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Men who stare at walls
- d--b 6mo agoSounds like someone reinvented mindfulness
- predkambrij 6mo agoThey made instructions for mindfulness direct and unambiguous which is great.
- thrownthatway 6mo agoI’d subtract a wall and substitute the breathe. But a wall would probably do just fine as well.
- vasco 6mo ago> A paper published in 2012 showed that in 2008 the average person was receiving 34 GB of information daily, with a daily information exposure growth rate of about 5.4% per year The paper linked to justify this just talks about media that people consume which is growing. But that has nothing to do with the point this post is trying to make? Your eyes "stream 4k video" anytime your eyelids are open regardless if you're watching a movie or looking at a wall? Why would me watching more videos say anything about how much information my brain processes?
- beepboopboop 6mo agoI’d venture that there’s less to process staring at a wall. Unless you’ve got exciting walls in your parts.
- markburns 6mo agoI don't think "Sitting in an office you sit in every day" or "Sitting in your living room" are the same amount of bandwidth/storage as "Travelling around the moon". I'm sure we have compression algorithms for this stuff and it's somewhat related to novelty. I'm aware of an association between perception of time to number of photons received in the eyes. These relate to both how much time the events appear to take subjectively as well as how well remembered they are or how long they feel retrospectively. As in there is an actual physiological explanation for "time flies when you're having fun". There probably is something to also be said for attention too. Increased awareness and attention will undoubtedly use up more 'bandwidth' or 'storage' too.
- u_fucking_dork 6mo agoObviously the blank wall compresses better
- llmssuck 6mo agoI understand your point, but a slightly more positive reading might be that the quantity of information consumed, while perhaps unable to be precisely quantified, can be related to the type of content being perceived. Staring at wall produces little information in and of itself, perhaps through reflection, but staring at a TV produces a load of information, most of which is useless like names of characters, their favorite dresses, what food is being eaten where, etc. You can learn a lot by just passively observing even "dumb" TV especially if it contains foreign content or skills like cooking or sports. Again, not saying all of it is relevant to your life, but that's a different issue.
- vasco 6mo agoI dunno I feel like brains are always going? It's not like if I'm staring at a wall my thoughts slow down vs if I'm watching a movie. If anything I'll be more "focused" on my thoughts so maybe they are more intense than the "shut brain down" effect of mindlessly consuming media? And I gave example of a wall, but what about scrolling tiktoks vs walking in the woods? Am I really processing more information scrolling tiktok than walking in nature? Hard to believe for me!
- llmssuck 6mo agoInteresting example for sure. Walking the woods seems more complex, but I still think there is a real difference between "this character Xenia in a TV show acts an actor inside a TV show inside this current one and she likes to eat brownies with yellow cream on top" versus "I see trees with many leaves". TikTok I have no knowledge of, but for sure seeing something like "Arab dude wearing suspicious looking outfit playing unknown instrument that I now have a name for playing a tune I did not know the name of but I do now says weird cultural thing that is highly specific to his or her locale but it kind of makes sense because of clues inside the video" is still very high-load compared to "I see a bird there that I do not care about in any way shape or form but I do remember it is blue".
- vasco 6mo agoYeah I just disagree immediately. Even having to mechanically traverse and move, each step you think way more than, "swipe". Plus all the things to look at all around you, being tired, etc.
- InMice 6mo agoNo thank you, my time on Earth is limited.
- Al-Khwarizmi 6mo agoIs this not a form of meditation? I've never been able to keep a meditation habit, but my understanding is that meditation techniques often feature closing your eyes and focusing on breathing, body parts or some other irrelevant thing, it sounds like staring at a wall would serve the same purpose.
- saimiam 6mo agoAfter reading your comment, I was reminded of my first and last visit to a zen meditation center where we had to meditate by staring at a wall sitting on some sort special cushion designed for this sort of meditation. I think your parallel is spot on!
- robertclaus 6mo agoI was taught to aim for "mind blanking" when meditating, so does seem like it!
- hk__2 6mo agoThis is what I do when trying to sleep, and often wonder what’s the difference with meditation.
- ammmir 6mo agostaring at a wall is basically the zen practice of shikantaza [1], except you’re not staring, it’s more of an eyes half closed yet alert gaze. you don’t do anything, not even counting the breath. you just sit, that’s the entire practice. in my experience, the more you intellectualize it, the more difficult it becomes! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikantaza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikantaza
- ganymedes 6mo agoIt is, but just sitting can be a little deceiving in its brutal simplicity and I think some thought has to be put on the technique. I would often would just sit and think, not just sit. I wasted a lot of time sitting and thinking I am meditating. It's more like "just sit and be extremely watchful, alert". I also found it useful to have a timer nearby and evaluating how slow the time passes. The emptier the mind, the slower the passing of time. It also helps to tap into feeling the body, I would find that it's completely impossible for me to focus, if I do not have a good sense on feeling my body. Posture also plays a very important role. It's something to note that the average modern day person has posture that would take weeks or even months of focused practice to fix, especially one browsing this site. It's just sitting, but there are many things involved. * If you tell a beginner to just sit, they will drown in their own thoughts. Something more practical is, stare at the timer and try to not think, just perceive each second passing by, do not think, see how long can you last without a single thought **. Shikantaza is basically willful suppression of the thought process and pretty much the opposite of what the wikipedia article describes as a "similar technique" - "Do Nothing Meditation". As for the article, I am actually doing 1 - 2 min shikantaza regularly while working. I'm staring at an empty screen. I do it multiple times per hour regardless if I feel focused or not. * Don't try to fix the posture while attempting shikantaza. ** Obviously something even more practical for a beginner is to gain focus by counting breaths and then breath awareness, before trying the most difficult type of zazen. I'm just describing what would be a way for someone that does not practice to imagine what correct shikantaza feels like.
- NDizzle 6mo agoThe same video showed up on my feed last week. I didn't try wall staring, but I did try a day (last Tuesday) with only a single screen active for the entire work day. I was extremely productive that day... but, and I know this is bad, I don't want set expectations too high. So here I type to you on a screen / device that should be turned off.
- Insanity 6mo agoI went from a single monitor setup to triple monitor a decade ago, and then back down to single monitor. It helps me focus to have just one active “feed”. And I put my phone away when I work to eliminate that screen as potential distraction. Where I still kinda “fail” is during natural downtime. Like if I’m waiting somewhere, e.g the Dr office, I’ll pull out my phone and browse mindlessly.
