8 ms·

Body doubling is very underrated and is the main non pharmacological way to bring focus for most https://bodydoubling.com/ https://bodydoubling.com/

lr4444lr 4y ago
Why do you think this works? I think it has to do with a mental and/or physiological response to loneliness increasing our stress.
- queuebert 4y ago
  Mirror neurons
  - daedalus_f 4y ago
    To quote wikipedia: To date, no widely accepted neural or computational models have been put forward to describe how mirror neuron activity supports cognitive functions. There’s lots of guff in the media and lots of speculation in the discussion section of papers about what they might be important for in broad hand-wavy terms, but really we don’t have a good understanding of them.
    - zackees 4y ago
      Wikipedia is not a good source. All the editor had to do was a google search to know this is misinformation: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C10&q=mirror+neurons+&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C10&q=mir...
- seydor 4y ago
  Memetism, apes like apeing each other, it's why we have classes of all kinds
- omarfarooq 4y ago
  Shame minimization.
0des 4y ago
is this why i have a monitor just playing various interviews im not interested in while im coding? I used to have a tiny black and white Bentley portable TV above my desk playing FOX all day long on low volume, then when that died, I moved to a separate monitor that currently appears to be running through police interrogations. anything at a constant volume, any type of long format talking, is what I go for. I always wondered what it was, because it doesnt have to be something im interested in, just a normalized volume with not a lot of noises punctuating it. I listen to a lot of loud music when Im not doing that. never knew this was due to adhd, I just assumed it was so that I don't hear boogers rustling around in my nose when breathing, or the sound of my heartbeat.
- eastbound 4y ago
  I use this to sleep. General-knowledge videos on Youtube, generally, constant voice, interesting facts. Otherwise I develop stories in my mind and become angry (to the point of breaking stuff, relationships, and probably suicide if I let it run unchecked). I’m quite a fine person and even appreciated if I use this method to suppress my internal dialogue. Do those symptoms match with ADHD? Or is it simply the mundanity of solitude around 40, when one has a few extremely bad experienced that tend to not get forgotten easily? I avoid alcohol, but do normal people’s use of alcohol helps with deleting those memories? Do normal people have a nagging girlfriend that plays the role of keeping the mind busy with something else? Or would anyone suggest another diagnosis that I should investigate? I find myself in quite unhealthy mental health because of that. I’ve always thought it’s just solitude turning me crazy, but it would be sad to not be aware that it’s a specific condition.
  - SemanticStrengh 4y ago
    I can't speculate on any diagnosis given you have not given us enough information. > I use this to sleep. General-knowledge videos on Youtube, generally, constant voice, interesting facts. > I use this method to suppress my internal dialogue. classic, pretty normal What's weird is the underspecified > develop stories in my mind and become angry (to the point of breaking stuff, relationships, and probably suicide if I let it run unchecked) I mean, If people have no distraction at night, it's not uncommon for many to be too mentally excited to fall asleep. But your other symptoms means you have something else going on. It doesn't need to be catalogued as a mental disorder, it could just be you have e.g. bad/cringe memories of the past or minor emotional traumas. You should attempt to reconciliate those memories, relativize their importance or plain forget them. You should attempt to have a meaningful lifestyle routine by doing meaningful activities/virtues. e.g. I encourage you to maintain a hapiness scale journal, where you note and rank what makes you the most happy when you experience it. Note relevant metadata such as how much is this specific activity reconsummable (recyclable pleasure) this accounts for sports, arts in all mediums, etc Loneliness in excess can be like a disease and must be fighted as a priority. It's not that hard to socialize, humans are generally quite welcoming in the right contexts. But like a muscle it needs practice. You could e.g easily contact again an old friend and see him while doing a cool activity (e.g. laser tag or karaoke) or you could start a new passion like being taught dancing, and meet new people there like a highschool 2.0 as for pharmacological "solutions" to pathological excessive anger, I don't know if specifics exist for this emotion but I assume e.g an NMDA antagonist could help during a crisis (magnesium lthreonate) or more potently memantine, memantine induce brain fog though at least at first. This reduce a neural excitatory overload. You could also calm yourself with l-theanine, ashwaganda and/or glycine (very underatted, help to sleep too). I would also recommend taking an antioxidant like ALCAR for general health. While what I suggested is benign and can