7 ms·

Attention is your scarcest resource (2020)

334 points by jxmorris12 1y ago

dondraper36 1y ago
Even though I agree with the premise of the article, as a person with ADHD, doing nothing else while being blocked by someone is very impractical. Maybe that works in huge companies, but most managers I have worked with are unlikely to agree with zero concurrency in software engineers :)
- riedel 1y ago
  Also scoring on the ADHD spectrum and having a pure knowledge worker job, I have to say, that knowledge work is actually not reliant on attention at all. One can get productive and not fired in many ways. Working in research is IMHO a nice niche for a neurodiverse community. I would say: a fitting job is all you need. As a side note: I have actually a lot of attention (so it is not scarce at all) but not always at the thing that just needs to get done atm.
  - dondraper36 1y ago
    That's also very much task-dependent. When I have a task that I find either intellectually challenging or with a critically important outcome, I am usually hyperfocused, and even pausing for lunch is an annoyance. With less rewarding tasks, however, I would say attention and discipline are exactly what I wish I had more of. Writing documentation, listening to other people talking in calls, etc.
    - riedel 1y ago
      I can totally relate. Even going to the toilet is difficult on hyperfocus. Stupid thing is that to make things 'interesting' for my brain they often have to get overdue, adding unnecessary stress until that point. But it is all about acknowledging that in my case and working with it. I guess other people are a lot further down the spectrum or have jobs where this does not work. But I also know how much this ability actually helped me in the past (and annoyed other people I guess)
    - theshrike79 1y ago
      I saw a nice 4 quadrant chart about this somewhere (but can't find it now). Basically when a task has JUST the right urgency and/or difficulty level, my ADD superpowers engage and I can Just Do It. But anything outside of that I just get bored and instead build a tool to filter and enrich RSS feeds, because it tickles my brain the right way. I can kinda force myself to focus, but not always.
  - dondraper36 1y ago
    Speaking of ADHD, sometimes I wonder whether that might be a false positive self-diagnosis in my case. About 10 years ago, when I consumed much less media content like Instagram or YouTube, everything was different in that I used to be an avid reader of fiction, which I now can hardly do without losing focus.
    - riedel 1y ago
      > Speaking of ADHD, sometimes I wonder whether that might be a false positive self-diagnosis in my case. > > About 10 years ago, when I consumed much less media content like Instagram or YouTube, everything was different in that I used to be an avid reader of fiction, which I now can hardly do without losing focus. I have recently at the age of 45 went through the trouble of getting myself 'diagnosed'. The whole process and theory is IMHO all very hand-wavy. I guess it boils down to the fact, if one's neurotype is incompatible with one's life you can call it illness and you need to give it a name to get treatment/help. In my case I don't want to take drugs, however, I am more self aware, which helps a bit creating less damage to myself and others (hopefully). It helps a bit also giving it a name myself and looking for better tools. While I certainly had trouble in my youth (which mostly my mother covered for me), it wasn't that much of a trouble in between, but as I grow older m ability to compensate by staying up all night to wait for some focus is decreasing. Regarding distractions: for me it is rather HN than YT, because it keeps my brain busy without pushing too much trash and ads into it as a side effect.
    - theshrike79 1y ago
      It's a threshold thing. The easier you make reading, the more likely yo are to do it. I've been using e-ink readers for about a decade, starting with the first Kindle (the one with a tiny keyboard) and now a Kobo Libra Colour (because f. the dude who can rent a whole city for his wedding). I can pick it up, open the cover and it's _exactly_ where I left it the last time. It weighs exactly the same whether I'm reading a 100 page novella or the latest Brandon Sanderson 1500 page brick. My eyes don't get tired because the display only updates on page change and it can ONLY read books, there's no way for me to get distracted by a notification. Now I've started to train my brain to pick up my e-reader when I have the urge to start doomscrolling some algorithm shit hole. I've gone through 4 books in the last month already =)
  - zavec 1y ago
    I got to work on research in my previous job which was a lot of fun. Ultimately the company pivoted to a direction which was less interesting to me (which I don't blame them for, you need to build something people actually want to buy and the original vision wasn't that), but I hope I can find a research position like that again someday.
poemxo 1y ago
That makes sense, because attention is also all I need.
- ramon156 1y ago
  I say the same after pushing ~2000 lines of slop
asplake 1y ago
As a manager, attention in your scarcest resource, and lack of context (strategic &/or operational) is a problem for everyone. The two are connected.
bongripper 1y ago
[dead]
incognito124 1y ago
I wonder if attention span can be increased somehow. Also related, I noticed context switching from one deep task to another requires significant energy and time, I also wonder if that can be optimized.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- nakedneuron 1y ago
  Most effort goes into loading the working memory. The longer the disconnect the more effort reloading takes. It occurred to me that it would be beneficial to use flashcards to trigger the memory. It sounds unconventional/unorthotodox use of flashcards but why not. Take screenshots of your codebase/functions/commits, capture progress on your workbench, take little notes of your progress/procedures/learnings/recipes and resurface them. I'm sometimes annoyed to rediscover a useful tool I made time ago. I yet haven't done this systematically, much less using a SRS, but it is sure worth a try. Difficult to predict when this is worth the effort. But it's a good habit to keep "lab notes" anyway.
tobyhinloopen 1y ago
I found that AI coding allows me to work on more stuff because it's doing its thing faster, but it also greatly diminishes my attention per project, reducing to less optimal solutions. Nobody is complaining though, stuff gets done.
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  I'd argue "diminishes attention per project, reducing to less optimal" is a great summary of the attention problem. Like, you can learn speed reading / scanning and go through all of HN's daily submissions in half an hour (... I do that), but how much do you actually retain? Or you can pick one and go in deep with it. I've seen both on HN, it's fairly easy to pick out those that just read the headline and jumped into the comments (...like me) and those that read and understood the article, did or brought some extra research, and did a thoughtful and well crafted reply.
amelius 1y ago