- dktp 6mo agoLoosely related, though I don't think Benjamin Bennett's intention was ever to improve focus/productivity But it never ceases to amaze me the consistency and time spent sitting and smiling and other similar endeavors by Benjamin - https://www.youtube.com/@BenjaminBennetttt/streams https://www.youtube.com/@BenjaminBennetttt/streams
- Cider9986 6mo agoThat is insane.
- amelius 6mo agoIn case someone wants to look at a wall: https://unsplash.com/photos/red-bricks-wall-XEsx2NVpqWY https://unsplash.com/photos/red-bricks-wall-XEsx2NVpqWY
- bsza 6mo agoNice find. I'm going to print this and put it on my wall.
- NDlurker 6mo agoI live in an old warehouse converted into apartments. The walls are made of yellow brick and they're nice to look at because of the variation in texture/wear/color
- shmeeed 6mo agoHonestly, looking at this photo even for one second only triggers intrusive thoughts about how badly it needs to be corrected for distortion... But maybe that's exactly the lesson.
- keyle 6mo agoInstead of a wall may I recommend trees, fresh air, and just enjoying it away from anything electrical. I had a same issue and I found it helped to just step away and blank out in nature. Also try delaying your first coffee to after the first hour of being awake.
- uean 6mo agoThanks for saying this. I live in a small, bleak, brown town just recovering from winter, and even despite this, getting out into nature and staring at the water flow past in the local river gives so much benefit. Reading this article is a great reminder that we all need to disconnect and ground ourselves again. My brain (and likely most of ours) just can't handle 100% up-time all day and needs that break. Tangent - I used to go cycling a lot, and required a lot less wall/river-staring then. Of the people I knew who I cycled with, 95% of us were coping with some kind of mental health issue in some way and had found our fix on the bike. I miss it.
- yahway 6mo agoJohn Fogerty used this method to write his early CCR albums. I thought it odd. Maybe I will try this!
- arnorhs 6mo agothis sure seems like meditation. it could probably work as well to close your eyes instead of staring at a wall. i've always found meditation types revolving around focusing on one thing (candle, wall etc), or nothing (empty mind) to be really hard. my mind just wanders and i end up super anxious, frustrated, and exhausted - resulting in me giving up pretty quickly What I've found is that focusing on "everything" - ie sitting still and trying to observe your surroundings, your body, all sounds simultaneously seems to work much better. It's easier to get to a calm state this way. Also, doing this while walking can also work - but perhaps easier to accidentally start thinking about something else
- 47282847 6mo agoThe idea as far as I understand it is that it’s the point exactly to sit with and process whatever comes up in your mind when you don’t distract yourself. The more often you do it, the more present you become, and the more ability you develop to discriminate between what really is there and what is your imagination/unprocessed memories of the past. The object you focus on merely serves as a still reference point from which you look at what else is showing up (feelings, thoughts, memories). There will always be anxiety, otherwise you would have processed it already and not hurried away into other activities. It sure feels life-threatening, but as long as you don’t give in to the illusion and remind yourself that it is not, there is no rational reason to jump away. Breathing is a typical way to remind yourself that you are safe in the present environment. And the gift you receive is more and more clarity and a relaxed base state from which to face what’s next.
- diogenes_atx 6mo agoSeems like it would be better and easier to just take a walk instead. Whenever you feel information overload, it's time for a break: step outside, get some fresh air, stretch your legs, etc. Not a panacea, obviously, just common sense. Staring at a wall while forcing your mind to "think of nothing"... maybe try it once and see how it goes.
- cwnyth 6mo agoGoing for a run helped formulate so many of my best ideas and solved so many tricky problems I was facing. It was always one of three places: on a run, in the shower, or right before falling asleep.
- steveBK123 6mo ago> Seems like it would be better and easier to just take a walk instead. Unfortunately for many, and few managers will admit it even though it's true - there is a performative aspect to physical presence at work. Being away from your desk, idle on slack, etc to go take that walk is a problem in many work environments. Probably one reason why SWEs are disproportionately interested in FIRE.
- Aurornis 6mo ago> Probably one reason why SWEs are disproportionately interested in FIRE. SWEs are disproportionately interested in FIRE because it is (or was) an easy way to get a high paying job without an extended education period like becoming a doctor or lawyer. You could go straight into a six figure job after 4 years of college and even wear shorts to work, while your med school and lawyer friends were just getting started and had years of grunt work ahead of them and debt to pay off. SWEs are also disproportionately represented on online spaces like Reddit and forums where FIRE was popularized. SWE jobs have been the most flexible I’ve had and seen across my career. I also had a manager who would police time spent in seats, but at every other job going for a walk was not an issue. Contrast that with many of my friends in other careers who, still to this day, have stories about their managers imposing dress codes or forbidding headphones in the office. The average SWE is spoiled in workplace flexibility, even if there are exceptions.
- Aperocky 6mo ago> What I didn’t expect was how difficult it would be. Sitting for 5-10 minutes staring at a wall without thinking of anything is hard! I relate it somewhat to the feeling I have with working out. So why not combine working out directly instead of staring at a wall? Ride a stationary bike at low zone 2/lower in my experience allow for uninterrupted focus during that time at work. While on bike, the mind shuns distraction and focus on "what's next" in the workstream (distraction includes HN, evidently I haven't gotten on the bike yet). My homeopathic theory is that I have a total mental energy that is the sum of focused energy and a distracting energy. This distracting energy can be temporarily used at task at hand but it results in mental exhaustion, or left alone it leads to distraction seeking behavior. While on the bike, distracting energy is fully consumed by riding, allowing for focused energy stay focused. If I go above low zone 2, it starts eating into focused energy and I lose efficiency.
- iterateoften 6mo agoZen meditation for an hour staring at a wall is a marathon that at the end results in a semi-psychedelic state for me. Exercising and sitting b meditating are two related but seriously different things. Which is why there are many other types of meditation to practice (walking, working, silent, etc) but zen mostly considers sitting and looking at a wall the OG
- cubefox 6mo agoSee also: Show HN: Improve cognitive focus in 1 minute (oneminutefocus.com) 741 points by junetic on Feb 7, 2024 | 287 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39288039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39288039 https://oneminutefocus.com/ https://oneminutefocus.com/
- zafka 6mo agoI have to say that the reworded title is what made me read the article. It is almost poetic. I could see it being a title of a campy movie.