be combined, that is not the case for memantine. it is a potent medication with side effects and tradeoffs, although trying doesn't cost anything. But it is essential to understand that generally pharmacology is not a proper solutions and is generally a slippery slope with side effects and tolerance mechanisms (except for the benign things I mentionned) and you will get much more in life through meaningful lifestyle changes than with pharmacology. And while durable lifestyle changes are hard to instill, again body doubling comes to the rescue, e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/GetMotivatedBuddies/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GetMotivatedBuddies/ Alcohol should be strongly avoided, it can destroy lifes. Alternative to podcasts at night and glycine for sleep would be calm ambient music, meditation and ASMR. You might also wanna check your blood pressure (unlikely). Indeed you might benefit from therapy/paid coaching. also.. any youtube podcasts to recommend?
bpicolo 4y ago
I feel like it's an unpopular opinion regarding remote work, but this is a big positive effect I feel being in an office that only works when others are there too, hah.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  It may not be popular on the internet, but it’s true for many. Context switching into an office where people around you are focusing sets the tone for work. Conversely, switching into an office where everybody is chatting away will hurt focus for the same reasons. This is why it’s important to have good working context whether you’re in the office or at home.
  - nazka 4y ago
    Depends the type of job! For the little story I had a job at a small startup 50+ people. We were like 20 people at the tech and we had 20 sellers. The whole company was in the same floor open space one big room. Sellers loved to chat all the time, be loud, cut each other in what they were doing… A big contract closed on the phone? They had a small belt to be ringed! At some point it was so noisy that even with headphones we couldn’t concentrate. Of course the tech part of room was quite silent. One time we asked them how can they ever focus with this noise and be productive?? They said that for them it’s like giving them the smile, being chatty being part of the job, the adrenaline rush to make it seems like the next big deal is right there on the next call.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
neilv 4y ago
I'm sure it helps some people focus, but also sure it's counterproductive for some. Overall, I find I usually get better non-interactive work done when not in such close proximity that social behaviors are activating. (Interactive real-time collaboration is a different matter, and that has its moments.) Someone sitting across right across from me, or right next to me, when we're not collaborating, for example? I'll be lucky if I can mindlessly tweak UI visual details, or spit out design or code that I've thought about only superficially. There's no way I could fairly rigorous thinking-through and creative connection-making, in that context, like I can in some other contexts.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  I experience this as well. I remember that in school, I would always seek out the most remote corners of the library in order to work. And before Covid times, working in an office that was anything but dead silent was a constant source of "activation" and therefore subtle distraction. Working from home has posted its own distraction challenges, but I do not miss that "nonfunctionally distracted" feeling I often got in the office.
rubicks 4y ago
My informal polling of my co-workers does not support this assertion.
dijit 4y ago
Sample of one: I have many markers of ADHD but do not wish to be diagnosed as such because there are stark warnings about holding certain types of jobs and health insurance increases. But, being around people does not help me focus at all, I have an anxiety about them interrupting me, maybe I need to pay attention to something going on in the environment because there are people. Open offices are a nightmare, and I talk about it openly. Strangely, this issue does not exist in coffee shops. I think it’s something to do with the fact that people are extremely unlikely to interact with me in a coffee shop. So, take that for whatever it’s worth. Body doubling certainly isn’t universal among people with ADHD markers.
- lewispollard 4y ago
  Same here; I have an ADHD-PI diagnosis. Obviously everyone with ADHD or adjacent symptoms is different, but the idea of having talking on in the background while working is untenable to me. Open offices have been the worst working environments I've ever used. Even having gentle, instrumental music on with headphones is too distracting for me to work. Silence, or no work is done. If people are close by, even if they're not interacting with me, just them being close by is distracting enough to make my productivity tank. Same issue with these "remote doubling" services, in my experience. Maybe it's different for people with a "primarily hyperactive" diagnosis, where the doubling is more an aspect of keeping them in their seat than anything.