If only it wasn't the Internet's de facto currency.
baxtr 1y ago
The sum of all attention is your life. So whenever you spend attention you spend life time. This helps me now and then to put away my phone and just live.
- qsort 1y ago
  We could say it's all you need...
  - thfuran 1y ago
    I don't think Maslow would agree.
    - mks_shuffle 1y ago
      I think the parent comment is referring to "Attention is All You Need", famous transformer paper.
      - thfuran 1y ago
        And I couldn’t fit any unreasonable effectiveness in my reply, so I had to be contrarian.
    - waldrews 1y ago
      Or, you know, the Beatles.
- pmg101 1y ago
  Sounds fun but breaks down on further inspection. What activities, in your taxonomy, count as "just living"? Reading a novel? Reading a trashy magazine? Washing dishes? Building a model boat? Conversation? Staring out the window? You know I can't think of any reason why phone activities aren't also living.
  - IrishTechie 1y ago
    When you use your phone to surf the Internet you’re often doing it to just fill time, rather than it being an activity you really want to do (like those things you list). You often tend to come out of a long phone reading session feeling a bit hungover and possibly guilty at the time you’ve spent, compared to say building a model boat where you’ll generally feel positive and refreshed afterward. Using your phone is also generally not one activity you’re paying close attention to, you’re hoping from one thing to the next never really getting a sense of flow. To be clear I’m talking about the mindless scrolling many of us do, if you’re reading a dissertation on battery chemistry or something on your phone I find that’s a different story.
uludag 1y ago
Great article. "To be reliably able to focus on something, you need to be intuitively, emotionally invested in the outcome." This rings 100% true for me. I've succumbed to a sort of fatalism though, where I'm not confident at all I can control what I'm emotionally invested in and that they just arise out of the situations I find myself in along with seemingly random thoughts from the brain.
- anal_reactor 1y ago
  I've tried becoming a nicer person in order to expand my social circle because apparently that's the foundation of your mental health. The result is that I met lots of people whose presence I simply do not enjoy. The people whose presence I do enjoy have shit to do and I see them once every few months at best. My prospects of meeting a partner are epsilon, which a major source of frustration for me. I've tried having hobbies but everything gets boring after the initial phase of "wow I love doing this new thing". I've tried sticking to things out of pure discipline and I gained skills, but fuck, it's not enjoyable. I'm not invested in my career because getting a significant raise at my company is pretty much impossible, and if I want to switch companies, I'd need to leave local maximum. I don't enjoy spending time with my family because they're not interested in getting to know me, they just want me to perform the theatre of "How's weather? Ah it's a nice day today". It's not possible for me to be emotionally invested in anything because I'm profoundly disappointed in life. I want a refund.
  - yownie 1y ago
    that just sounds like depression with a lot of extra steps.
  - _luiza_ 1y ago
    Read once somewhere that both heaven and hell surround us and it's all about what we choose to pay attention to. When nothing works, go for delusions (only if you're stable enough to not have them break apart the nature of your reality too much). Also, go travel; be it on the other side of the city in a new coffee shop, in a new town for their town's day or sth, or in a new state/country/continent, travel somehow manages to shuffle the internals in one's brain enough to reboot to a different baseline; good trick for when current internal state is too meah.
randomtoast 1y ago
Attention can be trained through Samatha meditation.
Lapsa 1y ago
US3951134A and they can take away it from you freely and anonymously
lagrange77 1y ago
That's why i despise advertising and marketing so much. It forcefully tries to hack you and steal your scarcest resource.
- Mars008 1y ago
  Have to practice attention hygiene. Add blockers, switching to something else if add or woke crap pops up. Annoying audio adds in shops.. I start singing to myself to keep verbal part of the brain busy.
  - lagrange77 1y ago
    Oh i do.
tossandthrow 1y ago
I saw the title of submission and immediately closed HN to do something better. (Only re-opened to comment this)
- pyman 1y ago
  We missed you during those 30 seconds :)
  - tossandthrow 1y ago
    I am bad at directing my attention. But at least my disciplin is equally bad.
ath3nd 1y ago
> Once I was full-time managing, I had no shiny distractions and was able to spend my showers focusing on how to be a better manager. And once I was 50%+ focused, well, I haven’t become a “superstar 10x manager” yet, but I quickly stopped being 0.1x. Counterpoint: a manager who is not spending at least some time on programming or in the codebase/PRs is not able to evaluate fully their teams' strengths and weaknesses and collaboration and is less of a 1x manager than a manager who does code/spend time in the codebase(s). Let me elaborate further. # Engineering Excellence It's a part of our job to foster and encourage engineering excellence. A hands-off "I only manage" type of engineering manager can get the following signals for a team member in terms of excellence: - from other team members (great) - from Jira/PRs merged output (good-ish) But is this merged PR the best work that can be done? Is it maybe not shoddily but quickly done, and LGTM-ed by others? Do you get good feedback about that person from other team members because they are great at being friends, or because they are excellent engineers? Is the codebase slowly becoming unmaintainable from the whole team vibe coding? You can't know for sure, cause you didn't check, and if you are "I only manage" type of engineering manager, after some time you wouldn't be able to tell the difference even if you checked either. Conclusion: an engineering manager who doesn't frequently check the codebase and or/code themselves can rely on fewer signals to gauge technical ability in their team and is less informed and capable to steer engineering excellence than a hands-on engineering manager. # Promotion and recognition It's a part of our job to recognize talent for the work they do and reward them for that. An "I only manage" engineering manager can rely only on two things to find things to reward in a software engineer: - Other teammates' feedback (okay-ish) - If that software engineer themselves brought up a significantly difficult achievement and self-advocated for their work (bad, selects for chest thumpers) An "I only manage" engineering manager not looking at code is blind to the achievements of more shy engineers that don't loudly advertise their work, and can be also blind to a dynamic where teammates don't know what others are doing. On the other hand, a hands-on manager might find achievements that teammates don't, and build a culture of celebrating each others' achievements + actually