- zug_zug 6mo agoI feel like this is on to something. I remember earlier in my career whenever I hit a really, really hard problem I'd have an instinct to try to stare of into the far distance (especially if there's like a distant skyline) and sort of zone-out. It was like shower-thinking or almost sleeping, and then come back with a deeper understanding of the problem. Psychology research backs this up -- I think there are studies that show students who have a break between two classes before better in both classes (it's called interference). Anyways it felt weird to me that our work never accommodated this, I think peak performance requires tuning the environment to the human biology, not management optics.
- latortuga 6mo agoIt's funny you said "shower-thinking" because showers are one of the few places where it's not practical to use a device and you really are alone with your thoughts. A normal day to day activity that is the same sort of "stare at walls" state that the OP describes.
- poulpy123 6mo agoTheta re reinventing meditation from first principles
- Lerc 6mo agoI could never do this. I would forget that I am staring at a wall within 30 seconds. The suggestion of going for a walk at least means when you get absorbed by something in your mind, you are still out on a walk, You can't just turn around and start working on some new idea if you are out on a path somewhere.
- sigbottle 6mo agoTotally agree with the absorption thing. I've always found myself at a great calm, ever since I was a kid, from sitting en transit and looking out the window. A train ride is great for this reason. I think about things. I actively think about things. These things are often not daydreams, hard problems, rumination. I know what those feel like, and they are definitely different from depressive rumination or furiously working through tasks. Again, I want to emphasize, that in none of these are you explicitly practicing the act of leashing in your mind. All in all, I think the popular conception of meditation, Youtube-ized since the 2010s, has more nuance. Maybe people see this distinction and think it's obvious. To me, as someone who unironically feel like I'm net negative from self-help content than net-positive, this matters to me, personally. If you want to get mystical, there are plenty of stories of deep Eastern masters practicing their craft every day. They certainly are thinking about their act - they are not trying their best to "get rid of all their thoughts". These are different activities, each with their own merits, both much different states than the common state of the modern man today. That being said, meditation and the surrounding ideas have helped me overall, if not just because the specific influencers that I do hold as valuable had a good attitude when approaching it. But nowadays I'd imagine it's been silently incorporated into the very underlying forces they were trying to avoid (I have to meditate because it makes me a more improved human being compared to my peers!)
- ninalanyon 6mo ago> You can't just turn around and start working on some new idea if you are out on a path somewhere. Eh? I'm retired now so I don't need to work but when I did I often went for a walk when a problem seemed insoluble. After a while I might feel that I have the solution to that and I'd start working on another problem as I continued my walk. You don't need to be in front of a screen with your fingers on a keyboard to do some work.
- jerf 6mo agoA lot of people are referencing meditation. Ultimately that's not a terribly well-defined word. It may match some broad ones, but there's a lot of narrow ones that it wouldn't. If staring at a wall helps then don't let me stop you but I've sometimes done something very similar by just sitting in a chair without any cell phone, book, electronic item, etc. until I'm very bored. Not like "gritting my teeth, come on we can do another 15 minutes let's goooooo" like an exercise push, but definitely waiting past the first couple of twitches of boredom until it's a constant. It's kind of an interesting way to start a vacation, really helps disconnect from work very quickly. It can be some hours, though. I do find that this only happens for me if I'm "doing nothing". I see others suggesting exercise, or something else, and those are absolutely good in their own way. But they are not the same thing as just doing nothing. It's still trying to do something and "use the time productively". The downside is that the family just sees a guy sitting there "doing nothing" and can find a dozen reasons to interrupt... it's hard to do this when there are any other people around, and while I'm not an absolutist about a plan that can be summed up as "sit until you can't" without much loss, the interruptions do very quickly diminish the utility. There's a huge difference between sitting uninterrupted for an hour, and sitting for 15 minutes, putting away the dishes, sitting for 15 minutes, getting up to help reach something, sitting for 15 minutes, explaining that yes you really are sitting there just doing nothing would you please just let me do that, and sitting for 15 minutes. This particular thing doesn't match "meditation" to me, because I'm not even doing the minimal thing meditation involves; I'm not concentrating on breathing, not trying to "not think", not trying to do anything. If the mind races, let it race until it is done racing[1]. In this point in particular this certainly doesn't match a lot of specific meditation traditions. If the thought of doing something occurs to you, that meditation technique of letting it pass through you until it disappears can be useful. If meditation is a deliberate attempt to slow down, or a deliberate attempt to concentrate on some particular thing, or a deliberate attempt to empty one's mind, it still has a deliberative goal. If you're willing to broaden the term to encompass not even having that much of a plan, then I have no objection. But this feels to me too low level to even justify the term meditation as most people use it. If you're "trying" to do anything at all, then this isn't really what I'm talking about here. I'm not saying this is "better" than meditation, I'm more saying I'm not sure this even rises to that level, as low as some of them may be. It's really just "rest", a concept our century and culture has largely lost track of. (Of course the obvious semantic argument about "well are you trying to not try, hmmmmmm?" is there and you are free to debate that in your own head, because like I said, I'm not trying to be absolutist about this. This isn't a program I'm proposing so much as an experience report. You do whatever and call it whatever and argue about definitions as much as you like.) [1]: If your mind literally never stops this may not work for you... that said, in the 21st century, are you sure your mind never stops racing if you just let it run itself to exhaustion? Have you ever tried? It could be some hours, plural. Again, I fully acknowledge that some people reading this can say "yes". I acknowledge the existence of great neurodiversity. But if you've never tried just letting it run itself to exhaustion you may be surprised what happens if you can find the time to let it.
- sailfast 6mo agoGoddamn this post reads like my daily challenge / struggle cycle just about every day. I’m gonna go stare at some walls!
