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( Continued From Below -> Sorry again for the length) You have to be tough. You say you want an opinion? You like to communicate with people and discuss things

( Continued From Below -> Sorry again for the length) You have to be tough. You say you want an opinion? You like to communicate with people and discuss things? You want to be well established in your beliefs and thoughts? Start with being well established in your actions and your own thought process. As it seems to hold contradicting opinions to what you believe needs to be focused on or done. I too was diagnosed with ADHD. I was scattered. I felt lost in an open world of activities as well as information. I tried management techniques, I tried meditation, I tried mini vacations (which are never unjustified by the way). I tried everything. I disappointed with my foundation and control of my life. I even allowed myself to endorse taking Adderall. Which actually did more harm than good because I soon realized that yes...yes I'm hyper focused, I'm hyper focused installing yet a new program I don't need. I'm hyper focused digesting yet another topic that I only meant to glance at to start with. I'm hyper focused doing the exact same habits and mistakes that I did to start with! How has that happened? It happens because at the end of the day regardless of the method you try to use to maintain control there is only one truth. You are either doing what you need to do, or you ALLOW yourself to be distracted. It’s a binary truth. It's on or off, and guess what? It's all up to YOU. Not a meditational leader, not a friend, not a spouse, and not an article...not even this comment. It will never be up to anyone other than yourself and the development of the ability to take a thought or a physical distraction at the moment it presents itself and eliminating it entirely. Truly saying NO! NO! NO! Repeatedly in your mind louder than the thought fighting for your attention. You've seen that move "Yes! Man" starring Jim Carrey most likely I would say. In the movie a man encounters a program developed to expand his mind and opportunities by simply saying "Yes" to them. How convenient it turned out for him. He went on a romantic adventure filled with spoiling homeless men with material possessions, late night dance clubs under the ambience of exotically non-rhyming music, experienced the spectacle activity called "Running Photography", and fell in love. Take a cue from that movie if you feel much too spread out and instead of allowing your mind to say "Yes! Man" to each new thought and ambition that presents itself force your mind to say "No! Man" without any other option. Be a man, be a NO man. Be grounded in your actions and thoughts and train that habit and nature. It takes a while but it can and will happen because physiologically as a human you are designed to adapt. You can undo all those years of allowing your mind to say yes to everything the internet and the world had to offer. Realistically it may take just as long in a worst case scenario to un-train those habits and force them out with the mindset you really want. But in the training process you will actually be having an immediate effect from the very first time you say NO in your mind and eliminate an adversary. So that by the time you feel you have sharp and well-honed mindset you set out to achieve you in-directly demolished every other little thing on your life list as a result. That's all I can offer. Again I say it might not be the optimal method for anyone in the world except myself. However the logic odd's and chance say that’s not true, and who knows it just might be for you after all...or you whoever may have stumbled upon this comment 73 clicks later in browsing Hacker News, you who meant to come online strictly for Christmas shopping only as it is last minute once again this year, or you who have no idea how you got here to this final sentence in the first place. _Iron_Codex_