knowing what the hell others are doing. Conclusion: "I only manage" engineering manager can be blind to some dysfunction and reward disproportionately people good at selling themselves. A hands-on engineering manager has a better and ampifly teams' recognition of one another and create a culture of shared celebration of achievements. # Know what people are talking about If you don't code/solve technical problems and you "only manage", what makes you qualified to hold a discussion, and even worse, judge merit of your team members? Why are we shoving a dynamic where the least qualified judges others and "solves" their problems. Sure, many problems are people problems, like salary, conflict, etc, but these problems are very often related to actual job performance. How can you judge thoroughly if someone is actually doing a good job ("I only manage" uses 80% vibes and 20% second-hand stories) and deserves that salary increase if you haven't seen their code or how they communicate with others in PRs? I want to stress out that I don't advocate for managers that are the best devs in their team, nor managers who don't care for their teams' wellbeing. I am simply saying that to actually manage well, you gotta be "in the things", know well what your team is doing AND HOW WELL. To judge software engineering capabilities, you yourself need to have sharp software engineering capabilities and getting a taste of the daily work makes you a far better engineering manager than the "I only manage" type of manager.
mzahir 1y ago
https://archive.ph/tiJk9 https://archive.ph/tiJk9
begueradj 1y ago
Men like Steve Jobs were known for their high attention and focus (signal-to-noise ratio) Focus on your goal + discipline & practice + semen retention = you will be a "übermensch".
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  You had me until "semen retention", wtf lol
  - begueradj 1y ago
    Well, Steve Jobs was into that too (and he's not the only one of that scale who practiced semen retention) And if you are an athlete of any type of sports, you will learn the hard way how it is important to keep that energy at least several weeks (to several months) before (and during) the competition.
    - lolive 1y ago
      True. My code has improved significantly since I stopped Youporn! [fellows, that thread is slowly becoming a South Park episode!]
      - begueradj 1y ago
        Scientific fact: just like coding, sex happens in your brain.
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
        lolive 1y ago
        Message to my [dear] colleagues: Not a reason to code like a dick!
    - lolive 1y ago
      > Well, Steve Jobs was into that too (and he's not the only one of that scale who practiced semen retention) Better not meet him in the elevator when he was beyond his third day of semen retention. #fired #fired #fired
Simon_O_Rourke 1y ago
Attention is relative, like if you're in the middle of some code review and your kid calls saying they've got a problem, then you may get distracted - but rightfully so. Not like this jerk, who's kid had to put time in his calendar for playing chess with him, because he was too interested in his own career https://www.pathtostaff.com/p/work-life-balance-slows-careers-e9 https://www.pathtostaff.com/p/work-life-balance-slows-career...
- llmthrow103 1y ago
  I'm mid-30s, never did anything to accelerate my career, and have already reached a point in my career that I'd be happy at if I stopped climbing here. I also can eat 3 meals per day with my family because I work from home and I have multiple athletic and intellectual pursuits. Speedrunning a career at the expense of living the rest of your life just seems psychotic to me.
  - rtkaratekid 1y ago
    I’m glad I’m not the only one! I decided early on that the balance means more to me than making more money or having the most amazing resume.
  - OneMorePerson 1y ago
    As someone who couldn't agree more with this part "Speedrunning a career at the expense of living the rest of your life just seems psychotic to me.", I don't think they see it that way. For a lot of people who work this much, the career is the dominant part of their life by choice. It's not popular to admit that anymore but they don't have a destination, they are doing what they enjoy (working a lot).
- lionkor 1y ago
  That is an unhinged post/blog/whatever that is. I've never seen such a load of cope for overworking and living for your employer.
  - 0xEF 1y ago
Niharika125 1y ago
[flagged]
uwagar 1y ago
they dont let u spend so much time in the shower as to have an idea anymore.
- lolive 1y ago
  Meetings > shower ;)
  - uwagar 1y ago
    wtf does that mean?
    - lolive 1y ago
      Meetings is the only official place when good ideas shall happen. [managers organize tons of them for a reason!]
anyg 1y ago
I should give time-boxing a try. My problem with 50+% focus and monotasking is that I tend to ignore everything else as much as possible when spending even 5 mins would take care of a side task. I take "All or nothing" to heart
water9 1y ago
Time is your scarcest resource
nikanj 1y ago
Attention is the scarcest resource for people who have ample other resources.
0xEF 1y ago
Spoken like a true middle manager. Attention is not the resource, but the act of spending the actual resource; time. Time is your most precious resource. Everyone wants more, but there is no way to get more. Nobody knows when their supply will run out. We do not produce it, having been granted a finite amount of it by our existence. Attention is to time as shopping is to your paycheck.
- HPsquared 1y ago
  Time and attention have the same dimensions and units I think, but they aren't quite the same. A 1:1 ratio would be the upper limit (full attention).
- Terr_ 1y ago
  Time-Giving-Attention is strictly less than Time though, at least as far as an external observer can measure, and is therefore scarcer, and scarcer still if it has additional requirements like Human Brain Is Awake.
- 28304283409234 1y ago
  Spoken like a true <insert derogatory term>. I disagree. My paycheck stays what it is when I do not go shopping. Time keeps running out regardless of where my attention goes. To me it seems that attention most certainly is a separate resource. And more importantly, regardless of what it is, it is more important. Time is meaningless. My attention is not.
  - Treegarden 1y ago
    I agree and dont understand the OP. I drink coffee out of the fear that I would waste my whole days time. The coffee allows me to spend some hours of focus time on what I want. In line with the blog posts point. This has been a struggle to all my life, its very hard to control my focus, my attention. I've been diagnosed with adhd (for whats that worth) and at some point took medication who's whole purpose was to allow me to control my focus. When I have unbridled focus, I suddenly have access to my brains full capacity. I think my IQ is easily 10 or 30 points higher / lower depending if I have focus or not.
highwaylights 1y ago
