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> Why can I focus for hours on a game but procrastinate when writing an email? OK I got a bit triggered by this sentence. Not at TFA, but sharing my own experi

> Why can I focus for hours on a game but procrastinate when writing an email? OK I got a bit triggered by this sentence. Not at TFA, but sharing my own experience: Games are fun. And I don't mean Type 1 vs Type 2 fun and the email is somehow type 2 fun. I mean that the stimulation / "hit" from a game is just higher than 90-99%% of work tasks (writing a new CLI or optimizer excluded!!). We pile on much stimulation to the work to get it to hit harder: Working by others (social/peer), snacks (biological rewards), free caffeine, money (sometimes lots), etc. And physical trinkets. We have studied this to death in other parts of our own biology, like food. Unhealthy food/drink is fun. It's a pleasurable reward sometimes, but if it forms the basis for your diet you are going to have a lot of trouble enjoying healthy stuff. You can't outrun a bad diet. You can't add a kale salad after a bowl of ice cream and expect your insulin levels to go down. You have to treat the underlying problem: A hugely stimulating / rewarding thing is displacing the healthy stuff. Almost every piece of sane health advice after 1900 has focused on removing unhealthy factors first. Work/hobby is no different. When I'm obsessed with factorio (it happened a lot once or twice), I find it harder to focus on work. When I "fast" from those "treats", work takes on new enjoy-ability. Dopamine diet is probably the wrong technical term, but it nails the practical effects well. I'm sure phones are just as stimulating for some. We all have our vices.