ctoscano 12y ago
You are not alone. Some words I took from your post were that “[T]there is only one truth. You […] ALLOW yourself to be distracted.” and “It will never be up to anyone other than yourself[.]” There is a theory that our default state of mind is that “racing state” that coned88 described, that most people are like that most of the time. Only few people, like both you are coned88 notice that it is happening. Fewer still learn, internalize, and practice noticing when their mind wanders and bringing their focus back to the task at hand, or as you put it, being a man. So in short, yes coned88, you just purge thoughts, actions, and literature that are not moving you towards accomplishing the task at hand. This can be taught. Or, as you put it, “[P]hysiologically as a human you are designed to adapt” and, more or less, we all have the same basic physiology. In response to coned88’s first question “Any advice on what I should do?” coned88’s, I’m tempted to tell you about my personal story, but I will focus on the advice and try to rely on my credibility as a stranger on the internet and citations for credibility. There are secular meditation techniques based on Tibetan Buddhism has been shown to increase the practitioners ability be aware of shifts in focus. I’m primarily citing personal experience. I’d like to recommend a book, a course, with instructions to help you increase your focus, but I don’t know of one. The books I have read focus on managing stress and healing emotional wounds instead of improving mental performance. The vast majority of stuff out there uses a lot of poetry, jargon, and generalizations I cannot recommend, but this lifehacker article was the best I found[6]. I hope it helps you. My secular interpretation of Buddhism is that they used fables to codify knowledge before they had writing. Information is easier to memorize that way[4]. Monks were trained to decode the knowledge from the fables. Or at least that is my understanding. Considering the short history of psychology in the West[5], as well as the cults, self help gurus, and experiments with drugs in the 60’s, it is still hard to find credible sources that validate meditation. Advances in neural imaging, as well as a growing psychological literature, as well as my personal experimentation has lead me to believe that specific meditative practices lead to increased awareness and control of mental focus. “Our data indicate that meditation training makes you better at focusing, in part by allowing you to better regulate how things that arise will impact you.” –Christopher Moore, Associate Professor of Neuroscience, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT as quoted by the MIT Press[1] A lot of the current research[2] focuses on using fMRI machines to see what is happening in the brain during meditation. "What we're trying to do is basically track the changes in the networks in the brain as the person shifts between these modes of attention," Dr Josipovic says, according the BBC article. How you use your brain has been shown to physically change over time based on how it is used. "One thing that meditation does for those who practise it a lot is that it cultivates attentional skills," Dr Josipovic says. [1] http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2011/meditation-0505 http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2011/meditation-0505 [2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12661646 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12661646 [3] http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallacies/87-fallacy-of-composition http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallaci... [4] http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_can_do?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_... [5] William James, Link to Harvard.edu http://bit.ly/1yrbVVD http://bit.ly/1yrbVVD [6] http://lifehacker.com/5895509/train-your-brain-for-monk-like-focus http://lifehacker.com/5895509/train-your-brain-for-monk-like...

ctoscano 12y ago

You are not alone. Some words I took from your post were that “[T]there is only one truth. You […] ALLOW yourself to be distracted.” and “It will never be up to anyone other than yourself[.]” There is a theory that our default state of mind is that “racing state” that coned88 described, that most people are like that most of the time. Only few people, like both you are coned88 notice that it is happening. Fewer still learn, internalize, and practice noticing when their mind wanders and bringing their focus back to the task at hand, or as you put it, being a man. So in short, yes coned88, you just purge thoughts, actions, and literature that are not moving you towards accomplishing the task at hand. This can be taught. Or, as you put it, “[P]hysiologically as a human you are designed to adapt” and, more or less, we all have the same basic physiology. In response to coned88’s first question “Any advice on what I should do?” coned88’s, I’m tempted to tell you about my personal story, but I will focus on the advice and try to rely on my credibility as a stranger on the internet and citations for credibility. There are secular meditation techniques based on Tibetan Buddhism has been shown to increase the practitioners ability be aware of shifts in focus. I’m primarily citing personal experience. I’d like to recommend a book, a course, with instructions to help you increase your focus, but I don’t know of one. The books I have read focus on managing stress and healing emotional wounds instead of improving mental performance. The vast majority of stuff out there uses a lot of poetry, jargon, and generalizations I cannot recommend, but this lifehacker article was the best I found[6]. I hope it helps you. My secular interpretation of Buddhism is that they used fables to codify knowledge before they had writing. Information is easier to memorize that way[4]. Monks were trained to decode the knowledge from the fables. Or at least that is my understanding. Considering the short history of psychology in the West[5], as well as the cults, self help gurus, and experiments with drugs in the 60’s, it is still hard to find credible sources that validate meditation. Advances in neural imaging, as well as a growing psychological literature, as well as my personal experimentation has lead me to believe that specific meditative practices lead to increased awareness and control of mental focus. “Our data indicate that meditation training makes you better at focusing, in part by allowing you to better regulate how things that arise will impact you.” –Christopher Moore, Associate Professor of Neuroscience, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT as quoted by the MIT Press[1] A lot of the current research[2] focuses on using fMRI machines to see what is happening in the brain during meditation. "What we're trying to do is basically track the changes in the networks in the brain as the person shifts between these modes of attention," Dr Josipovic says, according the BBC article. How you use your brain has been shown to physically change over time based on how it is used. "One thing that meditation does for those who practise it a lot is that it cultivates attentional skills," Dr Josipovic says. [1] http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2011/meditation-0505 http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2011/meditation-0505 [2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12661646 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12661646 [3] http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallacies/87-fallacy-of-composition http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallaci... [4] http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_can_do?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_... [5] William James, Link to Harvard.edu http://bit.ly/1yrbVVD http://bit.ly/1yrbVVD [6] http://lifehacker.com/5895509/train-your-brain-for-monk-like-focus http://lifehacker.com/5895509/train-your-brain-for-monk-like...