
Ask HN: Discipline but no focus, how to fix? - tinktank
I am incredibly good at getting up and out of bed and going into work and doing 12 hour days.  What I&#x27;m incredibly bad at is focusing on the task at hand.  I will often go off on a tangent to learn how something works, or something shiny will come my way and I&#x27;ll go off and play with it.  What are your strategies for increasing focus for someone who has the discipline to put in the time?
======
hoaw
As others have said, working 12 hour days is likely your problem. You are
probably naturally compensating to not get worn out by instead doing sporadic,
low pressure, tasks.

Think of it in reverse. What would a day look like if you really focused on
one thing. Presumably you would be worn out if not after 4 hours at least
after 8. Now you would have another 4 to go. That isn't sustainable. Doing all
sorts of random things that doesn't need to produce a result probably is.

------
arandr0x
Well, I mean, what if it's just the way you work? So you're creative and you
like learning new things, big whoop. Someday it'll come in handy when your
task-focused colleagues need somebody who can rattle off the state of the art
in database indexing or adversarial networks...

If it's actually impairing your life (as in, you put in 12 hours days because
there is no way your brain will allow you to complete your work in 8), you
need to consider changes in work environment may be needed to keep you on
task.

Several of my friends had success with lists and time tracking (it helps be
aware that, whoops, you're working on bug #Y now). Pair programming tends to
keep people very focused and it will never go on for 12 hours, so you could
pair part of the day, get the core work done, and then feel guilt-free about
the self-learning.

Take physical breaks, start drinking coffee, or both. Sometimes lack of focus
is a natural consequence of your task being not nearly exciting enough. We all
have tasks to do that are terribly boring, so when stuck in one, occasionally
give your brain a nugget of stuff feeling new. But don't task switch without
physically changing your environment; going outside when you need to goof off
will let you internalize that at desk=boring stuff we get paid for and
outside=play time. (Like many other smart children you and I probably didn't
learn that lesson quite as well as we should have in school.)

------
sns989
I am sure you've heard all of these but they worked for me: 1 month of doing
this on the regular and I've never been more productive.

All you need is 40 hours a week of solid productive work. that's it. Get that
in your head and work from this first principle.

make time for downtime - allow your mind to wonder and be bored and go off
tangents sometimes. Counterintuitively, that's part of the magic. do some
breathing exercises throughout the day(if you hate meditation like me lol)

Get a gym membership and do a rigorous workout 3/4 days a week.

Become friends with water: seltzer, regular, fruit-infused, tea, it doesn't
matter. drink lots of it. It'll have 2 main effects: keeps you hydrated of
course(with the many benefits) and it makes you get up every few hours to go
on a break.

------
segmondy
You have convinced yourself that discipline is different from focus. It's not,
it's one and the same. If you don't have focus, you don't have discipline.
It's easy to procrastinate and do things you shouldn't focus on and convince
yourself that you're doing work. It takes discipline or focus if you will to
do what you don't want to do. Before you begin work, plan your day, make your
plan visible, stick to the plan and don't move away from it. That's the
strategy. Plan ahead.

------
JabavuAdams
* Are you tired during the day? Do you sleep less than 7 hrs/day? 95% of people who believe they need < 7 hours of sleep a day are wrong. If you're feeling sleepy even when getting lots of sleep, get checked out for Sleep Apnea, etc. Lack of quality sleep -> lack of focus and poor decision making around impulsivity. Sleep deprivation is like hypoxia. You'll be debilitated but claim that you're not.

* Assuming your sleep is fine, have you ever been checked for ADHD? Medication has helped me be less impulsive. I call it my "anti-F __ _-it " medication. Where I used to think "I shouldn't really go off to do this, but f_ __it ", I now think "I shouldn't really go off to do this -- so I won't." Not a silver bullet, but a noticeable improvement.

* I've struggled with focus vs. exploration since childhood (I'm 43). It has never become easy, but I've become much better at it through experience and training.