- jareklupinski 6mo agoa large piece of modern / abstract art works just as well, without it needing to be a blank wall
- delis-thumbs-7e 6mo agoIt’s amazing how people recommend very quickly: ”Go to walk in a forrest amongst green leaves, talk to the squirrels…” instead of practice you can do anywhere anytime that cost nothing. Like do you understand that everyone is not rich working home next to a nice park or great forrest? Like many, many, many in this world people have to travel 1,5h to work middle of an urban metropolitan area with almost no trees and definitely no fresh air, and their living conditions are no improvement? But this practice or other types of meditation you can do even during your remote, or even in a solitary confinement? And if you get good at this hou can do small few minute/seconds of meditations or “wall staring” during the day? I am very privileged and there’s deers walking 5min from where I live, but I don’t have the audacity to think everyone in this world are as lucky.
- ToucanLoucan 6mo agoWhenever people describe the living conditions of your average person all I can think is what a colossal failure our system is, to imprison so many millions in such an utterly shit existence. Like yes it's cool to have air conditioning and basically any food anywhere at any time, and many have transportation that can take us across the country at a moment's notice. There are marvels now that our ancestors would die of shock trying to comprehend. That said, it seems still that we've made a remarkably awful place for the vast majority of people to live and work in, more the latter than the former, while a handful of people basically live in a never-ending theme park.
- sph 6mo agoIs having a park or woods nearby a symbol of wealth? Do you live in the middle of the Sahara desert?
- Detrytus 6mo agoWell, how about downtown Chicago? Or any big city in the US for that matter?
- Procrastes 6mo ago@aselimov3 Thank you for the reminder! This is something I used to do all the time when I was younger, and I have gotten away from it. Very helpful.
- jasonmp85 6mo ago[dead]
- cpa 6mo agoI thought it'd be the male version of https://www.thehairpin.com/women-laughing-alone-with-salad/ https://www.thehairpin.com/women-laughing-alone-with-salad/
- Rendello 6mo agoIn a lot of these there could logically be someone sitting across from them making them laugh, but the woman with the cherry tomato in her fingers is just smiling for the love of the salad.
- cramsession 6mo agoI've always done this. As I got older I found out that I have really bad astigmatism. It takes a lot of work to keep my eyes in focus. It feels great to just zone out and "stare" at nothing, it's like a bunch of tiny muscles in my skull get to relax.
- giancarlostoro 6mo ago> Extrapolating that trend, we would be at about 87 GB worth of data today. Throw in YouTube Shorts / TikTok etc and it makes me wonder if that estimate is drastically too low. We went from the information age, to the brainrot overload age, to let's both have brainrot and let computers think for us.
- lowdude 6mo agoIf that trend really wants to measure the quality of video etc. as well, it would definitely be way more. But that assumption seems very flawed to me, e.g. watching a full 4K movie would amount to way more data than scrolling through memes, even though the latter is way more of an attention-stealing activity.
- giancarlostoro 6mo agoI'm not a subject matter expert, but I'm wondering if all the context switching of short form video counts as way more drain on the brain, would be an interesting study. I have to think the brain eventually gets tired of all the short dopamine hits.
- HocusLocus 6mo agoA wall or a goat?
- Dilettante_ 6mo agoA cat is fine, too.
- immanuwell 6mo agobasically reinventing breathing practices and calling it "wall staring" is peak 2026, but honestly - whatever gets you off the doom-scroll and into something resembling rest, go off
- whatsupdog 6mo agoThe title could have been "People who stare at walls". The subtle patriarchy of hacker news users peeps up it's head once in a while.
- XargonEnder 6mo agoI think it's supposed to be a riff on "men who state at goats".
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- Ntrails 6mo agoBut then it would not have been a "Pune" or "play on words"
- lbrito 6mo agoI don't get this productivity hacking mindset. You're suffering some sort of burnout, and you want to try some hack to be _more_ productive? Looking at a wall so I can crank out _more_ work? No, screw that. If I'm ever feeling that way, I'm going to try and work _less_ and take _more_ breaks.
- Ifkaluva 6mo agoWhat are you talking about? Dude is literally describing a break, just not a type of break that feeds the attention economy. Are you opposed to that?
- ekjhgkejhgk 6mo agoI've noticed it's become fashionable to HN over the past few years to advocate for working less.
- lbrito 6mo agoSure, but he is advocating for a break so that he can work more and "waste" less time on "unproductive" breaks. He is promoting a productivity-enhancing break.
- techblueberry 6mo agoAlright, you go write a blog post about how actually doom scrolling is better for meditation, because it leaves you feeling unproductive.
- strangegecko 6mo agoReminds me of this article https://aeon.co/essays/instrumentalisation-is-making-everything-a-means-to-an-end https://aeon.co/essays/instrumentalisation-is-making-everyth... Doing things with an ulterior motive most likely changes the experience of those things. There's something inherently stressful in "doing relaxation".
- techblueberry 6mo ago
- outside1234 6mo agoI do not stare at walls, but when I get in this state I go for a 30 minute walk, with what sounds like the same effect.
- asow92 6mo agoSounds like this might be activating the default mode network? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network
- dublinstats 6mo agoIt may be the opposite of that, trying to inhibit the default mode network.
- asow92 6mo agoYes, that sounds right: > Additionally, during attention demanding tasks, sufficient deactivation of the default mode network at the time of memory encoding has been shown to result in more successful long-term memory consolidation.[33] > Studies have shown that when people watch a movie,[34] listen to a story,[35][36] or read a story,[37] their DMNs are highly correlated with each other. DMNs are not correlated if the stories are scrambled or are in a language the person does not understand, suggesting that the network is highly involved in the comprehension and the subsequent memory formation of that story.[36] The DMN is shown to even be correlated if the same story is presented to different people in different languages,[38] further suggesting the DMN is truly involved in the comprehension aspect of the story and not the auditory or language aspect. > The default mode network is deactivated during some external goal-oriented tasks such as visual attention or cognitive working memory tasks.[7] However, with internal goal-oriented tasks, such as social working memory or autobiographical tasks, the DMN is positively activated with the task and correlates with other networks such as the network involved in executive function.[8] Regions of the DMN are also activated during cognitively demanding tasks that require higher-order conceptual representations.[10] The DMN shows higher activation when behavioral responses are stable, and this activation is independent of self-reported mind wandering.[39] Meditation, which involves focusing the mind on breathing and relaxation, is associated with reduced activity of the DMN.[40]
- krzat 6mo agoDMN starts when you are doing something trivial and start thinking about something completely unrelated. It's kinda like falling asleep, except more coherent.