mfro 1y ago
This is the point I think many people fail to understand about consumption. Yes, it is usually perfectly sustainable to spend most of your free time scrolling tiktok or playing high-reward video games, yes you can live without regular exercise or a strict diet, but there are hard to quantify effects on an entire range of other things in your life. I think it is very important for the modern person to pay close attention to their mental state with and without the things they turn to the most, especially if experiencing problems with focus or motivation.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
al_borland 1y ago
> I'm sure phones are just as stimulating for some. This is one of my big objections do 2FA. My work has been pushing it hard, and from a security perspective, I get it. However, it’s all via an Authenticator app on the phone. We can no longer set down our phones and simply work. To start working, and periodically throughout the day, we are now forced to pickup our phones to authenticate. This invites the chance to see other notifications, check and app quickly, or more generally, break flow as we have to switch to another device and back again. All of this seems like a suboptimal solution.
- ambicapter 1y ago
  Time to get a “work” phone.
  - krustyburger 1y ago
    The optics of that can be questionable. Just ask Skyler White or her brother-in-law.
  - al_borland 1y ago
    I carried 2 phones for many years. It was more trouble than it’s worth. Especially these days. Working from home, my only work use of the phone is for the Authenticator app.
- jvanderbot 1y ago
  You should try a CLI-based workflow for 2FA. As long as you can exfiltrate the secret (and you often can by pretending you can't scan QR codes), then you can use oathtool to generate passcodes. 1. use 'pass' to save the secret: 'pass edit work.secret' <enter it and quit> 2. use oathtool to generate 2fa given a secret: ' #!/bin/bash oathtool -b --totp "`pass show $1.secret`" >&1 ' use it like '2fa work' If you have 'xsel' you can even do 'oathtool -b --totp "`pass show $1.secret`" | xsel -ib' to copy it to clipboard automatically.
  - mxmlnkn 1y ago
    Even if you only have the QR code, you can download the image or screenshot it and then extract the secret without ever having to use a smartphone by using zbarimg and then manually extracting the secret from the URI: sudo apt-get install zbar-tools oathtool zbarimg qr-2fa-code.png Output: QR-Code:otpauth://totp/username?secret=ABCDEFSECRET012349BASE32&period=30&digits=6 If you have some 2FA that you need to enter 10 times per day, then you can also add a global shortcut to automatically paste it. Of course, this undermines the "second device" security. Some PC password managers also support 2FA, e.g. https://github.com/paolostivanin/OTPClient https://github.com/paolostivanin/OTPClient ( sudo apt install otpclient )
Helmut10001 1y ago
I often trick myself imagining life is a game that throws boring or difficult tasks (boredom often equals difficult ) at me that I need to survive. It often helps because I I can picture finishing these things as rewards that help me get to the next "level". It was particularly helpful getting beyond difficult times (many bad events coinciding). Not sure if this can be transferred to others, or if it works because of my brain chemistry.
- kamaal 1y ago
  This stops working after a while. The real deal is you begin the realise the 'points' you accumulate playing this game can't be redeemed to do something fun or satisfying. This game begins to appear totally pointless as you age(Points are less useful as you age, and dying with lots of points means time and effort was spent to acquire a thing that can't be spent now). Which causes even more procrastination. I think humans crave freedom and free time, with good health more than anything else. This frees you up to care about doing things which we feel more rewarding and fun. Several times you are better off skipping the drills and rituals and just focus on making lots of money as quickly as possible. And of course competing to accumulate more money just for the heck of it is equally demotivating as well. Focus what you want from the money and that is likely to move you along better use of your time and effort.
  - Viliam1234 1y ago
    Yeah. Sometimes the reason you can't focus on something is that some part of your brain is trying to tell you that you shouldn't. Unfortunately, that part of the brain usually sucks at coming up with an alternative plan, and "do something else, anything" is not very actionable. And you still need to pay your bills somehow. The natural reward for work is work done. I don't need a motivational system to do the dishes. The motivation is seeing the dirty dishes gradually disappear, and the kitchen become cleaner. I don't need to create pieces of papers to represent that, because it is already happening right there, in real life. If I work on a project, it helps to specify all things that need to be done (as opposed to working on something open-ended), so that I can see how I am getting closer to the moment of "done". A nice thing about test-driven development is that you produce a set of checkboxes first, and then you gradually check them off. Even if the work is open-ended, if I keep thinking about new features that would be nice add, it helps to specify a "version 1.0", and after achieving it, a "version 2.0", etc. The idea is that after each version I can take a break and feel that my work is done. The least motivating thing is probably the job, as an employee. You work for 8 hours a day (generously assuming no overtime). There is no way to complete those 8 hours in e.g. 4 hours of working harder and then take a walk. In theory, if you do Scrum, you should have a certain reasonable amount of work assigned per sprint, and if you do it faster, then I guess you can take a short break and do something enjoyable (such as refactoring). In practice, almost no one does Scrum by the book; you will probably be randomly interrupted by extra tasks, and given unrealistic deadlines to avoid the possibility of completing the work earlier. Another demotivating thing about the job is that there is no personal consequence of completing a project; you immediately start working on a new one. The natural response to completing a work is to congratulate yourself and take a break. But at work, the vacations are mostly unrelated to projects. Also, you are paid per time spent working, not by the number of projects finished. So it is all disconnected. So I guess it all needs to be a part of some greater project, which can possibly be completed one day. Such as, putting your money in index funds, and planning to retire as soon as you reach a specified amount. Then each day you can congratulate yourself for getting 0.01% closer to the goal. (Or you can save money for other specific things, if that is what you desire.)
