It's one thing to remove distractions but it's another to have real _focus_.
IMO we're reaching the point where the ability to focus on one topic for prolonged time periods will become a new social / class divide; e.g. 80% unable to concentrate on anything for more than a couple of minutes vs 20% who have learnt how to focus. If you're not able to focus, you're effectively disabled from being able to define your own "destiny".
Well, I also agree, but I'd like to just add something to your small comment on consumers vs. producers. In this case, I don't think it's necessarily consumers vs. producers, but the divide among the consumers. Those consumers who can consume some particular piece of content in a way they understand it well, vs. the consumers who merely are looking for the tl;dr.
Some research already points to this being the case. iirc, they tracked the subjects from childhood to adulthood and the results showed that self-discipline was the prime differentiating factor displayed by successful subjects (no citation, sorry).
You're thinking of Deferred Gratification, and specifically the results of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment. Basically they put a marshmallow in front of children and said, "You can eat this marshmallow now, but if you don't eat it then when I get back you will get a second marshmallow". Then they leave the room and come back something like 10 minutes later.
It's not mentioned in those articles, but one of the differences in those who didn't eat the marshmallow was that they used coping strategies to distract themselves. Things like singing to themselves, looking around the room, or drumming on the table. I think I recall a follow-up experiment that's not mentioned in those articles where they taught these coping strategies to a group of children then ran the experiment and, sure enough, far more of them were able to resist eating the marshmallow than in the control group.
Thank you very much. That's definitely the study I was referring to.
The follow-up experiments you mention, where the coping strategies are taught, sound extremely interesting. Hopefully us info-addicts are not already too old to develop such "effective attentional control systems."
I installed focus.py this weekend (after seeing it here on HN), and am looking forward to some productivity gains. It was months ago that I read "Self-discipline in 10 days" (probably also on an HN recommendation). The key take-away (which I keep reminding myself) was that self-discipline is a skill that is learned and practiced, a muscle which is strengthened through exercise.
This experiment is apparently very compelling to us geeks, but according to Po Bronson, there are a number of problems with the marshmallow experiment (very few kids took the test as described in the Wikipedia links above, and grades were only tracked for a few of the students).
This is interesting. I reached similar conclusions several years ago and:
-turned data off on my phone. The control provided by pull is so much more than push. (email/twitter/facebook)
-email client is not running 24/7 anymore. Same philosophy as above.
-started hacking on extended projects - spend sometime every weekend over 5 months on one more challenging project.
-stopped posting every link I found interesting on FB/Twitter.
-decreased the amount of time spent on things I knew that I knew.
-started spending more time in solitude. (resisting the impulse to pull out the phone while waiting at the doctor's office)
-actually read books. Before this, I couldn't even remember the last time I had read a book back to back; magazines don't count.
Not only does the concentration help but I found the idle state of mind keeps me much more relaxed and it encourages new ideas to pop into my head. (Idle CPU being spent on the subconscious? I don't know but it works.) The overall affect on my life is freaking amazing.
If there was ever a book called, "creativity by design", this would definitely be in there.
In fact my hn activity is sporadic because I occasionally entirely block the site at the host file level.
I've now got myself a little app that blocks a blacklist site for a specified amount of time. I set this for 2-3 hour blocks, turn off email and get on with things. It's a bit crummy but it works OK.
I've never had push notifications on my phone.
I use RescueTime but I find it a bit after-the-event. As in, it tells me how bad I was in the prior week.
Ultimately, though, it takes self discipline, the same as any other worthwhile task like eating well, getting fit, or maintaining relationships and friendships.
If you find yourself mindlessly looking for distraction, I find it helps to stop and question yourself on what task it is you're trying to avoid, and then just get on and do that task.
I just started taking similar steps a couple of weeks ago as well.
- LeechBlock for Firefox, RescueTime as well.
- Cleared out my browser bookmarks and history of distracting sites so they don't pop up as suggestions all the time.
- Turned off email notifications on my phone and my work machine. It's amazing how easily one little "ding" noise could break my focus.
- During the workday I only allow myself to read industry-related articles and blog posts, so I'm not so entertained that I lose track of time.
If I still don't feel like I'm getting enough done, then I am considering going back to a dumbphone, making use of timers, and other more drastic measures. So far I'm doing much better though.
I power through as quickly as possible using keyboard shortcuts, making quick decisions about whether each item is important enough to devote some small fraction of my life to. Will it help me work faster, understand something I've been wrestling with, solve a difficult problem?
"Under these circumstances it seems better to live a life in which you do important things (important in your eyes, of course) than to merely live out your life. No sense frittering away your life on things that will not even appear in the footnotes."
Some good tips, especially this one browser addon.
I'd add:
- Using Pomodoro with 25 min units + 5 min breaks.
- Being logged in FB in your least favorite browser + checking FB in the evening only—works like a charme, you stop entering facebook.com in your url bar because it won't work in your most used browser and after a while you get too lazy to log in or to change into your least favourtie browser and thus, you stay away from FB. Doing this for months and it reduce my FB the to zero during the day.
Yeah, I go as far as to enter a password that I can't remember (copying it from some text file) and leaving the cookie only on the reserved browser. Keeps me from checking FB when I'm on my phone with nothing to do
The other day I changed my Linux window manager to stumpwm (also tried ratpoison but stumpwm works slightly better for my particular case). It's definitely helped me focus, and the fact that I have to run a command or keystroke to get to the Internet gives me just enough extra effort that I can stop myself.
However, I also find it somewhat grueling to go without any distractions for a long time. After about 4 hours straight I'm surprisingly drained.
I changed too my linux window manager three days ago to stumpwm. It feels and runs great. Try conkeror web browser If you didn't yet, +10% productivity gain.
I went with Windows Firewall for blocking sites on my work computer hoping it would give me more control than /etc/hosts. But I haven't been able to come up with a filter for Google that blocks News and Reader but allows me to use Search and Mail.
If you work from home, I strongly suggest getting a DD-WRT router and block sites at that level. Then password protect the router and give the password to someone you trust.
If you use /etc/hosts to block sites can be enough for some people to break the habit of casually drifting to those sites when your attention is on the wane or you're trying to focus. Less of a hassle too.
He's a fairly well-known blogger, podcaster, speaker, and .NET programmer who's entries get submitted here pretty frequently. But you could've learned this by visiting the link you're complaining about.
The article he's talking about[1] is linked from this post, literally within the first sentence.
More generally, Scott Hanselman is known, to me anyway, mostly as a blogger and host of the This Developer's Life podcast[2] with Rob Conery. He works for Microsoft.
IMO we're reaching the point where the ability to focus on one topic for prolonged time periods will become a new social / class divide; e.g. 80% unable to concentrate on anything for more than a couple of minutes vs 20% who have learnt how to focus. If you're not able to focus, you're effectively disabled from being able to define your own "destiny".