- cfors 6mo agoThe spirit of this is correct, but a better approach to this is going for a walk with just your thoughts. Yes, that means no phone, no headphones, just you and your brain enjoying a walk. Let your mind wonder and be free.
- aselimov3 6mo agoThere’s a lot of research on restorative environments (usually nature/outside)being good for focus. I definitely try to spend as much time outside as I can, but for some reason the wall works better for that 5-10 minutes. Being outside is much more enjoyable though haha
- Sir_Twist 6mo agoI remember first hearing about this from the book Deep Work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_restoration_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_restoration_theory
- pvab3 6mo agoInteresting. I hadn't heard of that directly, but I've never found it to be true. I've found momentum and continuation to be more useful than rest or relaxation when it comes to tackling big things.
- HerbManic 6mo agoIt depends on who you ask. Some Zen teachers think that it is impossible to meditate while walking as it keeps the mind moving rather than still. These are the folks that go against any kind of seasoning in food for the same reason. I always thought that was a very restrictive way to box in and needlessly constrain what meditation can be. If it works for you, great but don't sell it as the only path. That is the thing with a lot of folks, to try and overly define 'the only way', the smarter ones know there is a thousand paths to the top of the mountain. Thích Nhất Hạnh used to swear by walking meditation, others would scoff at that. Each to their own. 'There is a thousand paths to the top of the mountain, the view is the same for all at the peak'
- NDlurker 6mo agoIf you're the type of person who can fall asleep quickly, wouldn't a nap be better? I go out to my car and take a 10-15 minute nap when I'm struggling with something at work. I wake up with a clearer head and sometimes a solution to whatever the problem was.
- elAhmo 6mo agoWhy not a walk? No podcasts or music, just walk.
- liquid_thyme 6mo agoDoes sitting and closing eyes not do the same thing? That's what I do when I'm overwhelmed.
- proee 6mo agoWhen I was a kid, I would often sit on my bed and stare at the wall. My Dad would walk by my room and ask if everything was ok. I would always say "yeah", since I was literally just thinking. It's a great feeling to just stare at a wall and think. My first thought is usually, "If I could think about anything right now, what would it be?" And this frees my mind up to think about what I want to think about.
- tomwheeler 6mo ago> When I was a kid, I would often sit on my bed and stare at the wall. My Dad would walk by my room and ask if everything was ok. I would always say "yeah", since I was literally just thinking. Me too. And all I wanted was a Pepsi.
- gosub100 6mo agoGreat reference.
- patatino 6mo agoI sometimes went to bed early just to think! I was excited about it and looking forward to it. I don't do that anymore, but going for a walk without smartphone, no music, no audiobook reminds me of that time.
- ErigmolCt 6mo agoA lot of "doing nothing" advice gets framed as clearing the mind, yet sometimes the valuable part is finally letting the mind choose its own direction
- kelseyfrog 6mo agoShamatha/Zhine practitioner here. The wall staring practice described is not too unlike these. The main difference being that while practicing Zhine, I'm counting breathes. I really want to point out that the purpose is not to concentrate so hard that focus remains. It's simply to be aware of attention drifting, and gently bring it back. Repeatedly, over time, this becomes easier and easier. There is a sense of unwrinkling the mind that I achieve after a session. The inner voice drawing me toward the anxieties of life becomes quieter and quieter. The ability to choose to disregard thoughts and move on becomes stronger and stronger.
- tamimio 6mo agoJust go for a walk in nature or outside for 10min or so, get a fresh air, walking will activate many positive things, hell, you might actually cross path with someone who might have a better job for you than staring at screens and walls.
- analog8374 6mo agoShikantaza here. It's a big deal. Consider: We all know about "paying attention". Pay attention in class. Pay attention to the movie you're watching. Pay attention to where you're walking. Etc. It's important and we do it all the time. Take that to the next level. Pay attention to a thing for a while. AKA Concentration. That's important too. Deep thinking, careful doing, science, engineering, art. It's necessary for all that. And then there's meditation. It's more stuff to do with your attention. Samatha (AKA concentration meditation) is concentration taken to the next level. All that deeper thinking etc that you got from concentration, this takes it further. Possibly much further. There are weird depths. And also, you become very familiar with the ways of attention. How it moves and how it affects the rest of your world and what you can do with it. And then there is Shikantaza (AKA formless meditation, meditation without a seed...). it's a hard left turn. Serious sci-fi. I'll leave it at that.
- analog8374 6mo agoSome of us "stare" at our breath instead. That is, you put your attention upon the feeling of breath in the tip of your nose (or something like that). It's nice because your eyes don't need to be open for it, so they don't get all dried out and itchy.
- squirrelon 6mo agoI think this is actually valid, if you think about it. Some days I go by with constantly thinking be it about work, in messages, or simply on social media. Taking the time to stare at walls actually provides ability to step back, calm down, and actually random thoughts will start appearing out of which some can be insightful.
- neilv 6mo agoIf you get in the habit of doing this when thinking, it can bomb interviews with interviewers who don't know that's something that some people do. In-person interview: the majority of people want you to be making frequent eye contact, and are less comfortable when you aren't. Some people also hear folk myths that looking a certain direction is a tell for deception or fabrication. ("Up and to the left means lying; up and to the right means hungry.") On videoconf interview: if you look away when thinking, people might think you're looking at (or listening to) AI output or a human collaborator, to cheat. (OTOH, you might be better off finding thoughtful colleagues already familiar with introvert and neurodiverse thinkers, who are aware that many great engineers are also nerds, and who include that within "culture fit".)
- tolerance 6mo agoExactly! Bomb the interviews. I would also push back on the idea that this sort of behavior could be unique to "introvert and neurodiverse thinkers". Must there not be social and/or "neurotypical" people with idiosyncrasies?
- neilv 6mo agoAs the philosopher Depeche Mode put it, "people are people".
- longtimelurker1 6mo agoHuh, I just realized I’ve been doing a version of this for the last decade or so. When I’m tired or distracted at work, I do a “magic eye” with my keyboard: I bow my head down close to the keys, then focus my eyes to infinity, and gradually bring my focus closer to “snap” to different focus depths. When I worked in an office, my coworkers found this disconcerting. Really helps me reset though!
- LZ_Khan 6mo agoMuch needed advice. Thank you!
