> My personal read on this is that, if you have difficulty focusing, you're not really interested in what you're doing. I don't agree. I personally have lots o

> My personal read on this is that, if you have difficulty focusing, you're not really interested in what you're doing. I don't agree. I personally have lots of trouble focusing, and the more into something I am, the harder it is for me to focus. It's as though my thoughts go into overdrive and I feel actual pleasure in processing all the different facets and scenarios related to a particular idea, so much so that it incapacitates me and if I stop thinking about it, I start to feel miserable. Take writing for example, I'd love to write for a living but whenever I have an idea that I absolutely must get down on paper, a few things happen. 1- Nothing else matters, so everything else suffers. 2- Writing is too slow. Before I've finished a paragraph, my head has moved onto another chapter and trying to get back to where I was is like trying to tell myself to stop doing the most fun thing in the world and clean my kitchen instead. (I hope that makes sense). 3- It begins to dawn on me that I'm not making any progress. I start to feel mildly depressed and all by energy and excitement begins to dwindle as I realise this time is going to be like every other time and I'm not going to finish "it". And then I go back to what I was working on before, all my energy and excitement in that project is renewed and then I repeat steps 1 to 3. There is a huge difference between this and working on something that doesn't interest me. As a programmer, I often have to work on things that don't interest me, that are slow and laborious and repetitive. But the strange thing is, I can do that stuff to completion. It bores me to tears, and I start to hate my job if I have to do too much of it, but my brain gets out of the way for a while and lets me finish what I'm doing. Until I have another awesome idea for something, and then I'm screwed. Luckily, I enjoy most of my work, and I get interesting problems to solve that, even though I've no burning desire to solve them, keep me interested and happy none the less. This has gotten very personal very quickly. Reading this back, it sounds like I have will-power, self-control problems more than focus issues. Well thanks HN, this has been very therapeutic.