I never have ideas in the shower. My best ideas always come to me when I'm almost asleep and I have no idea why that is, which is really frustrating because I know I'm never going to remember them. Sometimes I'll get up and write it down but the bar's pretty high for that because then I'm awake and I know I'll end up zombie-ing around the house for another 2 hours until I'm tired enough to sleep again. I realise this is interesting to no-one but me, but it's WEIRD, right!?
- 5555624 1y ago
  The "hypnagogic state," anecdotally associated with creativity. (https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/why-do-i-always-come-up-with-my-best-ideas-when-im-trying-to-get-to-sleep https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/why-do-i-always-...)
- nicbou 1y ago
  Could it be that it's the only truly idle time you get? I find that I get my best ideas on longer solo trips, when I spend a lot of time lingering in cafés and sitting in trains with little to do.
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  No, it's not weird. Ideas come where they come. Wherever you get them, be ready to grab them. Keith Richards (of The Rolling Stones) kept a tape recorder by his bed, for exactly this reason. One morning he woke up and found that the tape was all the way at the end. He re-wound it and found that he had played a guitar riff and sung the words "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" several times. The rest of the tape was of him snoring.
lukko 1y ago
I like the idea of a 'bullshit timebox' - an hour period of protected time for minor chores & slightly annoying tasks. I wonder what the best way of arranging it is. I guess you want to schedule them or have set weekly times, otherwise there's a slight overhead of remembering and finding the best time to timebox. Or maybe you use the last timebox to schedule the next one..
jrflowers 1y ago
I love that you can just write anything online. “Attention is your scarcest resource” doesn’t make any sense at all for anyone on earth in any context but if you just sort of like phrases based on shape or vibe it’s definitely a sentence. It is like “The Goof Troop Movie Trilogy is finally getting its final installment… hyuck”. Like no it isn’t, that’s not happening, that’s just made up. Those are just words that are fun to read but mean nothing
keybored 1y ago
Then I should get back into meditation. Half of standard Buddhist meditation is exactly that, training concentration (so-called). Usually in a "pristine" environment. Which an open office is not.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
setnone 1y ago
In my dictionary attention is almost a synonym of love
Razengan 1y ago
Time is the scarcest resource. Everything else can be renewed.
TedHerman 1y ago
Inattention is abundant.
markus_zhang 1y ago
Reaching 40+ and having a full set of family, I think there is one more subtle resources that people don’t talk about until it’s too late (for me it’s now) —— not your time, your energy, your attention, but your mental strength to use the above resources. Right now, I’m not really out of time or energy or attention, but I just don’t feel the interest to pursuit any intellectual hobbies that I used to pursuit. Occasionally I went back to them but quickly dropped after maybe a day. I used to work on hobbies every day, but nowadays? Maybe once per month. Anyway, my advice is to NOT get a kid or even married if you have some strong intellectual interests. Family and kids are going to replace them as a new life style. It is not a worse one, neither a better one, just a different one. But you might never ever in this life get to drill deep into what you loved because you are going to lose the love — but not entirely, so you still regret.
- sebmellen 1y ago
  I think this might just be age. I have kids but I’m in my mid 20s and still feel very intellectually driven.
  - markus_zhang 1y ago
    Yeah could be age but more likely both -- can't imagine such a dramatic change in just 2-3 years.
    - sebmellen 1y ago
      That’s fair, everything is multifactorial in a complex system!
  - mezzie2 1y ago
    I'm 37 and still very intellectually driven (no children). I do think in general you're correct, though, because it's harder to find people like this as I age.
    - qmmmur 1y ago
justcallmejm 1y ago
This is precisely why we (two longtime Vipassana meditators) built Aloe. Attention is the precursor to agency. It’s all we’ve got. In today’s over-saturated information environment we need superhuman attention if we’re going to have any agency left.
- sork_hn 1y ago
  I couldn’t find it (or I found too many results actually). Do you have a link?
teberl 1y ago
Reading this article i followed a link which i find, at least, as good as that one. https://paulgraham.com/vb.html https://paulgraham.com/vb.html It's so true it hurts me!
bookofjoe 1y ago
Disagree: it's time.
jleyank 1y ago
Your scarcest resource is time, and you don't know how much you have to spend. And burnout is real - before you advocate having no diversions in life, imagine what happens when it occurs.
ashutosh-mishra 1y ago
This connects to a broader truth about knowledge work: we often treat focus as a personal failing when it's really a design problem. Most people try to fix their focus through better time management or productivity systems, but the real solution is usually structural - changing what you're responsible for, not how you manage those responsibilities.
ratelimitsteve 1y ago
Hear me out: it's your scarcest resources and also a certain amount of waste is not just expected but necessary. This article starts with the phrase "Like many people, I have most of my best ideas in the shower." What's happening when you have shower ideas is something called the default mode network (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network) is activated. It's basically "What you're thinking about when you're not thinking about anything" and it's how your brain builds relationships between facts. It's usually where you do your thinking about yourself, about other people and the past and future, as opposed to what is called the task-positive network which is when your thinking is focused on concrete things in the here and now. What's interesting about the default mode network is that it's the source of those "a-ha!" moments because, unconsciously, its actually been analyzing the problem, building potentially insightful connections between ideas and integrating those ideas into what you already know.
- runeks 1y ago
  > Hear me out: it's your scarcest resources and also a certain amount of waste is not just expected but necessary. Where's the waste in what you're describing? If all this stuff is going on then it doesn't sound wasteful at all to me.
  - ratelimitsteve 1y ago
    Fair, but when I say "waste" I mean more "cannot and should not be consciously marshalled toward a specific effort" Also sometimes this same network that creates insights creates things like when I couldn't remember the lyrics to Mingulay Boat Song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29l90zcoTBo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29l90zcoTBo) so I bopped around the house for a week singing "Heel ya ho boys/Let her go boys/She's a vampire/Set her on fire" so it's not all diamonds in the mine
sunrisetiger 1y ago
Reading a book about this by Chris Hayes called Siren's Call. Attention and Information are at odds with each other.