* One dynamic I have is overcommitting time-wise. I know I don't really have a lot of time to do task A, but f __ _-it, I 'll do some B, an it should just work out. Oh, I didn't finish my work tasks by EOD Friday, OK I'll just work the weekend. Can I do this in a week? Sure. A week is effectively infinite time to my knee-jerk-reaction task planner.

_ To combat that, I now put all upcoming deliverables in my calendar. I have a
TODO note in Evernote separated into TODAY, and BACKLOG. Anytime I think of a
cool project or idea, I put it in BACKLOG. The day's tasks go in TODAY. To
avoid over-filling the day with tasks, I actually block out time for each task
in the calendar. The idea is not to rigidly stick to the calendar, but to get
constant reminders that there isn't infinite time in a day or in a week.
Sometimes you really can't make up the lost time later.

* I track my time with Toggl.com. Not everything, but studying and software development projects. I now know that it takes 1hr to do a 2 question thrice-weekly physics assignment. If I ship some personal project, I'd like to have some idea of how much time I actually spent on it. $/hr and all that.

* Try Pomodoro. This got me out of a sticky situation a few years ago, but I stopped using it. Have started using it with my kid, for homework, for good effect. These days I only use it when I notice myself procrastinating.

EDIT> Also, as many others have said don't work 12 hours a day if you can
avoid it. It's killing your long-term productivity. I have been burned out for
years, and am only now getting out of that.

------
itamarst
Doing 12 hours days will lead to exhaustion. Exhaustion leads to lack of
focus.

1\. Don't work 12-hour days. Work 8-hour days. Seriously, overwork is BAD (for
you, and for your employer).

