
Bother Me, I'm Thinking  - jamesbritt
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703584804576144192132144506.html#printMode
======
robertk
The study results were interesting, but I find them hard to apply in a
directed effort towards achievement. I just finished reading _The Power of
Full Engagement_ , and I find Loehr and Schwartz provide a more practical,
workable model.

Their idea, strongly supported by thousands of case studies, is that to
maximize success (whether in academics, tennis, the corporate world, etc.) one
must practice deliberate spurts of stress followed by periods of strategic
relaxation. It is easier to apply this in practice than the interesting but
hardly practical content in the article. For example, for the past few hours,
I've been working hard on understanding some algebraic geometry from
Hartshorne, but now I'm daydreaming about neuroscience and salsa.

Thus, a perfect creative effort is a fusion of focused dedication interspersed
with lackadaisical goofing around.

~~~
impendia
I highly recommend this over Hartshorne:

<http://math.stanford.edu/~vakil/216blog/>

In particular note Ravi Vakil's 500+ page book-in-progress on algebraic
geometry, as well as a blog -- he is constantly soliciting and incorporating
advice from people who are reading the book. (Remind you of any advice you see
often on HN?)

~~~
Groxx
Wait, what? The TOC is hyperlinked to the headings in the document? I never
knew you could do that in a textbook! Years and years and crappy PDF after
crappy scanned PDF of technical books with zero linking (or only _external_
urls!) and I find out someone _actually does this_?

There's no way they're a teacher. None. You _cannot do this_ in the education
system. There's a law against it, or something. Maybe they're on the run, a
renegade teacher, like the professor-version of Archibald Tuttle.

~~~
juiceandjuice
I'm confused... are you being sarcastic, or have you never heard of LaTeX?

~~~
Groxx
</sarcasm>

Fully aware of LaTeX. Also fully aware a lot of book creators use things like
LaTeX and Adobe to build their books and form their footnotes and keep their
TOC / index / internal page references accurate.

I'm also _painfully_ aware that _tons_ of books, textbooks particularly
frequently, don't use the information they built the book with to build the
digital version, so it becomes a glorified scan that you can download and
read, and nothing more.

~~~
juiceandjuice
gotcha, your post was filled with so much genuine enthusiasm that I was
confused :)

------
csavage
Great article.

The author, Jonah Lehrer, has an amazing book on behavior economics that I
considering a must read for anyone trying to sell anything. It's been
incredibly valuable to us at Wistia. It's called "How We Decide".

Jonah always finds incredibly interesting ways to pull apart behavior from a
neurological perspective.

[http://www.amazon.com/How-We-Decide-Jonah-
Lehrer/dp/05472479...](http://www.amazon.com/How-We-Decide-Jonah-
Lehrer/dp/0547247990/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1298151089&sr=8-1)

~~~
eavc
I find Lehrer frustrating. He's sort of a psychological Malcolm Gladwell. He's
good at framing things in a pat and interesting way, but he's often making a
lot of compromises on being thorough and accurate on the way to that
narrative.

I would say it's good to read his stuff as a jumping off point, but it may be
good to follow that with something more scientific on the subject.

~~~
jsm386
Second that. Check out his _Proust Was A Neuroscientist_. Great framing, great
idea...but in the end, no, Proust was not a neuroscientist, and the same goes
for most else Lehrer has to say.

The whole premise of this piece doesn't make sense to me - coffee, whatever
else is in Redbull - provide energy, not focus. That energy can be used to
focus on something you don't want to focus upon. You also can let your mind
wander at the frenetic pace stimulants like coffee, ADHD meds and others
facilitate. So back to the beginning - Jonah Lehrer is very good at nicely
framing a point that he isn't actually making.

------
dstorrs
My concern is that "better at generating new ideas" != ("better at generating
good/relevant ideas" || "better at accomplishing things")

I tend to be more creative when I'm letting myself drift, but I need to focus
in order to execute. As with most things, balance is the key.

~~~
tigerthink
Some days you want to smoke weed, other days you want to take modafanil.

------
kulpreet
Wow. I can seriously relate to this article. I'm notorious among my friends
for "zoning-out", going into deep thought, being easily distracted and giving
a delayed response when they ask me something. I thought I might have a
problem, but this really gives a new perspective.

I think that perhaps by spending so many hours in front of the computer, my
mind is always in this "virtual world" state, where I think A LOT, but only to
myself—and this carries over to to the "physical world." I easily
distracted—but can focus really hard on one thing at a time, so I don't have
issues learning (if I'm paying attention to the class). Don't know if this is
a good or a bad thing.

------
Duff
This jives with my personal observations of my work.