334 points by jxmorris12 1y ago

Even though I agree with the premise of the article, as a person with ADHD, doing nothing else while being blocked by someone is very impractical. Maybe that works in huge companies, but most managers I have worked with are unlikely to agree with zero concurrency in software engineers :)

riedel 1y ago
Also scoring on the ADHD spectrum and having a pure knowledge worker job, I have to say, that knowledge work is actually not reliant on attention at all. One can get productive and not fired in many ways. Working in research is IMHO a nice niche for a neurodiverse community. I would say: a fitting job is all you need. As a side note: I have actually a lot of attention (so it is not scarce at all) but not always at the thing that just needs to get done atm.
- dondraper36 1y ago
  That's also very much task-dependent. When I have a task that I find either intellectually challenging or with a critically important outcome, I am usually hyperfocused, and even pausing for lunch is an annoyance. With less rewarding tasks, however, I would say attention and discipline are exactly what I wish I had more of. Writing documentation, listening to other people talking in calls, etc.
  - riedel 1y ago
    I can totally relate. Even going to the toilet is difficult on hyperfocus. Stupid thing is that to make things 'interesting' for my brain they often have to get overdue, adding unnecessary stress until that point. But it is all about acknowledging that in my case and working with it. I guess other people are a lot further down the spectrum or have jobs where this does not work. But I also know how much this ability actually helped me in the past (and annoyed other people I guess)
  - theshrike79 1y ago
    I saw a nice 4 quadrant chart about this somewhere (but can't find it now). Basically when a task has JUST the right urgency and/or difficulty level, my ADD superpowers engage and I can Just Do It. But anything outside of that I just get bored and instead build a tool to filter and enrich RSS feeds, because it tickles my brain the right way. I can kinda force myself to focus, but not always.
- dondraper36 1y ago
  Speaking of ADHD, sometimes I wonder whether that might be a false positive self-diagnosis in my case. About 10 years ago, when I consumed much less media content like Instagram or YouTube, everything was different in that I used to be an avid reader of fiction, which I now can hardly do without losing focus.
  - riedel 1y ago
    > Speaking of ADHD, sometimes I wonder whether that might be a false positive self-diagnosis in my case. > > About 10 years ago, when I consumed much less media content like Instagram or YouTube, everything was different in that I used to be an avid reader of fiction, which I now can hardly do without losing focus. I have recently at the age of 45 went through the trouble of getting myself 'diagnosed'. The whole process and theory is IMHO all very hand-wavy. I guess it boils down to the fact, if one's neurotype is incompatible with one's life you can call it illness and you need to give it a name to get treatment/help. In my case I don't want to take drugs, however, I am more self aware, which helps a bit creating less damage to myself and others (hopefully). It helps a bit also giving it a name myself and looking for better tools. While I certainly had trouble in my youth (which mostly my mother covered for me), it wasn't that much of a trouble in between, but as I grow older m ability to compensate by staying up all night to wait for some focus is decreasing. Regarding distractions: for me it is rather HN than YT, because it keeps my brain busy without pushing too much trash and ads into it as a side effect.
  - theshrike79 1y ago
    It's a threshold thing. The easier you make reading, the more likely yo are to do it. I've been using e-ink readers for about a decade, starting with the first Kindle (the one with a tiny keyboard) and now a Kobo Libra Colour (because f. the dude who can rent a whole city for his wedding). I can pick it up, open the cover and it's _exactly_ where I left it the last time. It weighs exactly the same whether I'm reading a 100 page novella or the latest Brandon Sanderson 1500 page brick. My eyes don't get tired because the display only updates on page change and it can ONLY read books, there's no way for me to get distracted by a notification. Now I've started to train my brain to pick up my e-reader when I have the urge to start doomscrolling some algorithm shit hole. I've gone through 4 books in the last month already =)
- zavec 1y ago
  I got to work on research in my previous job which was a lot of fun. Ultimately the company pivoted to a direction which was less interesting to me (which I don't blame them for, you need to build something people actually want to buy and the original vision wasn't that), but I hope I can find a research position like that again someday.

poemxo 1y ago

That makes sense, because attention is also all I need.

ramon156 1y ago
I say the same after pushing ~2000 lines of slop

asplake 1y ago

As a manager, attention in your scarcest resource, and lack of context (strategic &/or operational) is a problem for everyone. The two are connected.

bongripper 1y ago

[dead]

incognito124 1y ago

I wonder if attention span can be increased somehow. Also related, I noticed context switching from one deep task to another requires significant energy and time, I also wonder if that can be optimized.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
nakedneuron 1y ago
Most effort goes into loading the working memory. The longer the disconnect the more effort reloading takes. It occurred to me that it would be beneficial to use flashcards to trigger the memory. It sounds unconventional/unorthotodox use of flashcards but why not. Take screenshots of your codebase/functions/commits, capture progress on your workbench, take little notes of your progress/procedures/learnings/recipes and resurface them. I'm sometimes annoyed to rediscover a useful tool I made time ago. I yet haven't done this systematically, much less using a SRS, but it is sure worth a try. Difficult to predict when this is worth the effort. But it's a good habit to keep "lab notes" anyway.

tobyhinloopen 1y ago

I found that AI coding allows me to work on more stuff because it's doing its thing faster, but it also greatly diminishes my attention per project, reducing to less optimal solutions. Nobody is complaining though, stuff gets done.