2\. Focus comes from understanding your goals. If you know your goals you'll
be more motivated to focus: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/08/03/stay-
focused/](https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/08/03/stay-focused/)

~~~
mortivore
I second the not working 12 hour days thing. Seems like a bad, shortsighted,
and kind of dumb idea.

Also, make sure to get enough sleep. This can have a direct impact on your
ability to focus. 12 hour days can get in the way of this.

------
erikig
I really liked the rest of the comments but I’d like to offer an alternative
to all of the advice about limiting the amount of work.

I suggest finding a project, feature or initiative at work that ignites your
passion and puts you into flow (as defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi). 12hrs
will pass by quickly and you’ll be able to regain some of the focus you are
missing. If you can’t find this at the place you work, maybe consider changing
workplaces.

------
no1youknowz
Don't work 12 hour days especially when it seems you are wasting a lot of your
time.

You just need better planning. I posted the method that I use and I am really
productive [0].

Since March 2016 I do 9 hours a day, 7 days a week. That's 63 hours a week.

Of course, I would love to do more but I end up being frazzled.

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17479099](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17479099)

------
muzani
I had this problem a few months back. Meditation fixed it.

For 5 mins a day, try to focus and observe something. The standard is
breathing because it's easy and always existent. Just watch your breath go in
and out.

You can try guided meditation too, like Headspace.

Meditation can feel extremely difficult at first. You'll feel that the time is
better used for something else. Your mind will bounce all over the place.

It will most likely get even worse too at the beginning. Some people actually
scream.

Some places will suggest doing 30. I don't. We've seen people start at 30 mins
because they think it's easy and all, and then they go into the office all
stressed out.

I find the minimum dose is 7 _consecutive_ days. Try to do 5 minutes, 7 days.
Once you can do 7 consecutive days comfortably, you can start adding more
minutes in. Increase the dosage gradually, especially if you encounter
significant discomfort.

------
loneranger_11x
As others have mentioned "12 hour days" seem intense. I am assuming then that
you are not able to get a lot of work done.

Then, the key thing to focus on would be to get work done:

1\. Begin your day by making a long-list

2\. Prioritise - 1 do-or-die task, 3 must do, rest are good-to-have. It is
important to prioritise, else nothing gets done. Better to accomplish 1 thing
every day than attempting 10

3\. Once prioritised. lock down. Break down into tasks that take less than 30
minutes. And spend time on a task 15-30 minutes until it is done. Everything
else can wait

4\. Rinse and repeat

I have suffered this same problem before. Allocating too much time for tasks -
getting nothing done. Key is to focus on doing things rather than allocating
time. Hope this helps

------
Jefro118
For me the single best thing has been to schedule "deep work" first thing in
the morning. blocking out 1-4 hours to work with no music, no access to my
phone and if it makes sense (it rarely does) no internet connection. I find
that if I start my day like this I'm more easily able to focus for the rest of
the day even if I return to a more normal working environment. I don't have to
be at an office at 9am though so it might be less achievable for you.

While on the internet I use a pomodoro timer and website blockers to try and
keep me focused on the task at hand, both of these are pretty crude solutions
that can sometimes even be counterproductive though.

(shameless plug: I'm working on an "intelligent" website blocker in my spare
time - [https://awakely.herokuapp.com](https://awakely.herokuapp.com))

Modafinil/provigil can be helpful if you have a clear and inflexible plan for
what you need to do during the day. I find that they often make things even
worse once I do get distracted though. And they are more conducive to
productivity on simple repeatable tasks than complex, difficult tasks that
require context switching to learn new things. I take 100mg first thing in the
morning and drink extra water to prevent headaches.

Making lists of what you want/need to accomplish that day can be useful for
keeping you accountable to yourself, but again they often work better with
well-defined tasks, otherwise you end up with your original list half-complete
because you had to do other things that you couldn't anticipate and the day
ends up feeling like a failure.

A low-carb/slow-carb diet has been helpful for keeping my focus more constant
throughout the day, especially a fat/protein based breakfast. Some advocate a
ketogenic diet for this too, although I haven't gone that far myself.

Getting 8 hours of sleep each night makes a huge difference. Strangely, I
actually find ~4 hours sleep makes me more productive than 6, this certainly
isn't good long term though.

As others have said, your biggest issues is probably just attempting to work
12 hours a day in the first place - most people just can't pull this off on a
regular schedule.

------
wrestlerman
What helps me is well-defined tasks. I put them in Trello and prioritize them.
I tell myself that I can not go to another task without finishing a previous
one. I also tell myself the sooner I finish the more time I will have for
myself. I think the first steps are about discovering what works for you and
what does not.

I don't think you will fix this problem instantly. It will take time, so don't
panic. Also remember that some days you are gonna be less productive than
usual, don't be hard on yourself then.

------
fimspvfse
Looks like you're not working for 12 hours. Maybe 3-5h actual work and 5-7h of
surfing, switching, returning to a context.

It happens because a nature of current state of an internet. You can try to
limit your working time to a few slices of 4-6 working hours. Also try to
replace short and vivid content like any news, videos to the weekly
newsletter, books, tv series and so on.

I used to have the same issue and it's solved now by removing news, youtube,
all social networks, junk spammy content with ads from my life.

------
cweagans
Stop working 12 hour days. Take a completely disconnected vacation. Limit
yourself to 8-9 hours per day of screen time when you come back.

------
JSeymourATL
Do you have a daily exercise routine?

Terrific recent podcast discussion here on this very subject with Dr. John
Ratey. Authored “Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the
Brain,” > [https://findingmastery.net/john-
ratey/](https://findingmastery.net/john-ratey/)

------
hannahzenkova
Meditations. You learn to focus on something for as long as you wish. Fewer
distractions. It helped me a lot because I'm the one who's extra multitasking,
which wasn't productive enough. I've started meditating, and it changed my
workflow completely.

------
babaganoosh89
Are you tired? Personally caffeine helps me when I really can't focus.

------
MockObject
Weight lifting. Provigil. Vitamin D if it's too cool for shorts.

------
firemelt
I got the opposite problem focus but not discipline

