8 ms·

I can't tell if it's because I'm just getting older or because I'm surrounded by distractions (both electronic and caused by this open office nightmare trend),

I can't tell if it's because I'm just getting older or because I'm surrounded by distractions (both electronic and caused by this open office nightmare trend), but my ability to _concentrate_ seems to go down every year. When I was in my 20's, I could focus on a math problem for hours at a time. Now, I need to take a break and look at something else every 10 minutes. Is the world changing to make it harder to accumulate knowledge and improve intelligence?

neves 8y ago
Probably both. My problem isn't that it is more difficult to concentrate as I get older, but that I spend more time to get back to a flow state after I'm interrupted.
weberc2 8y ago
I think it's the distractions. I'm in my late 20s and when I was in college and didn't have a smart phone, I could hold my focus on a math problem for hours on a time. Now like you, I need to take a break and look at something else every 10 minutes.
ujal 8y ago
Perhaps you don't give a f* anymore?
- debeers 8y ago
  This is incidental, but there are important activities that gotten harded for me in recent years - just as OP described. It's pretty bold to blame just lack of motivation or commitment.
- cautionarytale 8y ago
  Even if true, that's more of a description than a solution. Generating new f*s to give is a hard problem.
MisterTea 8y ago
Life gets in the way. In my late 30's, full time job, side business, and managing properties makes things very difficult. Hobbies take a big back seat to all of that. I only have a few hours every night to tinker with stuff whereas in my 20's I had a single job and no other worries.
- Steve44 8y ago
  > I only have a few hours every night to tinker with stuff Count yourself lucky, I reckon I usually get at most 2 hours if I really force it and most nights hardly anything. We've family, kids, house, own business etc and that just eats away at everything else.
  - bjoli 8y ago
    Unless I stop sleeping I get at most 45 minutes of own-time per day. Apart from the frustration of not getting to have any hobbies, I kind of like it. The whole frustrating experience of kids and hose work is in a way what I really need. My hobbies (computers and programming) have had effects on my life that have been detrimental to my mental health in the long run.
  - ams6110 8y ago
    Most nights I come home, eat, and go to bed. Free time if there is any is only on weekends.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
rgrieselhuber 8y ago
I think this is something we all fight, we live in a vampiric system in terms of the various ways in which our energy is drained off. Biggest things that have helped me have been paying attention to endocrinology (avoid things / activities that deplete your testosterone), supplementing things like magnesium, heavy workouts, and good diet / sleep. Avoid screen time as much as possible. Read more books, etc.
- s-shellfish 8y ago
  Why testosterone? Asking as a female.
  - jxub 8y ago
    As it improves brain activity in both sexes, see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4330791/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4330791/
    - s-shellfish 8y ago
      I've read a lot of this literature in the past, but I can't say I agree with it with certainty. The researchers who performed these studies seem to have just as much uncertainty about it, and underlying that sentiment, I think there's quite a bit of subtext in the conclusion that explains why. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4330791/#__sec16title https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4330791/#__sec1... I'm not looking to pick at the trope argument here. I just really don't know if these kinds of evidence are evidence enough to use such research to support oneself in one's own sense of what it means to take care of oneself. When you lead with a statement that is an absolute, with a citation to a respectable publication, I mean, the conclusion in the publication simply is not an absolute, and there are many reasons given as to why that is the case.
      - brailsafe 8y ago
        I appreciate the fact that you're setting a reasonably high bar for the evidence that you'd base potentially large lifestyle changes on. In a si milar vein, it really gets me when close friends go down farcicle paths of "cleansing" their body, heavy fasting, or others, with barely anything to go on.
jxub 8y ago
You might be right. I've taken an IQ test at the beginning and at the end of my highschool and my scores dropped from 136 to 132 in four years (Wechsler scale if I recall correctly), which can be attributed both to organized education and increasing reliance on technology. Moreover, as the average 100 IQ has gone down in absolute terms, the change is even more drastic in my case :P However, and despite me being prone to tell this as a funny anecdote, this might be a case of sample bias or other statistical imprecision.
- maaark 8y ago
  4 points on a score that high just sounds like noise.
- bjoli 8y ago
  Iirc WAIS (and most IQ tests) will only compare to your age group, so your drop in IQ is not relative to the general population. Edit,and as the other person says, the reliability more than 2 standard deviations up is somewhat limited, so a person scoring within 4 points is reasonable.
afpx 8y ago