I'm a very busy guy, but I easily spend 40% of my day not focusing on work.
Probably another 20% is walking around talking to the people. To me,
"focusing" on random stuff (ie. Hacker News, the newspaper, work-related or
personal research) and completing tasks with minimal time is the best way to
get things done -- the pressure helps me cut to the essence of whatever I need
to do.

------
sriram_sun
Doesn't this go against the concept of flow
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)>?

~~~
ardit33
no it doesn't. 'Flow' works well when you already know what are you going to
do, and that particular task is not too easy, but not too hard (something that
doesn't require your maximum cognitive effort).

The article is talking about on how to start tacking solving problems. People
that are easily distracted seem to come up with more creative solutions. Which
makes sense.

Also, the studies cited have a selection bias. They studied very smart college
students (at Harvard), which means these kids, even though had attention
problems, they were successful enough to get there, which means they are high
functioning ADD/ADHD. (they manage to get some productivity out of them. And
the extra creativity gives them an edge).

The article also mentions that they didn't measure all those kids with
ADD/ADHD that were never able to finish high school, or get into college.

ADD/ADHD can be crippling, but for very smart people that manage it (or find
way to become productive), it might be actually be beneficial to their
creativity and give them and edge.

One comment that you hear from people that start taking Ritalin due to adult
ADD, is that while they are a lot less distract-able and are able to perform
and complete a lot more tasks, they feel less creative, and more a bit like
robots.

~~~
Loginid
>>ADD/ADHD can be crippling, but for very smart people that manage it (or find
way to become productive), it might be actually be beneficial to their
creativity and give them and edge.

I am adult that has been recently diagnosed with ADD, and have to say that the
comparative problem solving and creativity advantage has been apparent all of
my life (not just to me :) ).

>>One comment that you hear from people that start taking Ritalin due to adult
ADD, is that while they are a lot less distract-able and are able to perform
and complete a lot more tasks, they feel less creative, and more a bit like
robots.

I was afraid that this would happen to me, but thankfully that hasn't been my
experience. I'm hardly a robot, and really just as prone to distraction. I am,
however, better able to modulate my attention. On the drugs, I can choose what
I pay attention to so that distractions are less of a problem.

------
chrischen
I think it mainly has to do with hyperactive thoughts. More random thoughts =
more possibilities considered = more creative output = less time on any single
thought (focus). Distractibility is just a side effect of this predilection to
racing thoughts.

------
chegra
Creativity requires trust. How many employers are willing to trust their
employees to get stuff done without concern with the way they get stuff done?
It requires you to trust the process which often doesn't have intermediary
stages that you can show progress, answers just arise.

------
jaysonelliot
Time spent thinking without distractions, or playing with a ball, sure.

Time spent with "leisure Internet browsing," though? Not so much.

Brainwaves slow down when watching TV compared to just sitting staring at the
grass. Lolling around Gawker and Reddit isn't so different from watching TV
for a lot of people.

~~~
petercooper
_Time spent with "leisure Internet browsing," though? Not so much._

It's not for everyone, but for me, "leisure Internet browsing" (and leisure
_creation_ ) over the past 15 years has been step 1 of most of my successes.

If I'd been focused on my "work" more, I probably wouldn't have started
blogging in 1999 or even known what it was. Blogging has brought me a book
deal, a large share of my income, and many other things since then. I probably
wouldn't have come across Rails in 2004 and had some early successes there. I
wouldn't have been tuned into the great stuff discussed on HN about e-mail
newsletters, which I've now turned into a success for myself too. The list is
endless.

I try not to spend _too_ long just noodling around the Internet, but I do
quite a bit of it because I can see what an investment it is. By keeping an
eye on what people are into, what other people are making, and what memes are
catching on, I can absorb those ideas and produce catchier things of my own.
It saddens me when I meet smart people at meetups who don't spend _enough_
time casually browsing and who have no idea what's "going on" at the moment or
what opportunities there are opening up..

Again, this might only be beneficial because I work entirely for myself. If I
were working a 9 to 5 in an office, it probably wouldn't make sense.

~~~
Mikushi
I work 10 to 6 in an office, and i do the same, wandering on Hacker News,
/r/programming or /r/gamedev, arstechnica, Twitter, to too much but just
enough. I find that trying to hard to concentrate just leads to bad stuff, so
whenever i can't concentrate or get a grasp on a problem, i just go "meh
whatever, what's new on Hacker News?", read one article or two, get back to
whatever i was doing.

I'm a problem solver, i'm recognized to be one, and i don't know much people
who have a problem with me wandering on the internet here and there. And if
it's not internet, i take a quick smoke break, helps most of the time,
specially in the winter when it's -20 outside (Montreal, gotta love it :p ),
slap you right in the face.