- w10-1 6mo agoStaring at a wall, or relaxing, is not meditation or a cure for losing focus. Losing focus could be e.g., (1) lacking the attention span (ability, fatigue, disinterest), (2) lacking the working memory to hold the problem; (3) distraction (by more important or interesting things); (4) focusing too hard on the wrong things (and getting no where); etc. Solutions differ, but like talk therapy, most any approach will have some positive effect just via escape from oblivious continuance or self-defeating (mental) behaviors, if not development of insight (i.e., self-observation). To me the key is that thoughts are motivated (interesting) and amplified (concerning or exciting); the key is to recognize that you are the source of that energy, and learn to notice and decide whether this energy is helpful in the situation. Usually that means letting it go, but sometimes you need to raise it (e.g., to address an instance of ongoing injustice). Then focus is a function of having the energy needed for a given situation - no more or less.
- Olshansky 6mo agoI hope people see this comment. Meditation is to mental training and focus, as going to the gym is to physical training. Socials killed our attention span. Agents are literally making us context switch even more. Putting aside the whole "I am at piece and one with the world" part of meditation, it is extremely hard. I'm also no expert. When I'm waiting for something to finish (agent, compilation, etc), I've found that staring at a wall ends up in a net positive in productivity rather than replying to a message, going on X, or kicking off another agent.
- ErigmolCt 6mo agoThe hard part is that the training looks like nothing from the outside, so it's easy to dismiss (in a way)
- Olshansky 6mo agoThis is great. Puts Rick Rubin's appearance into perspective.
- HerbManic 6mo agoOne thing I do point out to folks is that meditation comes in many shapes, there is no one size fits all. For some it is silent sitting Zazen style, for others it is walking mediation, or a sort of physical almost martial arts type thing. There is a thousand different style in between that. Do what works for you. If that is staring at walls, neat!
- Olshansky 6mo agoThanks for mentioning this.
- dr_kiszonka 6mo agoI am a pretty peaceful person, but working with agents frequently (daily) makes me furious. I wonder if the context switching you mentioned leads to more fatigue, which makes me much more irritable.
- jonaustin 6mo agoThis is pretty much literally what the originator of Zen, Bodhidharma did for 9 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhidharma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhidharma
- sarmike31 6mo agoEven better, stare into the distance to adjust your focus and help them recover from staring at screens. Makes them relax looking at something far away or at least flex them into another state for a little.
- hgomersall 6mo agoI've recently realised that the biggest problem with smartphones is not that they steal your attention (which is bad enough), but that they steal your disattention I don't know of a better word for it than disattention. Perhaps downtime? But it's not so structured. It's just those moments where you'd previously let your mind wander. Gone forever.
- alexperry00 6mo agoI believe boredom might be the word you're looking for.
- pavel_lishin 6mo agoI recently watched this video (on my phone, naturally) about the need for boredom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orQKfIXMiA8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orQKfIXMiA8
- layman51 6mo agoYou reminded me of a post I had read on a math-related website. I think it was a math association where different authors could post articles, but it was one about a series of advice columns by people pursuing PhDs or graduate studies in math. Anyway, the article I'm thinking of was about a guy who had advice along the lines of "keeping up your hygiene" or "maintaining your cleanliness habits" and his anecdote was about being stuck for a while in making progress on a problem, but he would have a habit of taking a daily shower. There was a detail he shared about getting an insight and then being able to write some ideas on the window with the condensation. I wonder if I can find it again.
- gweinberg 6mo agoIs the title a reference to "Men Who Stare at Goats"? If so, I think few people got it.
- croes 6mo agoI think so, given that the first picture in the article is George Clooney in Men who stare at Goats
- Phelinofist 6mo agoI was thinking of Three Body Problem
- hatradiowigwam 6mo agoIf staring at walls doesn't do it - try playing guitar instead. Works for me and it's more fun than a wall IMHO.
- sharadov 6mo agoWhy not just take a quick stroll, if you are close to anything green - park, nature even better. Nature soothes like nothing else.
- ErigmolCt 6mo agoI've found the same thing with short walks without headphones. The first few minutes feel almost irritating, like my brain is looking for something to latch onto. Then after a while the mental noise settles and work feels less aversive again...
- bad_username 6mo agoJohn Cleese suggested something similar when solving hard problems that require creativity. https://youtu.be/Pb5oIIPO62g?si=qML6bM5brI_XES9l https://youtu.be/Pb5oIIPO62g?si=qML6bM5brI_XES9l
- moffkalast 6mo agoAh yes, when healthy people discover disassociation. Creativity is easy when you spend half of your day on autopilot daydreaming about random ideas just to avoid dealing with reality.
- ZeidJ 6mo agoThis reminds me of an app we made awhile back with the sole purpose of finding 'Boredom'. TLDR on the app is that you join real time 'boring' livestream rooms with random people. The app never did really take off, but I still would love some fresh ideas around combatting information overload (outside of the 1000's of screen/content blocking type apps) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47926461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47926461
- zem 6mo agough, this is definitely a great thing to do but it's quite off-putting to see the "improve your focus and productivity" framing. that's uncomfortably target oriented for something that is fundamentally about appreciating and cultivating the mental state in which you enjoy your mind's inner resources and let it wander down serendipitous paths. I don't stare at walls personally because I find that state easiest to access in a moving vehicle, so my equivalent is sometimes daydreaming rather than reading or scrolling my phone when I'm on a bus or train.
- profstasiak 6mo agoIt seems you have caffeine problem not scrolling problem :) join us at r/decaf
- tbossanova 6mo agoI’ll often use a quick brain break like this to do a tiny bit of exercise, e.g. walk on the spot, plank. This means staring at a wall (or the floor) anyway plus you get the blood flowing. Most appropriate would probably be wall sit while staring at the opposite wall!
- tiffanyh 6mo agoI use to listen to podcasts to fill in time (while driving, showering, walking) … and also realized it was info overload for my brain, making me feel exhausted & tired. I’m now so much more relaxed and mentally rested by literally having no music/podcast on while driving/walking/showering these days. Your brain needs quiet time.
- jconley 6mo agoThis was the name of my blog, back when I wrote one. I often do that when I need to think deeply. https://blog.jdconley.com https://blog.jdconley.com
- thatguymike 6mo agoTech Guy reinvents meditation
- TheGRS 6mo agoKind of just an unstructured meditation routine no? And I should really meditate more.
