diet, exercise, rest, vitamins, seasonal daylight, supplements and/or substances.
- ge96 10y agoLimitless
- simplemath 10y agoPSA: Adderall is not Limitless
- ge96 10y agoYeah tolerance and comedowns
- pfista 10y agoIs there a mirror for the actual review?
- CN7R 10y agohttp://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v17/n11/pdf/nrn.2016.113.pdf http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v17/n11/pdf/nrn.2016.113.p...
- ihaveahadron 10y agoYour out there, whatever. Translation my smart level is negative two and I've never had a spontaneous thought IN MY FUCKING LIFE WOW IM A DUMBASS.
- markpapadakis 10y agoJohn Carmack's said "Focus is a matter of deciding what not to do". I think that quote describes a fairly efficient heuristic for keeping your mind focused.
- luxpir 10y agoAbsolutely. Didn't know he'd said anything on focus, interesting. Cal Newport's book on 'Deep Work' covers similar ground.
- adhdthrow 10y agoI fought so hard through every year at school. At home, computers let my mind explode in computer games, 3D realms and unlimited feeling exploring of operating systems and hardware. The only way to control my thoughts and mind was ridiculous amounts of exercise, 1 hour run daily or equivalent and drinking 5 cups of coffee per workday, just to have a normal focus. Somehow, after living a very random 20's. I graduated with a bachelor and a master degree. My life was a still a mess, but at least I graduated. Something had to be wrong. The thought had occured to me, is this ADHD, but I surpressed it. Didn't want it do be me. Felt agonized over the thought of having a condition, and offended by the character traits that were all exact descriptions of me. At age 32 I kept going at a rock bottom slow pace. Had no job. The occational consulting stint. No proper money in the bank. Everything messy around me, including my head, clean but untidy. Relationship with my girlfriend hanging by a thread. If I was was to stay in the paradigm of trying to get a solid career dayjob, and performing well, something had to change fundamentally. ADHD is real. Get diagnosed if you believe you have it. I waited 7 years before daring to speak to a professional psychiatrist, don't do the same as me if you believe you have it! I took the plunge and visited a private Psychiatrist. Nice office, expensive art hanging on the walls, meters of full bookshelves on surrounding the interview area. The guy himself, top notch, understanding and genuinely interested. Through 5 solid sessions, and 2500USD later, I was diagnosed with ADHD level. "For your own sake, it was really fortunate that you came". I was prescribed Concerta 54Mg (3x 15mg Ritalin daily). My life is now entirely upended and everything has been an incredible improvement in all aspects of my life. - After taking the medication, I was able to focus completely on tasks. Seeing them through, completely focused and analyzing the problems. -- Sequential tasks (doing something from A through to Z) like doing the dishes, cleaning my room, or building a spreadsheet model over 7 hours - no problem. - Frustrated thougts and mild depression over lack of life progress completely evaporated - Before this I couldn't get a job. Couldn't make it through the interviews. My CV was never good enough et cetera. - After this, I got 5 job interviews with great companies, 2 job offers with high salaries - I now work in the world's largest technology & strategy consulting company. - I was just promoted, fast tracked - I just got a raise - My bank now believes in me financially and is about to offer me a mortage to buy an apartment - My diagnosis and medication has given a fantastic life where all my opportunities are within reach. #RealLifeLimitless
- junto 10y agoNot surprisingly, my mind can be completely focused for hours when I'm doing something I want to do. If it's something I don't want to do, then not so much.
- wallace_f 10y agoI feel like I have this problem to an extreme degree, and I still don't know how change it, even a little bit, anyone have any ideas?