I’ve found that the effectiveness of my working memory (which is tested via IQ tests) has decreased over time. I’m not sure what has caused it, but I’m concerned that the SSRIs and bipolar meds that I’ve been on for many years have affected my Hypothalamus, but I need to do more research.
- jglauche 8y ago
  If you take anything that blocks certain dopamine receptors (as some bipolar meds do) that might affect it. I've heard claims that SSRI can cause downregulation of the other neurotransmitters over time, but I don't think I've read a study of that.
Steve44 8y ago
Same here, but I'm not sure if some of it is that my job has changed. I was a programmer for about 15 years and could really get into the 'zone' for hours. I'm now doing a very different job where there is no deep creativity, just answering queries really. Sometimes I need to do deep work and struggle to get into it. I'm quite disciplined at not being distracted but think a large part is I'm just not used to the big thinking any more. I see the kids claiming they can multitask, they have their phones out, TV running in the background etc whilst supposedly working. Having anything which demands your attention inhibits you getting into the zone and can easily rip you our out it. (Entirely my thoughts & viewpoint, nothing scientific here)
hedora 8y ago
I’m pretty sure it is open seating, plus (presumably) you have more experience than you did when you were younger, and get more interrupts. I’ve found that being sick and bedridden actually improves my productivity by a nice multiple (1.5x?). Being home and healthy gives a 3-4x boost. The perfomance review scene in the Zero Theorem pretty much summarizes my opinion of open seating.
- mieseratte 8y ago
  > I’m pretty sure it is open seating, plus (presumably) you have more experience than you did when you were younger, and get more interrupts. Back in the day, I used to be able to sit down in the comfort and isolation of my room and knock out a good 300 page novel in one sitting. Nowadays, I find I can scarcely make it through a chapter without finding myself distracted, wandering, and reaching for an electronic device. This become one of the major reasons why I got rid of my cellphone. I found it incredibly disturbing.
abandonliberty 8y ago
Somewhat regular breaking can be adaptive. 25 on / 5 off https://francescocirillo.com/pages/pomodoro-technique https://francescocirillo.com/pages/pomodoro-technique. Meditation also helps. Kabat-Zinn has some decent intro content. I've personally noticed that seconds move faster now. When I was a child, seconds were slow a minute was an eternity.
- EGreg 8y ago
  How so? I don’t notice any difference..
aspencerpsu 8y ago
It's the trend of the led-emitted-light distraction theory. Computer devices should be restricted for youth until they reach college. It's the only viable hope for humans to gain social cognitive skills at the highest threshold. The microwave frequency at even 6 kHz of RF exposed to children could be detrimental to their nurturing stages leading to trouble and worsening of memory for children.
- jxub 8y ago
  Got any research on that?
randcraw 8y ago
"The Shallows" by Nicholas Carr discusses this problem and "Deep Work" by Cal Newport proposes a solution.
jug 8y ago
It’s smartphones and social networks. That Vine was build around six second clips was such a sign of the times. 6 seconds! It wasn’t a huge success but not because of the short clips. Instagram is pretty similar. Ain’t nobody got time for minute long clips!
UnpossibleJim 8y ago
Odd question, but do you read as much literature as when you were young? There seems to be a fairly strong correlation between reading literature/fiction and concentration in studies (and no, I don't have the sources on hand, I heard mention of them on YouTube, of all places.. Boo, I know. Improper citation, but what are you gonna do. Sometimes I listen to lectures when I work). I, personally, had gotten into the habit of reading technical papers all of the time and foregoing literature and fiction on the basis of "well, what good is that doing me?!" and had noticed that my focus had been slipping. Now, this could be anecdotal or I could have just needed the down time but, I started reading some scifi (is that what Hitchhiker's Guide and John Dies is?) again and my concentration seems to have gotten slowly better.... could also just be time away from the screen. Though I do read on a Kindle Paperwhite, so who knows.
- zerostar07 8y ago
  I m not sure if it s an effect of age, but i can barely watch a movie. I believe however its a consequence of technology that ‘just works: we demand (re-)solutions now and are impatient.
- tomjakubowski 8y ago
  as another totally useless data point, I read fiction and non-fiction books, magazines, and newspapers, constantly when growing up, but since I was about 15 or 16 I've had serious issues with concentration + attention. The reading tapered off into my 20s along with that. I strongly believe that I am getting dumber as I age.
- AdamM12 8y ago
  I'm glad I found someone who mentioned this as I was going to. I've spent the first month and a half of my summer reading books (4 down, which is more than I've read in the past decade and a half combined) and I definitely feel as though it has helped me focus more. I've been more disciplined about really "reading aloud" the words in my head as opposed to when I was younger I kinda just skimmed and didn't really take in what I was saying. Edit: should say outside of assigned readings for school work. Which tend to lean technical and are never fully read from cover to cover.
dorfsmay 8y ago
What about when you're stuck away from the internet, say in an airplane without WiFi?