- LowLevelKernel 6mo agoIsn’t that similar to Transcendental Meditation?
- Zone3513 6mo agoReinventing meditation from first principles
- qtwhat 6mo ago[dead]
- huflungdung 6mo ago[dead]
- pkress2 6mo agoI never expected to encounter such an appropriate time to link to this song... https://open.spotify.com/track/2CODrD7ncpPCyGeKqDKpE7?si=uZNhG17PRaOGwn687sGK8Q https://open.spotify.com/track/2CODrD7ncpPCyGeKqDKpE7?si=uZN...
- charlie0 6mo agoBonus focus points if you paint the wall and watch it dry.
- tolciho 6mo ago“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” ― Blaise Pascal, Pensées
- saidnooneever 6mo agomeditation helps empty hippocampus. its pretty close to what sleep does. 15 mins a day is plenty. its good to realise its called a practice since u practice it. no one every really things of nothing
- psidebot 6mo agoFor me it's driving. My best thinking and my best zoning happens on the road, especially if it's limited access highway with low traffic.
- dgb23 6mo agoApparently movement plus focus on the distance has a calming, clearing effect on the mind. Do you have a similar experience when walking or running (deliberately)?
- jbethune 6mo agoThis is extremely true. The instinct to fill every bit of downtime with a quick bit of doom-scrolling is very hard to kick. It's something I have made a point of working on; giving my mind space to just do nothing and let all sort of mental detritus process itself.
- croisillon 6mo agoi thought it was called "rawdogging" these days
- contubernio 6mo agoI have wondered if one of the issues with mobile devices might simply be physiological - using them appears to require constant eye movement that rest does not require. I haven't seen this addressed.
- a96 6mo agoMore on the topic of the post, devices require a tight focus on details on a small object. That's the poison. Tight focus means stress for humans. You need time where you're not focusing on things (in all senses of the word, ideally) to recover and lower stress.
- BubbleRings 6mo agoI’m sorry, could you repeat that? I got distracted by the large animal with the tusk, over by the kitchen door. Try zero caffeine for a while. It will not be easy, for the majority of people. After 3 months the worst of it will be over, and most people are withdrawal symptom free by 6 months. Btw free means no decaf, no chocolate, no tea.
- bashkiddie 6mo agoAn ADHD brain may work better without stimulating caffeine, YMMV.
- justaman123 6mo agoDiscovering meditation from first principles
- iammrpayments 6mo agoWho ever wrote this has no understanding how eye muscles work. If you keep looking for hours at a short distance, you should instead take breaks looking at a distance for long term eye health. That’s why I prefer working next to window or a big open space, not a cubicle where I can stare at a wall.
- sebastiennight 6mo agoWhile your point is very helpful ("stare through a window instead"), you're adding a second-order improvement while the article is suggesting a solution to a first-order problem (dread, overwhelm, depression, burn-out). (Also, even on the second-order of "what about your eyes", I would guess that staring at a wall several feet away is already an improvement over staring at a screen in your hand.) To play along as we crowdsource a combined solution to more than this narrow problem, I'll add my own 2nd-order suggestion as well (for fitness and health), and suggest staring at the horizon while walking outdoors for a few minutes
- cbracketdash 6mo agoThis can be fixed by relaxing your eyes and staring through the wall. This is equivalent to looking into the distance.
- nobodywillobsrv 6mo agoWould be interesting to understand if walls and short focus vs trees and natural stuff further out is preferable. When I was working more vision was always a bottleneck ... Staring at yet more close things would be less useful than staring at far away things
- lasftew 6mo agoOP mentions they are a coffee drinker, and use caffeine a lot to fight tiredness and brainfog. While the suggested methods to refocus are great, maybe there is some improvement potential by looking at root causes? As a former heavy coffee consumer, I experienced varying degrees of tiredness over my workday, and inconsistent sleep patterns. Ever since I stopped drinking it, my energy levels have been far more predictable and decrease rather linearly until bedtime. There is definitely no more "hitting the wall" in the early afternoon! Living caffeine free has generally been a considerable QOL improvement (after initial withdrawal).
- profstasiak 6mo agosame experience here. I had similar hitting the wall problem in early afternoon. After stopping caffeine it's exactly as you describe
- hellohihello135 6mo agoDo you have any advice on how to quit? I would love to try not drinking caffeine but it just seems too hard.
- scrivna 6mo agoSwitch to decaf, same habit and ritual and mixes things up from plain water all day (which I enjoy).
- lasftew 6mo agoI quit cold turkey about two years ago. It wasn't enjoyable at all, as I felt dizzy and very unproductive for weeks. I was also suffering from prolonged headaches and slept two hours more per night than usual. The upside of this though was that it showed me how heavily dependent I was on caffeine to just function. Which helped me to endure the withdrawal, and I guess that's the only advice I have: Turn it into positive energy and let that insight power your determination to get your body into a more natural state. After a few days, I definitely noticed that I got better, which also helped. Now I feel better, fresher and more balanced than ever. Waking up in the morning is much easier, and have no reason or intent to ever go back to cafeinated life.
- ifh-hn 6mo agoI thought this might have been about zazen, but it's not and no comment seems to mentioned it. I practiced zazen for a while, I want to get back to it. Maybe I will now I've finished studying.
- kristjank 6mo agoA lot of these self-improvement sort of hacks stop working when employed at a large scale, repeatedly, so one must keep it in check enough to not overdo it. However, a lot of my mental performance has become intertwined with the concept of breaking the mental work pattern with some light physical activity like taking a short walk, or just mental inactivity like going outside for a smoke (which also includes a positive chemical reinforcement, coupled with some light environmental stimulation), which might yield itself somewhat similar to the staring at a wall routine, though much less dull.
- misja111 6mo agoI have been doing this for years already after finding out by myself that it worked. Staring at anything works, even staring at your screen as long as you make sure you focus out.
- namblooc 6mo agoBro discovered meditating and gave it a fancy title.
- Tade0 6mo ago> Stay up late because I’m wired on caffeine and dopamine from scrolling. I wish people didn't overuse certain terms. Dopamine has a half life of 2 minutes in the body. It can't possibly keep you up at night. It's just the caffeine, which in turn has a half-life of several hours. Also below a certain level it's eliminated approximately exponentially, so there's a long tail of residual caffeine.