Cthulhu_ 1y ago
I'd argue "diminishes attention per project, reducing to less optimal" is a great summary of the attention problem. Like, you can learn speed reading / scanning and go through all of HN's daily submissions in half an hour (... I do that), but how much do you actually retain? Or you can pick one and go in deep with it. I've seen both on HN, it's fairly easy to pick out those that just read the headline and jumped into the comments (...like me) and those that read and understood the article, did or brought some extra research, and did a thoughtful and well crafted reply.

amelius 1y ago

If only it wasn't the Internet's de facto currency.

baxtr 1y ago

The sum of all attention is your life. So whenever you spend attention you spend life time. This helps me now and then to put away my phone and just live.

qsort 1y ago
We could say it's all you need...
- thfuran 1y ago
  I don't think Maslow would agree.
  - mks_shuffle 1y ago
    I think the parent comment is referring to "Attention is All You Need", famous transformer paper.
    - thfuran 1y ago
      And I couldn’t fit any unreasonable effectiveness in my reply, so I had to be contrarian.
  - waldrews 1y ago
    Or, you know, the Beatles.
pmg101 1y ago
Sounds fun but breaks down on further inspection. What activities, in your taxonomy, count as "just living"? Reading a novel? Reading a trashy magazine? Washing dishes? Building a model boat? Conversation? Staring out the window? You know I can't think of any reason why phone activities aren't also living.
- IrishTechie 1y ago
  When you use your phone to surf the Internet you’re often doing it to just fill time, rather than it being an activity you really want to do (like those things you list). You often tend to come out of a long phone reading session feeling a bit hungover and possibly guilty at the time you’ve spent, compared to say building a model boat where you’ll generally feel positive and refreshed afterward. Using your phone is also generally not one activity you’re paying close attention to, you’re hoping from one thing to the next never really getting a sense of flow. To be clear I’m talking about the mindless scrolling many of us do, if you’re reading a dissertation on battery chemistry or something on your phone I find that’s a different story.

uludag 1y ago

Great article. "To be reliably able to focus on something, you need to be intuitively, emotionally invested in the outcome." This rings 100% true for me. I've succumbed to a sort of fatalism though, where I'm not confident at all I can control what I'm emotionally invested in and that they just arise out of the situations I find myself in along with seemingly random thoughts from the brain.

anal_reactor 1y ago
I've tried becoming a nicer person in order to expand my social circle because apparently that's the foundation of your mental health. The result is that I met lots of people whose presence I simply do not enjoy. The people whose presence I do enjoy have shit to do and I see them once every few months at best. My prospects of meeting a partner are epsilon, which a major source of frustration for me. I've tried having hobbies but everything gets boring after the initial phase of "wow I love doing this new thing". I've tried sticking to things out of pure discipline and I gained skills, but fuck, it's not enjoyable. I'm not invested in my career because getting a significant raise at my company is pretty much impossible, and if I want to switch companies, I'd need to leave local maximum. I don't enjoy spending time with my family because they're not interested in getting to know me, they just want me to perform the theatre of "How's weather? Ah it's a nice day today". It's not possible for me to be emotionally invested in anything because I'm profoundly disappointed in life. I want a refund.
- yownie 1y ago
  that just sounds like depression with a lot of extra steps.
- _luiza_ 1y ago
  Read once somewhere that both heaven and hell surround us and it's all about what we choose to pay attention to. When nothing works, go for delusions (only if you're stable enough to not have them break apart the nature of your reality too much). Also, go travel; be it on the other side of the city in a new coffee shop, in a new town for their town's day or sth, or in a new state/country/continent, travel somehow manages to shuffle the internals in one's brain enough to reboot to a different baseline; good trick for when current internal state is too meah.

randomtoast 1y ago

Attention can be trained through Samatha meditation.

Lapsa 1y ago

US3951134A and they can take away it from you freely and anonymously

lagrange77 1y ago

That's why i despise advertising and marketing so much. It forcefully tries to hack you and steal your scarcest resource.

Mars008 1y ago
Have to practice attention hygiene. Add blockers, switching to something else if add or woke crap pops up. Annoying audio adds in shops.. I start singing to myself to keep verbal part of the brain busy.
- lagrange77 1y ago
  Oh i do.

tossandthrow 1y ago

I saw the title of submission and immediately closed HN to do something better. (Only re-opened to comment this)

pyman 1y ago
We missed you during those 30 seconds :)
- tossandthrow 1y ago
  I am bad at directing my attention. But at least my disciplin is equally bad.

ath3nd 1y ago

> Once I was full-time managing, I had no shiny distractions and was able to spend my showers focusing on how to be a better manager. And once I was 50%+ focused, well, I haven’t become a “superstar 10x manager” yet, but I quickly stopped being 0.1x. Counterpoint: a manager who is not spending at least some time on programming or in the codebase/PRs is not able to evaluate fully their teams' strengths and weaknesses and collaboration and is less of a 1x manager than a manager who does code/spend time in the codebase(s). Let me elaborate further. # Engineering Excellence It's a part of our job to foster and encourage engineering excellence. A hands-off "I only manage" type of engineering manager can get the following signals for a team member in terms of excellence: - from other team members (great) - from Jira/PRs merged output (good-ish) But is this merged PR the best work that can be done? Is it maybe not shoddily but quickly done, and LGTM-ed by others? Do you get good feedback about that person from other team members because they are great at being friends, or because they are excellent engineers? Is the codebase slowly becoming unmaintainable from the whole team vibe coding? You can't know for sure, cause you didn't check, and if you are "I only manage" type of engineering manager, after some time you wouldn't be able to tell the difference even if you checked either. Conclusion: an engineering manager who doesn't frequently check the codebase and or/code themselves can rely on fewer signals to gauge technical ability in their team and is less informed and capable to steer engineering excellence than a hands-on engineering manager. # Promotion and recognition It's a part of our job to recognize talent for the work they do and reward them for that. An "I only manage" engineering manager can rely only on two things to find things to reward in a software engineer: - Other teammates' feedback (okay-ish) - If that software engineer themselves brought up a significantly difficult achievement and self-advocated for their work (bad, selects for chest thumpers) An "I only manage" engineering manager not looking at code is blind to the achievements of more shy engineers that don't loudly advertise their work, and can be also blind to a dynamic where teammates don't know what others are doing. On the other hand, a hands-on manager might find achievements that teammates don't, and build a culture of celebrating each others' achievements + actually knowing what the hell others are doing. Conclusion: "I only manage" engineering manager can be blind to some dysfunction and reward disproportionately people good at selling themselves. A hands-on engineering manager has a better and ampifly teams' recognition of one another and create a culture of shared celebration of achievements. # Know what people are talking about If you don't code/solve technical problems and you "only manage", what makes you qualified to hold a discussion, and even worse, judge merit of your team members? Why are we shoving a dynamic where the least qualified judges others and "solves" their problems. Sure, many problems are people problems, like salary, conflict, etc, but these problems are very often related to actual job performance. How can you judge thoroughly if someone is actually doing a good job ("I only manage" uses 80% vibes and 20% second-hand stories) and deserves that salary increase if you haven't seen their code or how they communicate with others in PRs? I want to stress out that I don't advocate for managers that are the best devs in their team, nor managers who don't care for their teams' wellbeing. I am simply saying that to actually manage well, you gotta be "in the things", know well what your team is doing AND HOW WELL. To judge software engineering capabilities, you yourself need to have sharp software engineering capabilities and getting a taste of the daily work makes you a far better engineering manager than the "I only manage" type of manager.