lr4444lr 4y ago

Why do you think this works? I think it has to do with a mental and/or physiological response to loneliness increasing our stress.

queuebert 4y ago
Mirror neurons
- daedalus_f 4y ago
  To quote wikipedia: To date, no widely accepted neural or computational models have been put forward to describe how mirror neuron activity supports cognitive functions. There’s lots of guff in the media and lots of speculation in the discussion section of papers about what they might be important for in broad hand-wavy terms, but really we don’t have a good understanding of them.
  - zackees 4y ago
    Wikipedia is not a good source. All the editor had to do was a google search to know this is misinformation: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C10&q=mirror+neurons+&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C10&q=mir...
seydor 4y ago
Memetism, apes like apeing each other, it's why we have classes of all kinds
omarfarooq 4y ago
Shame minimization.

0des 4y ago

is this why i have a monitor just playing various interviews im not interested in while im coding? I used to have a tiny black and white Bentley portable TV above my desk playing FOX all day long on low volume, then when that died, I moved to a separate monitor that currently appears to be running through police interrogations. anything at a constant volume, any type of long format talking, is what I go for. I always wondered what it was, because it doesnt have to be something im interested in, just a normalized volume with not a lot of noises punctuating it. I listen to a lot of loud music when Im not doing that. never knew this was due to adhd, I just assumed it was so that I don't hear boogers rustling around in my nose when breathing, or the sound of my heartbeat.

eastbound 4y ago
I use this to sleep. General-knowledge videos on Youtube, generally, constant voice, interesting facts. Otherwise I develop stories in my mind and become angry (to the point of breaking stuff, relationships, and probably suicide if I let it run unchecked). I’m quite a fine person and even appreciated if I use this method to suppress my internal dialogue. Do those symptoms match with ADHD? Or is it simply the mundanity of solitude around 40, when one has a few extremely bad experienced that tend to not get forgotten easily? I avoid alcohol, but do normal people’s use of alcohol helps with deleting those memories? Do normal people have a nagging girlfriend that plays the role of keeping the mind busy with something else? Or would anyone suggest another diagnosis that I should investigate? I find myself in quite unhealthy mental health because of that. I’ve always thought it’s just solitude turning me crazy, but it would be sad to not be aware that it’s a specific condition.
- SemanticStrengh 4y ago
  I can't speculate on any diagnosis given you have not given us enough information. > I use this to sleep. General-knowledge videos on Youtube, generally, constant voice, interesting facts. > I use this method to suppress my internal dialogue. classic, pretty normal What's weird is the underspecified > develop stories in my mind and become angry (to the point of breaking stuff, relationships, and probably suicide if I let it run unchecked) I mean, If people have no distraction at night, it's not uncommon for many to be too mentally excited to fall asleep. But your other symptoms means you have something else going on. It doesn't need to be catalogued as a mental disorder, it could just be you have e.g. bad/cringe memories of the past or minor emotional traumas. You should attempt to reconciliate those memories, relativize their importance or plain forget them. You should attempt to have a meaningful lifestyle routine by doing meaningful activities/virtues. e.g. I encourage you to maintain a hapiness scale journal, where you note and rank what makes you the most happy when you experience it. Note relevant metadata such as how much is this specific activity reconsummable (recyclable pleasure) this accounts for sports, arts in all mediums, etc Loneliness in excess can be like a disease and must be fighted as a priority. It's not that hard to socialize, humans are generally quite welcoming in the right contexts. But like a muscle it needs practice. You could e.g easily contact again an old friend and see him while doing a cool activity (e.g. laser tag or karaoke) or you could start a new passion like being taught dancing, and meet new people there like a highschool 2.0 as for pharmacological "solutions" to pathological excessive anger, I don't know if specifics exist for this emotion but I assume e.g an NMDA antagonist could help during a crisis (magnesium lthreonate) or more potently memantine, memantine induce brain fog though at least at first. This reduce a neural excitatory overload. You could also calm yourself with l-theanine, ashwaganda and/or glycine (very underatted, help to sleep too). I would also recommend taking an antioxidant like ALCAR for general health. While what I suggested is benign and can be combined, that is not the case for memantine. it is a potent medication with side effects and tradeoffs, although trying doesn't cost anything. But it is essential to understand that generally pharmacology is not a proper solutions and is generally a slippery slope with side effects and tolerance mechanisms (except for the benign things I mentionned) and you will get much more in life through meaningful lifestyle changes than with pharmacology. And while durable lifestyle changes are hard to instill, again body doubling comes to the rescue, e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/GetMotivatedBuddies/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GetMotivatedBuddies/ Alcohol should be strongly avoided, it can destroy lifes. Alternative to podcasts at night and glycine for sleep would be calm ambient music, meditation and ASMR. You might also wanna check your blood pressure (unlikely). Indeed you might benefit from therapy/paid coaching. also.. any youtube podcasts to recommend?