- internaut 10y agoI was once watching Elon Musk talk about this, he said something kind of curious, which I'll paraphrase here because I forget his exact words. He said he does not feel motivated every hour of the day, occasionally running into snags, ick factor, brain fog but he also doesn't not view handling those as options. He just literally does not think of 'dealing with it', which sounds like the opposite of most self help book advice It is not so much thinking, as the lack of it that gives him an exceptional personal executive command to coordinate. Either that or he's got a secret supply of NZT. It does speak to several things I've read about the brain though. The higher brain functions are 'new' and rudimentary. It fits in with Moravec's Thesis about AI. I don't see many animals procrastinating or stressing out unless there is an obvious physical stimulus that explains why they're behaving like that. Many of the psychological phenomena humans experience must be related to higher brain function and it being evolutionarily unrefined. In the human species itself there is a wide spread of behavior, where a lot of intellectual people are neurotic as hell (kvetching being quite noticeable) but the obviously less intellectual apparently don't suffer quite as much. It cannot be a coincidence that meditation has the goal for absence of thoughts and so many geeks practice it.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- narrator 10y agoI get sick of working after a while and then I go read Hacker News again. Then I go back to work, or get a coffee. Lately, I've started doing Khan Academy's "World of Math" while I wait for builds or tests or deploys. It's basically over 1000 exercises that encompass all of math you'd learn if you weren't a math major: from counting up through differential equations. Some of it is absurdly easy, some of it is a nice refresher, a few things I forgot how to do and there is of course a perfect explanation included. It's possible to make meaningful progress in a minute or two, so perfect for those little build breaks. Generally when I get stuck I go into emacs org mode and just use it to brainstorm about what to do next. If that doesn't work I close my eyes and try and meditate for 30 seconds before trying again.
- michaelgrafl 10y agoI've been trying to do 10 minutes of Duolingo instead of browsing Hacker News when I need a break from work. But doing the latter has become a really strong habit over the last few years that's hard to break. I hope it's working better for you than for me.
- midgetjones 10y agoIt's clearly not working perfectly for either of you ;)
- _lce0 10y agoI've been doing a lot of Duolinguo and it works like wonders to start picking a new language but then, at some point, it becomes repetitive and boring. How do you deal with it?
- michaelgrafl 10y agoI don't have that problem. I guess your Duolingo work ethic surpasses mine. However, if I'd become too bored to do Duolingo, I'd progress on something a bit harder like reading gossip magazines (they use simple language and have emotionally charged content, which makes it an easy read).
- DonHopkins 10y ago"I'm trying to think but nothing happens!" -Curly Joe [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlejsgxOxrU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlejsgxOxrU
- skywhopper 10y agoNot sure how to feel about this article. On the one hand the interview subjects are making good points about the value of neurodiversity and the fact that many disorders are just stronger expressions of typical traits. On the other hand ADHD is labeled a "mental illness" in the opening paragraph. I'm not sure the writer really absorbed the subject matter.
- viewer5 10y ago> On the other hand ADHD is labeled a "mental illness" in the opening paragraph As a sufferer, I agree wholeheartedly with that label. It's an absolute nightmare to deal with and negatively affects every facet of my life. And it doesn't allow me to 'think freely and creatively' as the article asserts, it prevents me from continuing to think about what I want to think about. That's very much like saying 'nixing the brakes on your car removes the need for wasting time at stop signs and red lights.' I can't be creative with it because I can't think about something for long enough to nail down a useful idea. I GM pen-and-paper RPGs--but never again unmedicated, I learned my lesson there. Being unable to organize my thoughts enough to run a game or even think of a premise FOR a game is leagues away from 'thinking freely and creatively'.
- rdm42116 10y agoI think everyone deals with it differently and has different severity. ADHD has different variants as well. Personally have it, and my "creativity" in my mind is off the charts. When I occasionally have hyperfocus I can make something from it, but I have the similar issues to you in that I lose focus or am unable to organize myself. I think the mental illness side of things is very grey. Clearly you have a very severe case, but I don't consider my personal variant severe enough to label as an extremely debilitating mental illness,but I benefit greatly from treatment. I can still function-I get most of what I need to done, but I struggle a lot with it. But at the same time, I understand the problem of not always labeling it as such, because then people dismiss it in its more severe forms.
- lfowles 10y agoYes, ADHD is literally when these "strong expressions of typical traits" turn dysfunctional. I was primarily led to getting a diagnosis because I couldn't even sit down and enjoy videogames or hobbies like you describe.