taeric 1y ago
And what about those of us that find they have stretches where they don't focus well on anything? Games included. There are several games I'd like to spend a bit of time on. It ain't happening.
- myst 1y ago
  Sleep until you can’t take it anymore. In less than 12h something will appear more interesting than sleeping.
  - taeric 1y ago
    I find this intensely amusing. In grade school, I got "mono" and dang near literally slept for several days. Granted, being sick is a bit different than being disinterested. My problem is typically more that there are plenty of more interesting things to do than anything I'd like to do right now.
    - myst 1y ago
      Being picky was never easy.
- gitpusher 1y ago
  When you are feeling this way it's good to take stock of your 3 fundamentals... Food, Sleep, Exercise. If any are suffering, then it's almost guaranteed to be the source of your problem. It sounds elementary but I have to remind myself of this constantly. Particularly the sleep part
  - taeric 1y ago
    I posted in another thread how reliable some old/popular answers can be. Frustratingly so. :D Exercise is annoying, as without a lot of modern life, it largely takes care of itself. Back when I could just walk to a grocery, as an easy example, it was unsurprisingly easy to stay in decent shape.
- pas 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
vonneumannstan 1y ago
>When I "fast" from those "treats", work takes on new enjoy-ability. Dopamine diet is probably the wrong technical term, but it nails the practical effects well. Man no offense but this sounds devastatingly sad. "We must starve ourselves of fun so that the barest excitement at work feels good."
- laurieherault 1y ago
  I agree with both of you, but when I am fasting and also doing activities with a high level of dopamine release, I actually find it easier to focus on my tasks as well.
- avidiax 1y ago
  > We must starve ourselves of fun so that the barest excitement at work feels good. Much like people that struggle with their weight need to turn every meal into accounting for lean protein and leafy vegetables. Eventually, you crave the broccoli a bit more than you used to, and it makes the diet easier.
- card_zero 1y ago
  Yeah, it denies that games are any good, and demonizes fun as a vice. People who talk about dopamine and procrastination are just looking for ways to beat themselves up and start conflicted fights with themselves over what they want.
- raincole 1y ago
  Do you do drugs? If not then you're already 'starving' yourself of the purest form of pleasure (which is a good thing, don't get me wrong). I don't think taking one step further is that sad.
  - cluckindan 1y ago
    That’s insanely stereotypical. There is no ”drugs” that is ”the purest form of pleasure”. Instead, there are many thousands of different substances which can elicit, heighten, prolong or enable pleasure; some illegal, some legal, some included in your favourite meals and snacks. Even vanilla is a ”drug” which enhances pleasurable feelings. (Vanillin and ethylvanillin are monoamine oxidase inhibitors and consuming them will increase serotonergic and dopaminergic activity)
geoka9 1y ago
> You can't add a kale salad after a bowl of ice cream and expect your insulin levels to go down Sorry for being off-topic, but you actually can (not a scientist, just speaking from experience). My guess is the digestion slows down and the sugar gets released into the system at a slower rate (probably because of the lower overall Glycemic index?). Anyways, it actually works! Just eat your salad before the ice cream to make sure it does :)
Aaronstotle 1y ago
I don't even get that kind of hit from a game though unless playing with friends, and that's because I'm with my friends. If I was playing alone I'd play for 30 minutes max and then stop.
d--b 1y ago
Playing sudoku is not fun at all, it’s Lumon-level shit work. Yet people definitely procrastinate on it.
yapyap 1y ago
TFA? the fucking author?
- krupan 1y ago
  Article, usually
brailsafe 1y ago
> I'm sure phones are just as stimulating for some. We all have our vices. Hard agree, and yes we have our vices, but wouldn't life be better if we had more agency over them? My phone is overwhelmingly a detriment to my life, it's just disguised as a necessary utility by doing the same things I could do anyway if I didn't have it. It's not never uniquely valuable to me, but those rare signals don't need to be tightly coupled with so so so much noise. The big one for me lately is the aptly named tethering. It's wild that it's not just built into my mac at this point, if it weren't for that, (maybe 2Fa as well) I'd leave the phone at home so often I'd probably forget about it, and I long for that future.
sn9 1y ago
It's not necessarily true that games being fun is the reason why you can play them for hours. Think about games where you're grinding doing tedious stuff to level up your character. Not nearly as fun, but still something you can end up doing for hours.
crq-yml 1y ago
I think I do some of this, but my framing is not explicitly about adopting monastic practices - rather, it's about having a "novelty budget" each day. Every novel stimulus is an opportunity to careen off course. However, if the task ahead of me is great and I'm motivated, then I automatically seek less novelty to focus on it. IOW, maintaining a boring baseline of routine so that novelty is selective is important as a way of being able to "jump into action". It's good to get off the phone. It doesn't replace the intrinsic motivation. There's an aspect to productivity advice that is about shouting down your burnout by adding more productivity hacks or taking stimulants or flagellating oneself. Burnout's root cause has to be approached by asking the tougher questions about life and aligning with a philosophy that is truthful to that. The work itself will have moments of routine boredom, exhilaration, and heartbreak, but the motive has to endure all of it.
mrheosuper 1y ago
even the Gen Z and Gen Alpha have noticed this effect and came with their own term: Brain Rot.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

