

Why it is so hard to stay focused these days—and what to do about it - jseliger
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124018463826033223.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

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dgallagher
Rob May* wrote this three years ago about the same topic:

Is Concentration the New Competitive Advantage?:
[http://www.businesspundit.com/is-concentration-the-new-
compe...](http://www.businesspundit.com/is-concentration-the-new-competitive-
advantage/)

He goes onto saying how reading every Digg post, or looking at every new Web
2.0 startup is basically a complete waist of time.

You feel like you're actually learning something, but in reality the info
you're learning is "junk" knowledge (unless you're a VC looking for an
investment opportunity - but by the time it hits TechCrunch or Digg, it's
probably too late to invest anyway).

*Rob no longer writes for BusinessPundit.com. He's at CoconutHeadsets.com now.

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keopi
Yeah, I had a similar thought thinking how Hacker News was distracting me from
the work I should be focusing on.

~~~
gcheong
I'm beginning to think the value of HN is to give you something to do _after_
you've sold your startup.

~~~
mahmud
For me it's before and during. HN is a deadly weapon in the hands of a shrewd
business opportunist with kickass hacking team/skills.

It has been an MBA for me.

~~~
trapper
What have you learned here that you didn't know already?

~~~
mahmud
The transformation from a shrink-wrap industrial software developer to doing
web-startups. It takes two different minds; previous projects were hard and
very demanding, and they were sold via word of mouth and ads in trade
publications. Web business is entirely different.

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FlorinAndrei
My recipe for efficient writing:

\- Put laptop in backpack

\- Go someplace where you can be "lonely in a crowd" (e.g. local coffee shop)

\- Log out of your Google home page, so all those applets won't claim your
attention all the time

\- Don't even think of touching anything in the bookmarks

\- Keep the email client turned off

\- Turn cell phone off too if you must

\- Get a nice large latte (either regular or decaf)

\- Fire up the text editor

\- Let your mind take off

Voila, instant productivity. I get into the "flow" pretty quickly that way.

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chops
_Mental attention, she notes, is selective. Like a flashlight beam, we aim our
consciousness on but a thin slice of what surrounds us. At a party, for
instance, we hear only one voice among many until another voice speaks our
name and our attention suddenly shifts._

I find myself to be much the opposite. I have trouble focusing on on any one
conversation, I'm too easily distracted. I can't hold a phone call or
conversation while a TV is playing at similar volume. In a restaurant, I feel
like I hear all conversations and the music, and I can't seem to shut them
out. It's not that I'm _listening_ to all the conversations, but I _hear_
them, and it makes focusing on the conversation I'm trying to hold difficult.

With programming and reading, however, I do find that I can shut out
background noise, and I suspect this is because it's a different kind of
thinking than what distractions around would be causing.

I suspect that because the attention is given to a mode of thought (reading,
programming), and that that mode is not competing with other forms of the same
mode (I'm not trying to read two books simultaneously), that this enables
someone (or maybe just me, I dunno) to shut off the other senses. While with
listening and hearing multiple conversations, it's like trying to read and
having random words getting thrown into the sentences you're reading.

~~~
thalur
I know what you mean - I have the same problem. For me, it's worst with
television: I can't have a conversation with someone if there's a TV on in the
same room. I'm not sure if this is the opposite to the flashlight simile, or
just an example of an inability to direct it at will.

~~~
silentbicycle
Well, television (particularly ad-supported television) _is_ actively trying
over and over to grab your attention, so it's not terribly surprising. I have
a hard time focusing when there's a tv in line-of-sight, too, and it gets
worse when I haven't watched broadcast tv for a while.

I remember hearing somebody (Douglas Rushkoff, I think) suggest that ADD-like
behaviors might be an adaptation to a childhood in which one is inundated with
aggressive, flashy advertising. Adapting to reflexively ignoring things that
are designed to steal your focus probably affects your brain in the long term,
much like meditating regularly can.

~~~
umjames
If that's true, we should re-purpose ADD to stand for Advertisement Deluge
Disorder.

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mjfern
The article mentions the concept of "flow." This concept is described in
detail in the book "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" by Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi. I highly recommend this book!

[http://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Mihaly-
Csik...](http://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Mihaly-
Csikszentmihalyi/dp/0060920432)

------
rjett
On a similar, yet somewhat unrelated note,I often catch my own mind working
like a search engine. When there's something that I'm trying to recall, for
instance the contents of an article I read a couple months ago, I know exactly
where I can find the article and I remember whether I thought the article was
good or bad, but I often times find that I don't remember a lot of the details
of the article. In short, I remember the location, the subject, and the
relevance of stuff, but I find it hard to remember specific contents.

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puzzle-out
In my experience, there is no point doing anything unless you spend at least
twenty minutes just getting into it first. This is how long it takes me to get
into a 'concentration/focus' zone.

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esila
Back when I first started programming, a peer highly recommended to me to take
a martial art. It didn't matter which one - the only requirement was that it
had to require discipline and focus. Training in a martial art is a wonderful
way to induce "flow" - get distracted during a sparring session, and the
consequences can "hurt" a bit more than just time wasted.

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kamme
I must admit I like having some time off too, away from all those
distractions. But on the other hand, if I don't have my cellphone, emails,
meetings, ... I often feel out of control because I don't know the status of
issues.

I like to think there is a time for everything, and as said in the article, I
think people with ADD sometimes just don't manage that time correctly. Of
course I'm not saying ADD doesn't exist, but sometimes I do think it seems to
be(come) a real buzzword for some people.

And it seems logical to me people tend to find it hard to be focused, we are
living in a fast world, maybe sometimes too fast and demanding...

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edw519
Nice article, but like many things, this just touches the surface and adds
little enlightment.

Being really good at many things, especially programming, requires _deep_
involvement. This is the polar opposite of "posing".

It's easy to pose and talk about eyeballs or algorithms or third normal form.
But tell me what data is in column 4, which programs change it under which
conditions, and what that effects. That takes _deep understanding_. Which
takes focus.

If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.

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tokenadult
The Richard Wiseman color-changing card trick

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voAntzB7EwE>

is a good example of selective attention.

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FraaJad
tl;dr

~~~
s_baar
Hmm, I better scroll down to make sure no one else posted this... What font
color is that? -8?!? Oh thank god...

~~~
FraaJad
:)

Contrived efforts to keep the conversation serious had made people zealous
with their down buttons.