neves 8y ago

Probably both. My problem isn't that it is more difficult to concentrate as I get older, but that I spend more time to get back to a flow state after I'm interrupted.

weberc2 8y ago

I think it's the distractions. I'm in my late 20s and when I was in college and didn't have a smart phone, I could hold my focus on a math problem for hours on a time. Now like you, I need to take a break and look at something else every 10 minutes.

ujal 8y ago

Perhaps you don't give a f* anymore?

debeers 8y ago
This is incidental, but there are important activities that gotten harded for me in recent years - just as OP described. It's pretty bold to blame just lack of motivation or commitment.
cautionarytale 8y ago
Even if true, that's more of a description than a solution. Generating new f*s to give is a hard problem.

MisterTea 8y ago

Life gets in the way. In my late 30's, full time job, side business, and managing properties makes things very difficult. Hobbies take a big back seat to all of that. I only have a few hours every night to tinker with stuff whereas in my 20's I had a single job and no other worries.

Steve44 8y ago
> I only have a few hours every night to tinker with stuff Count yourself lucky, I reckon I usually get at most 2 hours if I really force it and most nights hardly anything. We've family, kids, house, own business etc and that just eats away at everything else.
- bjoli 8y ago
  Unless I stop sleeping I get at most 45 minutes of own-time per day. Apart from the frustration of not getting to have any hobbies, I kind of like it. The whole frustrating experience of kids and hose work is in a way what I really need. My hobbies (computers and programming) have had effects on my life that have been detrimental to my mental health in the long run.
- ams6110 8y ago
  Most nights I come home, eat, and go to bed. Free time if there is any is only on weekends.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

rgrieselhuber 8y ago

I think this is something we all fight, we live in a vampiric system in terms of the various ways in which our energy is drained off. Biggest things that have helped me have been paying attention to endocrinology (avoid things / activities that deplete your testosterone), supplementing things like magnesium, heavy workouts, and good diet / sleep. Avoid screen time as much as possible. Read more books, etc.

s-shellfish 8y ago
Why testosterone? Asking as a female.
- jxub 8y ago
  As it improves brain activity in both sexes, see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4330791/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4330791/
  - s-shellfish 8y ago
    I've read a lot of this literature in the past, but I can't say I agree with it with certainty. The researchers who performed these studies seem to have just as much uncertainty about it, and underlying that sentiment, I think there's quite a bit of subtext in the conclusion that explains why. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4330791/#__sec16title https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4330791/#__sec1... I'm not looking to pick at the trope argument here. I just really don't know if these kinds of evidence are evidence enough to use such research to support oneself in one's own sense of what it means to take care of oneself. When you lead with a statement that is an absolute, with a citation to a respectable publication, I mean, the conclusion in the publication simply is not an absolute, and there are many reasons given as to why that is the case.
    - brailsafe 8y ago
      I appreciate the fact that you're setting a reasonably high bar for the evidence that you'd base potentially large lifestyle changes on. In a si milar vein, it really gets me when close friends go down farcicle paths of "cleansing" their body, heavy fasting, or others, with barely anything to go on.

jxub 8y ago

You might be right. I've taken an IQ test at the beginning and at the end of my highschool and my scores dropped from 136 to 132 in four years (Wechsler scale if I recall correctly), which can be attributed both to organized education and increasing reliance on technology. Moreover, as the average 100 IQ has gone down in absolute terms, the change is even more drastic in my case :P However, and despite me being prone to tell this as a funny anecdote, this might be a case of sample bias or other statistical imprecision.

maaark 8y ago
4 points on a score that high just sounds like noise.
bjoli 8y ago
Iirc WAIS (and most IQ tests) will only compare to your age group, so your drop in IQ is not relative to the general population. Edit,and as the other person says, the reliability more than 2 standard deviations up is somewhat limited, so a person scoring within 4 points is reasonable.

afpx 8y ago

I’ve found that the effectiveness of my working memory (which is tested via IQ tests) has decreased over time. I’m not sure what has caused it, but I’m concerned that the SSRIs and bipolar meds that I’ve been on for many years have affected my Hypothalamus, but I need to do more research.

jglauche 8y ago
If you take anything that blocks certain dopamine receptors (as some bipolar meds do) that might affect it. I've heard claims that SSRI can cause downregulation of the other neurotransmitters over time, but I don't think I've read a study of that.