------
tgflynn
Maybe we have something like a consciousness filter. We are only consciously
aware of ideas or perceptions that are strong enough to pass the filter
threshold.

It would make sense that people with a low threshold would be more easily
distracted by weak environmental stimuli but they would also be more likely to
be aware of their own ideas and hence would be better at generating ideas.

People with a high threshold would not be easily distracted and would have an
easy time remaining focused on tasks which are "not too hard" in that the next
step is strongly suggested by the current step. I think much programming is
like this.

To be successful at solving hard problems we need to vary our consciousness
threshold, as others have said in different words.

------
makmanalp
> For instance, researchers have found a surprising link between daydreaming
> and creativity—people who daydream more are also better at generating new
> ideas.

Repeat after me: Correlation does not imply causation. Correlation does not
imply causation. Correlation does not imply causation.

> The scientists measured the success of 60 undergraduates in various fields,
> from the visual arts to science. They asked the students if they'd ever won
> a prize at a juried art show or been honored at a science fair.

Art shows and science fairs, obviously the best / only indicators of success.

Man, either the article is terrible or it's shocking that this passes as
"research".

------
juiceandjuice
I wrote a college paper about ADHD and higher education, largely motivated by
my own struggles and aspirations for grad school. The actual research I did
for it ended up being pretty interesting, but the actual paper wasn't really
that great (IMO, I did get an A for it however)

Anyways, there's a huge lack of ADHD research in adults, and how it affects
students in higher education, and virtually no research on how it affects
people in the workplace.

There is some interesting research regarding creativity and ADHD. Some of it
ends up trying to strengthen/disprove the dopamine hypothesis.

~~~
mkramlich
i started writing a paper on ADHD but didn't finish it

------
davidwparker
Interesting article. As mentioned above, I'm not sure that just generating
ideas is the same as generating good ideas. And when it all boils down to
getting things done (GTD), I really have to pay attention. If I'm in a
creative mood, and I don't have time schedules looming over my shoulder, then
sure, it's okay to let the mind wander.

I'll also mention that I've recently gotten into Pomodoro, and that has really
helped me to pay attention. I never would have thought so, but I'm actually
able to code and be a lot more efficient in my Internet usage using the
technique.

------
flipside
This article encapsulated one of my strengths, the difficulty of focusing
exclusively on any one thing. As an individual that has always been somewhat
easily distracted, I've learned to take advantage of this by always staying on
the lookout for new opportunities each time my attention shifts. My startup
idea was born from piecing together many different insights into one new idea.

Reading this article made me really happy that... ooooh, shiny!

------
microarchitect
Sometimes, I've had trouble convincing other people that thing X is
distracting me so much that I can't work. So perhaps one other interpretation
of the results is that folks who are creative are more likely to be distracted
by a certain distraction, perhaps because more creative work requires a higher
degree of concentration.

------
KeepTalking
For those who are interested, this months scientific American - mind 's cover
is about the relationship between day dreaming, creativity and its
understanding from a neurological perspective. It is a very good read,
unfortunately behind a pay wall online or free at your local Barnes and nobles
;)

------
keyle
In a way it is similar to the old idea of "get out, get some air, go for a
walk and clear your mind" and then problem solving comes out at its best.

It also connects to the old saying "La nuit porte conseil" - aka "the night
brings council" - or "best to sleep on it".

------
ifesdjeen
That sounds a lot like House MD :D He seems to solve all of his diagnostical
problems when thinking of a different / abstract thing, and approaching
problem from a completely different angle. Nice idea, worth experimenting with

------
Hawramani
Maybe it is the other way round; creative people are distractable?

------
Stratego
This article confuses personal distraction with external distraction. Yet
another example of journalists interpreting research creatively.

------
duvander
I couldn't finish it.

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zeynel1
I think the title is misleading.

"Distract me, i am working" reflects the idea of the article better.

Distraction may not be irritating but bothering someone is always irritating
and annoying and leads to stress. But creativity comes from relaxed state
(daydreaming etc).

~~~
Hast
I think "If you can distract me, I'm creative." would be a better title.

Being easily distracted means you have a harder time to get stuff done. To
bring it back to another commenter it also means you have a harder time to
achieve and maintain Flow.

So in a typical pop-scientist way the writer of the article got the headline
completely wrong. You can't make me more creative by distracting me. If I'm
creative I'll have a harder time to maintain focus.

------
leandroico
I loved this reading. Can I translate it to my native language (brazilian
portuguese) and publish on my blog (referencing to the original post)?