mzahir 1y ago

https://archive.ph/tiJk9 https://archive.ph/tiJk9

begueradj 1y ago

Men like Steve Jobs were known for their high attention and focus (signal-to-noise ratio) Focus on your goal + discipline & practice + semen retention = you will be a "übermensch".

Cthulhu_ 1y ago
You had me until "semen retention", wtf lol
- begueradj 1y ago
  Well, Steve Jobs was into that too (and he's not the only one of that scale who practiced semen retention) And if you are an athlete of any type of sports, you will learn the hard way how it is important to keep that energy at least several weeks (to several months) before (and during) the competition.
  - lolive 1y ago
    True. My code has improved significantly since I stopped Youporn! [fellows, that thread is slowly becoming a South Park episode!]
    - begueradj 1y ago
      Scientific fact: just like coding, sex happens in your brain.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - lolive 1y ago
        Message to my [dear] colleagues: Not a reason to code like a dick!
  - lolive 1y ago
    > Well, Steve Jobs was into that too (and he's not the only one of that scale who practiced semen retention) Better not meet him in the elevator when he was beyond his third day of semen retention. #fired #fired #fired

Simon_O_Rourke 1y ago

Attention is relative, like if you're in the middle of some code review and your kid calls saying they've got a problem, then you may get distracted - but rightfully so. Not like this jerk, who's kid had to put time in his calendar for playing chess with him, because he was too interested in his own career https://www.pathtostaff.com/p/work-life-balance-slows-careers-e9 https://www.pathtostaff.com/p/work-life-balance-slows-career...

llmthrow103 1y ago
I'm mid-30s, never did anything to accelerate my career, and have already reached a point in my career that I'd be happy at if I stopped climbing here. I also can eat 3 meals per day with my family because I work from home and I have multiple athletic and intellectual pursuits. Speedrunning a career at the expense of living the rest of your life just seems psychotic to me.
- rtkaratekid 1y ago
  I’m glad I’m not the only one! I decided early on that the balance means more to me than making more money or having the most amazing resume.
- OneMorePerson 1y ago
  As someone who couldn't agree more with this part "Speedrunning a career at the expense of living the rest of your life just seems psychotic to me.", I don't think they see it that way. For a lot of people who work this much, the career is the dominant part of their life by choice. It's not popular to admit that anymore but they don't have a destination, they are doing what they enjoy (working a lot).
lionkor 1y ago
That is an unhinged post/blog/whatever that is. I've never seen such a load of cope for overworking and living for your employer.
- 0xEF 1y ago

Niharika125 1y ago

[flagged]

uwagar 1y ago

they dont let u spend so much time in the shower as to have an idea anymore.

lolive 1y ago
Meetings > shower ;)
- uwagar 1y ago
  wtf does that mean?
  - lolive 1y ago
    Meetings is the only official place when good ideas shall happen. [managers organize tons of them for a reason!]

anyg 1y ago

I should give time-boxing a try. My problem with 50+% focus and monotasking is that I tend to ignore everything else as much as possible when spending even 5 mins would take care of a side task. I take "All or nothing" to heart

water9 1y ago

Time is your scarcest resource

nikanj 1y ago

Attention is the scarcest resource for people who have ample other resources.

0xEF 1y ago

Spoken like a true middle manager. Attention is not the resource, but the act of spending the actual resource; time. Time is your most precious resource. Everyone wants more, but there is no way to get more. Nobody knows when their supply will run out. We do not produce it, having been granted a finite amount of it by our existence. Attention is to time as shopping is to your paycheck.

HPsquared 1y ago
Time and attention have the same dimensions and units I think, but they aren't quite the same. A 1:1 ratio would be the upper limit (full attention).
Terr_ 1y ago
Time-Giving-Attention is strictly less than Time though, at least as far as an external observer can measure, and is therefore scarcer, and scarcer still if it has additional requirements like Human Brain Is Awake.
28304283409234 1y ago
Spoken like a true <insert derogatory term>. I disagree. My paycheck stays what it is when I do not go shopping. Time keeps running out regardless of where my attention goes. To me it seems that attention most certainly is a separate resource. And more importantly, regardless of what it is, it is more important. Time is meaningless. My attention is not.
- Treegarden 1y ago
  I agree and dont understand the OP. I drink coffee out of the fear that I would waste my whole days time. The coffee allows me to spend some hours of focus time on what I want. In line with the blog posts point. This has been a struggle to all my life, its very hard to control my focus, my attention. I've been diagnosed with adhd (for whats that worth) and at some point took medication who's whole purpose was to allow me to control my focus. When I have unbridled focus, I suddenly have access to my brains full capacity. I think my IQ is easily 10 or 30 points higher / lower depending if I have focus or not.

highwaylights 1y ago

I never have ideas in the shower. My best ideas always come to me when I'm almost asleep and I have no idea why that is, which is really frustrating because I know I'm never going to remember them. Sometimes I'll get up and write it down but the bar's pretty high for that because then I'm awake and I know I'll end up zombie-ing around the house for another 2 hours until I'm tired enough to sleep again. I realise this is interesting to no-one but me, but it's WEIRD, right!?