mfro 1y ago

This is the point I think many people fail to understand about consumption. Yes, it is usually perfectly sustainable to spend most of your free time scrolling tiktok or playing high-reward video games, yes you can live without regular exercise or a strict diet, but there are hard to quantify effects on an entire range of other things in your life. I think it is very important for the modern person to pay close attention to their mental state with and without the things they turn to the most, especially if experiencing problems with focus or motivation.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

al_borland 1y ago

> I'm sure phones are just as stimulating for some. This is one of my big objections do 2FA. My work has been pushing it hard, and from a security perspective, I get it. However, it’s all via an Authenticator app on the phone. We can no longer set down our phones and simply work. To start working, and periodically throughout the day, we are now forced to pickup our phones to authenticate. This invites the chance to see other notifications, check and app quickly, or more generally, break flow as we have to switch to another device and back again. All of this seems like a suboptimal solution.

ambicapter 1y ago
Time to get a “work” phone.
- krustyburger 1y ago
  The optics of that can be questionable. Just ask Skyler White or her brother-in-law.
- al_borland 1y ago
  I carried 2 phones for many years. It was more trouble than it’s worth. Especially these days. Working from home, my only work use of the phone is for the Authenticator app.
jvanderbot 1y ago
You should try a CLI-based workflow for 2FA. As long as you can exfiltrate the secret (and you often can by pretending you can't scan QR codes), then you can use oathtool to generate passcodes. 1. use 'pass' to save the secret: 'pass edit work.secret' <enter it and quit> 2. use oathtool to generate 2fa given a secret: ' #!/bin/bash oathtool -b --totp "`pass show $1.secret`" >&1 ' use it like '2fa work' If you have 'xsel' you can even do 'oathtool -b --totp "`pass show $1.secret`" | xsel -ib' to copy it to clipboard automatically.
- mxmlnkn 1y ago
  Even if you only have the QR code, you can download the image or screenshot it and then extract the secret without ever having to use a smartphone by using zbarimg and then manually extracting the secret from the URI: sudo apt-get install zbar-tools oathtool zbarimg qr-2fa-code.png Output: QR-Code:otpauth://totp/username?secret=ABCDEFSECRET012349BASE32&period=30&digits=6 If you have some 2FA that you need to enter 10 times per day, then you can also add a global shortcut to automatically paste it. Of course, this undermines the "second device" security. Some PC password managers also support 2FA, e.g. https://github.com/paolostivanin/OTPClient https://github.com/paolostivanin/OTPClient ( sudo apt install otpclient )

Helmut10001 1y ago

I often trick myself imagining life is a game that throws boring or difficult tasks (boredom often equals difficult ) at me that I need to survive. It often helps because I I can picture finishing these things as rewards that help me get to the next "level". It was particularly helpful getting beyond difficult times (many bad events coinciding). Not sure if this can be transferred to others, or if it works because of my brain chemistry.

kamaal 1y ago
This stops working after a while. The real deal is you begin the realise the 'points' you accumulate playing this game can't be redeemed to do something fun or satisfying. This game begins to appear totally pointless as you age(Points are less useful as you age, and dying with lots of points means time and effort was spent to acquire a thing that can't be spent now). Which causes even more procrastination. I think humans crave freedom and free time, with good health more than anything else. This frees you up to care about doing things which we feel more rewarding and fun. Several times you are better off skipping the drills and rituals and just focus on making lots of money as quickly as possible. And of course competing to accumulate more money just for the heck of it is equally demotivating as well. Focus what you want from the money and that is likely to move you along better use of your time and effort.
- Viliam1234 1y ago
  Yeah. Sometimes the reason you can't focus on something is that some part of your brain is trying to tell you that you shouldn't. Unfortunately, that part of the brain usually sucks at coming up with an alternative plan, and "do something else, anything" is not very actionable. And you still need to pay your bills somehow. The natural reward for work is work done. I don't need a motivational system to do the dishes. The motivation is seeing the dirty dishes gradually disappear, and the kitchen become cleaner. I don't need to create pieces of papers to represent that, because it is already happening right there, in real life. If I work on a project, it helps to specify all things that need to be done (as opposed to working on something open-ended), so that I can see how I am getting closer to the moment of "done". A nice thing about test-driven development is that you produce a set of checkboxes first, and then you gradually check them off. Even if the work is open-ended, if I keep thinking about new features that would be nice add, it helps to specify a "version 1.0", and after achieving it, a "version 2.0", etc. The idea is that after each version I can take a break and feel that my work is done. The least motivating thing is probably the job, as an employee. You work for 8 hours a day (generously assuming no overtime). There is no way to complete those 8 hours in e.g. 4 hours of working harder and then take a walk. In theory, if you do Scrum, you should have a certain reasonable amount of work assigned per sprint, and if you do it faster, then I guess you can take a short break and do something enjoyable (such as refactoring). In practice, almost no one does Scrum by the book; you will probably be randomly interrupted by extra tasks, and given unrealistic deadlines to avoid the possibility of completing the work earlier. Another demotivating thing about the job is that there is no personal consequence of completing a project; you immediately start working on a new one. The natural response to completing a work is to congratulate yourself and take a break. But at work, the vacations are mostly unrelated to projects. Also, you are paid per time spent working, not by the number of projects finished. So it is all disconnected. So I guess it all needs to be a part of some greater project, which can possibly be completed one day. Such as, putting your money in index funds, and planning to retire as soon as you reach a specified amount. Then each day you can congratulate yourself for getting 0.01% closer to the goal. (Or you can save money for other specific things, if that is what you desire.)

taeric 1y ago

And what about those of us that find they have stretches where they don't focus well on anything? Games included. There are several games I'd like to spend a bit of time on. It ain't happening.