bpicolo 4y ago

I feel like it's an unpopular opinion regarding remote work, but this is a big positive effect I feel being in an office that only works when others are there too, hah.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago
It may not be popular on the internet, but it’s true for many. Context switching into an office where people around you are focusing sets the tone for work. Conversely, switching into an office where everybody is chatting away will hurt focus for the same reasons. This is why it’s important to have good working context whether you’re in the office or at home.
- nazka 4y ago
  Depends the type of job! For the little story I had a job at a small startup 50+ people. We were like 20 people at the tech and we had 20 sellers. The whole company was in the same floor open space one big room. Sellers loved to chat all the time, be loud, cut each other in what they were doing… A big contract closed on the phone? They had a small belt to be ringed! At some point it was so noisy that even with headphones we couldn’t concentrate. Of course the tech part of room was quite silent. One time we asked them how can they ever focus with this noise and be productive?? They said that for them it’s like giving them the smile, being chatty being part of the job, the adrenaline rush to make it seems like the next big deal is right there on the next call.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

neilv 4y ago

I'm sure it helps some people focus, but also sure it's counterproductive for some. Overall, I find I usually get better non-interactive work done when not in such close proximity that social behaviors are activating. (Interactive real-time collaboration is a different matter, and that has its moments.) Someone sitting across right across from me, or right next to me, when we're not collaborating, for example? I'll be lucky if I can mindlessly tweak UI visual details, or spit out design or code that I've thought about only superficially. There's no way I could fairly rigorous thinking-through and creative connection-making, in that context, like I can in some other contexts.

nerdponx 4y ago
I experience this as well. I remember that in school, I would always seek out the most remote corners of the library in order to work. And before Covid times, working in an office that was anything but dead silent was a constant source of "activation" and therefore subtle distraction. Working from home has posted its own distraction challenges, but I do not miss that "nonfunctionally distracted" feeling I often got in the office.

rubicks 4y ago

My informal polling of my co-workers does not support this assertion.

dijit 4y ago

Sample of one: I have many markers of ADHD but do not wish to be diagnosed as such because there are stark warnings about holding certain types of jobs and health insurance increases. But, being around people does not help me focus at all, I have an anxiety about them interrupting me, maybe I need to pay attention to something going on in the environment because there are people. Open offices are a nightmare, and I talk about it openly. Strangely, this issue does not exist in coffee shops. I think it’s something to do with the fact that people are extremely unlikely to interact with me in a coffee shop. So, take that for whatever it’s worth. Body doubling certainly isn’t universal among people with ADHD markers.

lewispollard 4y ago
Same here; I have an ADHD-PI diagnosis. Obviously everyone with ADHD or adjacent symptoms is different, but the idea of having talking on in the background while working is untenable to me. Open offices have been the worst working environments I've ever used. Even having gentle, instrumental music on with headphones is too distracting for me to work. Silence, or no work is done. If people are close by, even if they're not interacting with me, just them being close by is distracting enough to make my productivity tank. Same issue with these "remote doubling" services, in my experience. Maybe it's different for people with a "primarily hyperactive" diagnosis, where the doubling is more an aspect of keeping them in their seat than anything.