- jccalhoun 10y agoMy first reaction was to be distracted by fact that the headline doesn't use an Oxford comma. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma I'm not sure what this says about me.
- 3chelon 10y agoSee, I would get distracted if it did have that extraneous comma!
- Yanwar 10y agoAs the writer of the article at issue, I struggled with whether to use that extra comma in the headline. I also struggled with calling ADHD a mental illness. My son has it and while it's challenging, I don't see it as a mental illness as much as a brain difference. But there's no escaping that it's defined in the literature as a disorder.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- _98fj 10y ago> For example, their review of brain-imaging studies found that when the brain was focused on a task at hand, its prefrontal “executive” network, which governs planning and impulse control, among other functions, constrains other brain activity. That is the reason why dopamine-raising stimulants actually have a calming function on people with ADHD: they fuel this "suppressing" function of the brain, thus enabling it to calm itself. My theory about ADHD is that there's a genetic disposition, where people need to move physically in order to have their dopaminergic systems functioning properly. Probably a bad adaption to our rather stationary lifestyle. On top of that I think that if children are frequently interrupted and confronted with bad emotions they don't learn to focus.
- lfowles 10y agoKeep in mind that ADHD has two subtypes: Hyperactive and Inattentive. Where Hyperactive individuals express themselves physically, Inattentive individuals get lost in their thoughts.
- Declanomous 10y agoI feel it's important to note that there's also combined type, which combines elements from both hyperactive and inattentive types.
- lfowles 10y agoAbsolutely, I find that I'm naturally on the inattentive side but hyperactive symptoms present when I'm forcing myself to pay attention to something (like a lecture) and not let my mind wander.
- _98fj 10y agoJust a quick question (in relation to my comment to your other comment): In these lectures that you find hard to concentrate on: Could you say that you feel disgust/repulsion? There doesn't need to be a rational reason, disgust is completely trained and can be felt for anything from the look of the windows to the hairstyle of the lecturer to the actual topic. If so, then your inattentiveness could be your mind trying to escape that feeling.
- norea-armozel 10y agoI'm naturally scatterbrained I swear. I'll be reading HN about half the time I'm working. I'm not sure why I need to switch between it and my other tasks at work. It's just something I do I guess. I can focus when I have to but honestly nothing keeps me focused for long unless I'm really interested in it. Like I can read the Wikipedia for hours on history of the Reconquista but God help me I can't focus on a boring lecture of the same subject.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoSame here. I can sometimes will myself into focus, but most of the time it either comes naturally or it doesn't.
- pc86 10y agoI find that when I force myself to focus for long periods of time, I'm exhausted at the end of the day (I never make it a whole day). I too need to bounce between code and email and HN constantly.
- Declanomous 10y agoThat comment fully captures my entire method of working. I have been diagnosed with ADHD though. I resisted the diagnosis for a really long time, because I'm very high achieving, but knowing really helps manage it in the long run. Honestly, software development is a really natural field for someone with ADHD. I half joke the reason why I learned how to program is because I hate repetitive tasks, but I think my inability to concentrate on tedious work really was impetus to learn how to program. My friends in college, all of whom focus fully on one task at a time, used to joke that it was impossible to catch me working, cause I was always doing something else at the same time.
- lfowles 10y agoBefore I realized it was ADHD, I always joked that "I needed to slow down a bit so my brain won't catch on fire" .. 30 minutes browsing the internet to 5 minutes of studying/homework.
- pasbesoin 10y agoMy physical health and environment make an enormous -- fundamental -- difference in this. Sooner or later, the psych disciplines are bound to catch on to this. </sarcasm, to greater or lesser degree>
- hockeybias 10y agoYes.
- zacirving 10y agoI'm one of the authors on this paper, and was so happy to hear this thread was going! I've heard about HN from my hacker friends, and it's hilarious and flattering to be here!! Seems like you've been having a great discussion. Thank y'all and stay curious! I'll go through the comments and respond where I can. [Edit: thanks to @upen for posting this!!]