It's worth remembering that what works for John Carmack may not work for you.
You may have more distractions in life or job that you cannot get rid of.
Your baseline innate ability to focus may be very different.
You may have less experience training the skills required to focus.
Watching how successful people do things can provide useful inspiration for things to try, but you have to apply your own critical thinking and find what works for you.
True. But he's talking about a universal approach: removing the distraction instead of fighting it. You can implement your own specific method for this, but anybody would benefit from it.
> True. But he's talking about a universal approach: removing the distraction instead of fighting it.
It's less universal than it seems. For example, people with ADHD become distractable if their task isn't sufficiently stimulating. If the environment doesn't already offer distractions, their brain will generate some itself.
Brain scans show that ADHD brains use inefficient subsystems to maintain focus, and don't quiet down the daydream subsystem during focus time. Removing distractions doesn't do much because the brain is neurologically happy to manufacture some.
This supports the GP's point: what someone else needs may not help you in particular at all. Someone like this is better off finding ways to keep work interesting, or structuring their day around bouts of interest instead of unbroken working sessions.
> You may have more distractions in life or job that you cannot get rid of
s/cannot/choose not to/
Carmack walks his kids to school, occasionally plays video games with them, and that is the extent of his "dad" time, from what I can gather.
Some people don't consider social/family life to be as critically important as others. Not a judgement at all, but there is no such thing as "cannot" get rid of. We all make choices and tradeoffs.
You may have more distractions in life or job that you cannot get rid of.
Your baseline innate ability to focus may be very different.
You may have less experience training the skills required to focus.
Watching how successful people do things can provide useful inspiration for things to try, but you have to apply your own critical thinking and find what works for you.