5555624 1y ago
The "hypnagogic state," anecdotally associated with creativity. (https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/why-do-i-always-come-up-with-my-best-ideas-when-im-trying-to-get-to-sleep https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/why-do-i-always-...)
nicbou 1y ago
Could it be that it's the only truly idle time you get? I find that I get my best ideas on longer solo trips, when I spend a lot of time lingering in cafés and sitting in trains with little to do.
AnimalMuppet 1y ago
No, it's not weird. Ideas come where they come. Wherever you get them, be ready to grab them. Keith Richards (of The Rolling Stones) kept a tape recorder by his bed, for exactly this reason. One morning he woke up and found that the tape was all the way at the end. He re-wound it and found that he had played a guitar riff and sung the words "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" several times. The rest of the tape was of him snoring.

lukko 1y ago

I like the idea of a 'bullshit timebox' - an hour period of protected time for minor chores & slightly annoying tasks. I wonder what the best way of arranging it is. I guess you want to schedule them or have set weekly times, otherwise there's a slight overhead of remembering and finding the best time to timebox. Or maybe you use the last timebox to schedule the next one..

jrflowers 1y ago

I love that you can just write anything online. “Attention is your scarcest resource” doesn’t make any sense at all for anyone on earth in any context but if you just sort of like phrases based on shape or vibe it’s definitely a sentence. It is like “The Goof Troop Movie Trilogy is finally getting its final installment… hyuck”. Like no it isn’t, that’s not happening, that’s just made up. Those are just words that are fun to read but mean nothing

keybored 1y ago

Then I should get back into meditation. Half of standard Buddhist meditation is exactly that, training concentration (so-called). Usually in a "pristine" environment. Which an open office is not.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

setnone 1y ago

In my dictionary attention is almost a synonym of love

Razengan 1y ago

Time is the scarcest resource. Everything else can be renewed.

TedHerman 1y ago

Inattention is abundant.

markus_zhang 1y ago

Reaching 40+ and having a full set of family, I think there is one more subtle resources that people don’t talk about until it’s too late (for me it’s now) —— not your time, your energy, your attention, but your mental strength to use the above resources. Right now, I’m not really out of time or energy or attention, but I just don’t feel the interest to pursuit any intellectual hobbies that I used to pursuit. Occasionally I went back to them but quickly dropped after maybe a day. I used to work on hobbies every day, but nowadays? Maybe once per month. Anyway, my advice is to NOT get a kid or even married if you have some strong intellectual interests. Family and kids are going to replace them as a new life style. It is not a worse one, neither a better one, just a different one. But you might never ever in this life get to drill deep into what you loved because you are going to lose the love — but not entirely, so you still regret.

sebmellen 1y ago
I think this might just be age. I have kids but I’m in my mid 20s and still feel very intellectually driven.
- markus_zhang 1y ago
  Yeah could be age but more likely both -- can't imagine such a dramatic change in just 2-3 years.
  - sebmellen 1y ago
    That’s fair, everything is multifactorial in a complex system!
- mezzie2 1y ago
  I'm 37 and still very intellectually driven (no children). I do think in general you're correct, though, because it's harder to find people like this as I age.
  - qmmmur 1y ago

justcallmejm 1y ago

This is precisely why we (two longtime Vipassana meditators) built Aloe. Attention is the precursor to agency. It’s all we’ve got. In today’s over-saturated information environment we need superhuman attention if we’re going to have any agency left.

sork_hn 1y ago
I couldn’t find it (or I found too many results actually). Do you have a link?

teberl 1y ago

Reading this article i followed a link which i find, at least, as good as that one. https://paulgraham.com/vb.html https://paulgraham.com/vb.html It's so true it hurts me!

bookofjoe 1y ago

Disagree: it's time.

jleyank 1y ago

Your scarcest resource is time, and you don't know how much you have to spend. And burnout is real - before you advocate having no diversions in life, imagine what happens when it occurs.

ashutosh-mishra 1y ago

This connects to a broader truth about knowledge work: we often treat focus as a personal failing when it's really a design problem. Most people try to fix their focus through better time management or productivity systems, but the real solution is usually structural - changing what you're responsible for, not how you manage those responsibilities.

ratelimitsteve 1y ago

Hear me out: it's your scarcest resources and also a certain amount of waste is not just expected but necessary. This article starts with the phrase "Like many people, I have most of my best ideas in the shower." What's happening when you have shower ideas is something called the default mode network (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network) is activated. It's basically "What you're thinking about when you're not thinking about anything" and it's how your brain builds relationships between facts. It's usually where you do your thinking about yourself, about other people and the past and future, as opposed to what is called the task-positive network which is when your thinking is focused on concrete things in the here and now. What's interesting about the default mode network is that it's the source of those "a-ha!" moments because, unconsciously, its actually been analyzing the problem, building potentially insightful connections between ideas and integrating those ideas into what you already know.

runeks 1y ago
> Hear me out: it's your scarcest resources and also a certain amount of waste is not just expected but necessary. Where's the waste in what you're describing? If all this stuff is going on then it doesn't sound wasteful at all to me.
- ratelimitsteve 1y ago
  Fair, but when I say "waste" I mean more "cannot and should not be consciously marshalled toward a specific effort" Also sometimes this same network that creates insights creates things like when I couldn't remember the lyrics to Mingulay Boat Song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29l90zcoTBo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29l90zcoTBo) so I bopped around the house for a week singing "Heel ya ho boys/Let her go boys/She's a vampire/Set her on fire" so it's not all diamonds in the mine

sunrisetiger 1y ago

Reading a book about this by Chris Hayes called Siren's Call. Attention and Information are at odds with each other.