myst 1y ago
Sleep until you can’t take it anymore. In less than 12h something will appear more interesting than sleeping.
- taeric 1y ago
  I find this intensely amusing. In grade school, I got "mono" and dang near literally slept for several days. Granted, being sick is a bit different than being disinterested. My problem is typically more that there are plenty of more interesting things to do than anything I'd like to do right now.
  - myst 1y ago
    Being picky was never easy.
gitpusher 1y ago
When you are feeling this way it's good to take stock of your 3 fundamentals... Food, Sleep, Exercise. If any are suffering, then it's almost guaranteed to be the source of your problem. It sounds elementary but I have to remind myself of this constantly. Particularly the sleep part
- taeric 1y ago
  I posted in another thread how reliable some old/popular answers can be. Frustratingly so. :D Exercise is annoying, as without a lot of modern life, it largely takes care of itself. Back when I could just walk to a grocery, as an easy example, it was unsurprisingly easy to stay in decent shape.
pas 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

vonneumannstan 1y ago

>When I "fast" from those "treats", work takes on new enjoy-ability. Dopamine diet is probably the wrong technical term, but it nails the practical effects well. Man no offense but this sounds devastatingly sad. "We must starve ourselves of fun so that the barest excitement at work feels good."

laurieherault 1y ago
I agree with both of you, but when I am fasting and also doing activities with a high level of dopamine release, I actually find it easier to focus on my tasks as well.
avidiax 1y ago
> We must starve ourselves of fun so that the barest excitement at work feels good. Much like people that struggle with their weight need to turn every meal into accounting for lean protein and leafy vegetables. Eventually, you crave the broccoli a bit more than you used to, and it makes the diet easier.
card_zero 1y ago
Yeah, it denies that games are any good, and demonizes fun as a vice. People who talk about dopamine and procrastination are just looking for ways to beat themselves up and start conflicted fights with themselves over what they want.
raincole 1y ago
Do you do drugs? If not then you're already 'starving' yourself of the purest form of pleasure (which is a good thing, don't get me wrong). I don't think taking one step further is that sad.
- cluckindan 1y ago
  That’s insanely stereotypical. There is no ”drugs” that is ”the purest form of pleasure”. Instead, there are many thousands of different substances which can elicit, heighten, prolong or enable pleasure; some illegal, some legal, some included in your favourite meals and snacks. Even vanilla is a ”drug” which enhances pleasurable feelings. (Vanillin and ethylvanillin are monoamine oxidase inhibitors and consuming them will increase serotonergic and dopaminergic activity)

geoka9 1y ago

> You can't add a kale salad after a bowl of ice cream and expect your insulin levels to go down Sorry for being off-topic, but you actually can (not a scientist, just speaking from experience). My guess is the digestion slows down and the sugar gets released into the system at a slower rate (probably because of the lower overall Glycemic index?). Anyways, it actually works! Just eat your salad before the ice cream to make sure it does :)

Aaronstotle 1y ago

I don't even get that kind of hit from a game though unless playing with friends, and that's because I'm with my friends. If I was playing alone I'd play for 30 minutes max and then stop.

d--b 1y ago

Playing sudoku is not fun at all, it’s Lumon-level shit work. Yet people definitely procrastinate on it.

yapyap 1y ago

TFA? the fucking author?

krupan 1y ago
Article, usually

brailsafe 1y ago

> I'm sure phones are just as stimulating for some. We all have our vices. Hard agree, and yes we have our vices, but wouldn't life be better if we had more agency over them? My phone is overwhelmingly a detriment to my life, it's just disguised as a necessary utility by doing the same things I could do anyway if I didn't have it. It's not never uniquely valuable to me, but those rare signals don't need to be tightly coupled with so so so much noise. The big one for me lately is the aptly named tethering. It's wild that it's not just built into my mac at this point, if it weren't for that, (maybe 2Fa as well) I'd leave the phone at home so often I'd probably forget about it, and I long for that future.

sn9 1y ago

It's not necessarily true that games being fun is the reason why you can play them for hours. Think about games where you're grinding doing tedious stuff to level up your character. Not nearly as fun, but still something you can end up doing for hours.

crq-yml 1y ago

I think I do some of this, but my framing is not explicitly about adopting monastic practices - rather, it's about having a "novelty budget" each day. Every novel stimulus is an opportunity to careen off course. However, if the task ahead of me is great and I'm motivated, then I automatically seek less novelty to focus on it. IOW, maintaining a boring baseline of routine so that novelty is selective is important as a way of being able to "jump into action". It's good to get off the phone. It doesn't replace the intrinsic motivation. There's an aspect to productivity advice that is about shouting down your burnout by adding more productivity hacks or taking stimulants or flagellating oneself. Burnout's root cause has to be approached by asking the tougher questions about life and aligning with a philosophy that is truthful to that. The work itself will have moments of routine boredom, exhilaration, and heartbreak, but the motive has to endure all of it.

mrheosuper 1y ago

even the Gen Z and Gen Alpha have noticed this effect and came with their own term: Brain Rot.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]