- MrOrelliOReilly 6mo ago> It’s just the caffeine Fair enough if the use of “dopamine” is imprecise, but excessive screen time / doomscrolling / shitposting is definitely enough to wire you awake on its own, without caffeine.
- bashkiddie 6mo ago> Dopamine has a half life of 2 minutes in the body. May be true. But doing "rewarding" work encourages your body to emit more dopamine. Some people call it "the flow", others "hyperfocus", but it is a constant stream of dopamine that keeps you doing what you currently do. And you can interfere with the emittance and absorbtion by using caffeine.
- H8crilA 6mo agoDopamine is more like a particular type of a transistor in a large semiconductor. What this type of a transistor does heavily depends on the area of the circuit. And it's never the only thing that's responsible for an entire high level feature, not by a mile. There are some common correlations, but that's about it. I have never understood why people feel the need to use terms like "dopamine" in very pop culture and highly unscientific way, instead of just describing the state that they are talking about.
- Tade0 6mo agoThis. The other day someone told me that they "sense a high concentration of acetylcholine" in me. Thank you, I guess? Personally, I blame Jordan Peterson. it's not that he used those terms incorrectly (he didn't). It's that the general public interpreted them in a way that went on to live a life of its own.
- pcblues 6mo agoAs a software developer, when I used to smoke, I would go outside for 5-10 minutes and talk shit with other regulars who had nothing to do with my work. It was a break that would fix my fading focus (probably for more than one reason :) I could only keep peak thinking/designing/developing for about an hour or so. That's peak matrix level with edge cases identified and documented on the way. I could do OK for a lot longer, but the same quality wasn't there. The non-smokers would resent us for it, but most of them would go for a half to one hour coffee instead. I going to try this. Thanks!
- instalabsai 6mo agoAs a non-smoker I always took smoke breaks when I worked at an office. It’s the place where you can get the juiciest gossips and insights about the company.
- James_K 6mo agoMeditation from first principles.
- shamash 6mo agoWhy do people always have to reinvent the wheel? Just do Zazen, my dude.
- shamash 6mo agoWhy do people constantly have to reinvent the wheel? This is just Zazen but with less thought put into it... If you're tired of corpo meditation, go to a Buddhist monastery and learn how to do the real thing. You don't need to pick up the religion, just learn how to reach the kind of deep concentration that leads to joy.
- muzani 6mo agoMy and my partner made an app where you stare at yourself in the mirror for 5-30 minutes. You'd record how you feel after. It's not "scientifically proven" to work but it's quantifiable that there's a clear improvement. We tried to scientifically prove it - the scientists were incredibly offended, lol. So it can't be proven, but there's data. We started quantifying it because corporations asked for data. Nobody wants to buy an app where you record yourself staring at a mirror, so we don't charge for that. We end up charging for the data reporting, anonymization, data handling, etc. There's some interesting data, like we find people who are highly stressed will get all kinds of diarrhea, vomiting, and angry if they crank it up to 30 minutes. So we designed it to start at 5 min/day for a week, then 10, then 15, slowly up to 30. Staring at a mirror is a little different to staring at a wall, but I'd imagine the results are similar.
- michaelteter 6mo agoNo mention of exercise. Shame. But for staring at walls, I like to do that in the sauna. My mind sorts out so much stuff in that hot room that is like magic. Showers used to be that way for me, before I cared about water use.
- subarctic 6mo agoIs staring at a wall somehow better for productivity than looking out a window at something far away? Because the latter is much better for your eyes as far as I know
- randallsquared 6mo agoI think the idea is that it should be as featureless as possible, so you're not distracted by watching specific things happen or go by.
- SplendorP 6mo agoThis is just a form of meditation, keeping focus on something deliberately for a long time.
- luxuryballs 6mo agoStaring at trees in a forest is the same but better I’d wager, read a study on the benefits of looking at trees in the brain once, combine with this wall technique and my own anecdotal experience of walking in the woods to solve complex computer problems, plus the physical movement of the hike gets your blood flowing.
- guest__user 6mo agoi think some cultures call this meditation
- MiDu16 6mo agothis is similar to Kasina meditation, one of the oldest concentration practices in the Buddhism. You focus on one of 10 subjects including Earth, Water, Air, Fire (elements), Blue, Red, Yellow, White (colours) and Space, Lights. These subjects can be found anywhere and most importantly neutral so you won't or unlikely to have sensual attachments and association. This is considered an entry to mediation. It's easier than focusing breathing because breathing is movement and very natural so you're likely to lose focus. The biggest advantage of breathing to 10 entry subjects of Kasina meditation is it's everywhere. Effort or single-mindedness or focus is one of 8 noble paths in Buddhism. And meditation is to improve focus/concentration. At least that one of the purposes of meditation. Edit for grammar
- DoctorOetker 6mo agoThis reasoning seems flawed: >This calculation includes audio, visual, and text data and incorporates quality into the measurement, i.e. 10 minutes of HD video has more information than 10 minutes of 480p video. From a video compression or storage perspective this is of course correct. But I argue it results in the opposite direction when it comes to mental taxation: Consider how actors/agents/brains process information: we subconsciously model the world around us. Imagine you drop a tiny screw on a carpet, you really need it, its part of a digital caliper and helps align the capacitive PCB's... With high visual acuity, you quickly find the screw. With low visual acuity uncertainty increases and you need to model a "superposition" of multiple possible worlds: is this glint the screw? (ah no thats one of many solder blobs that fell from the table), is that glint the screw? (ah no thats one of the many clipped leads that fell on the carpet)... having more information in and of itself lowers the lack of information (entropy). entropy is logarithmic in number of states. number of possible alternative states is exponential in entropy. clearly having better acuity allows to track things more effectively and resolve detected doubts more quickly, decreasing the stack of mental "TODO's". Its just a criticism of that sentence and its reasoning, I am of course not denying the effects of using deep learning and mass collection of user behavior to increase addictivity and "user metrics". That can explain continual increase of mental overload. But a mere increase in detail for the senses should actually decrease mental overload...
- jpfromlondon 6mo agoThis reminds me of David Foster Wallace's The Pale King in which a presumed jesuit guest lecturer tells an audience of college students that true heroism is enduring boredom, that there is no higher calling, that it is key to a successful life.