Steve44 8y ago

Same here, but I'm not sure if some of it is that my job has changed. I was a programmer for about 15 years and could really get into the 'zone' for hours. I'm now doing a very different job where there is no deep creativity, just answering queries really. Sometimes I need to do deep work and struggle to get into it. I'm quite disciplined at not being distracted but think a large part is I'm just not used to the big thinking any more. I see the kids claiming they can multitask, they have their phones out, TV running in the background etc whilst supposedly working. Having anything which demands your attention inhibits you getting into the zone and can easily rip you our out it. (Entirely my thoughts & viewpoint, nothing scientific here)

hedora 8y ago

I’m pretty sure it is open seating, plus (presumably) you have more experience than you did when you were younger, and get more interrupts. I’ve found that being sick and bedridden actually improves my productivity by a nice multiple (1.5x?). Being home and healthy gives a 3-4x boost. The perfomance review scene in the Zero Theorem pretty much summarizes my opinion of open seating.

mieseratte 8y ago
> I’m pretty sure it is open seating, plus (presumably) you have more experience than you did when you were younger, and get more interrupts. Back in the day, I used to be able to sit down in the comfort and isolation of my room and knock out a good 300 page novel in one sitting. Nowadays, I find I can scarcely make it through a chapter without finding myself distracted, wandering, and reaching for an electronic device. This become one of the major reasons why I got rid of my cellphone. I found it incredibly disturbing.

abandonliberty 8y ago

Somewhat regular breaking can be adaptive. 25 on / 5 off https://francescocirillo.com/pages/pomodoro-technique https://francescocirillo.com/pages/pomodoro-technique. Meditation also helps. Kabat-Zinn has some decent intro content. I've personally noticed that seconds move faster now. When I was a child, seconds were slow a minute was an eternity.

EGreg 8y ago
How so? I don’t notice any difference..

aspencerpsu 8y ago

It's the trend of the led-emitted-light distraction theory. Computer devices should be restricted for youth until they reach college. It's the only viable hope for humans to gain social cognitive skills at the highest threshold. The microwave frequency at even 6 kHz of RF exposed to children could be detrimental to their nurturing stages leading to trouble and worsening of memory for children.

jxub 8y ago
Got any research on that?

randcraw 8y ago

"The Shallows" by Nicholas Carr discusses this problem and "Deep Work" by Cal Newport proposes a solution.

jug 8y ago

It’s smartphones and social networks. That Vine was build around six second clips was such a sign of the times. 6 seconds! It wasn’t a huge success but not because of the short clips. Instagram is pretty similar. Ain’t nobody got time for minute long clips!

UnpossibleJim 8y ago

Odd question, but do you read as much literature as when you were young? There seems to be a fairly strong correlation between reading literature/fiction and concentration in studies (and no, I don't have the sources on hand, I heard mention of them on YouTube, of all places.. Boo, I know. Improper citation, but what are you gonna do. Sometimes I listen to lectures when I work). I, personally, had gotten into the habit of reading technical papers all of the time and foregoing literature and fiction on the basis of "well, what good is that doing me?!" and had noticed that my focus had been slipping. Now, this could be anecdotal or I could have just needed the down time but, I started reading some scifi (is that what Hitchhiker's Guide and John Dies is?) again and my concentration seems to have gotten slowly better.... could also just be time away from the screen. Though I do read on a Kindle Paperwhite, so who knows.

zerostar07 8y ago
I m not sure if it s an effect of age, but i can barely watch a movie. I believe however its a consequence of technology that ‘just works: we demand (re-)solutions now and are impatient.
tomjakubowski 8y ago
as another totally useless data point, I read fiction and non-fiction books, magazines, and newspapers, constantly when growing up, but since I was about 15 or 16 I've had serious issues with concentration + attention. The reading tapered off into my 20s along with that. I strongly believe that I am getting dumber as I age.
AdamM12 8y ago
I'm glad I found someone who mentioned this as I was going to. I've spent the first month and a half of my summer reading books (4 down, which is more than I've read in the past decade and a half combined) and I definitely feel as though it has helped me focus more. I've been more disciplined about really "reading aloud" the words in my head as opposed to when I was younger I kinda just skimmed and didn't really take in what I was saying. Edit: should say outside of assigned readings for school work. Which tend to lean technical and are never fully read from cover to cover.

dorfsmay 8y ago

What about when you're stuck away from the internet, say in an airplane without WiFi?