Ask HN: What is the best way to learn for the easily distracted?

Unfortunately, I don't think there are any tricks. Focus is a learned skill just like anything else. Try practicing meditation, removing/reducing constant attention sinks from your life (such as HN or Reddit), making sure your sleep and diet are good, and setting yourself up for success by removing excuses and distractions for the work you want to get done. Make a schedule and keep to it. It's not easy. Good luck.

There are no magic tricks. You're either getting something done or simply reading about getting something done, which is just another form of procrastination (http://jamesclear.com/taking-action).

Oh, and humans can't multitask. It's also more "expensive" to having to restart a task.

As a fairly easily distracted person, I find that I learn very effectively when I have some concrete problem to solve, and much less effectively when I just want to pick up knowledge for the sake of knowledge. The concrete problem provides focus and more importantly boundaries that I wouldn't have from just reading some docs or some textbook. Even studying for my ham radio exam was like this: picking up the basic concepts was slow going, because I'd either learn about something related but irrelevant or just lose focus entirely. But when I started taking practice exams instead of trying to learn the material first, I had specific goals of learning the questions I got wrong, which helped a lot.

Changing setting also works for me. I get different types of work done on my couch at home vs. at local coffee shops (and different coffee shops are good for different things). I hear part of this is that you form mental associations with different places as being suited for different kinds of work, and it's possible that your couch (or worse, your desk at work) is associated with doing too many things, none of which are learning.

Also, I might mention that adult ADHD is a thing that exists and that doctors can care for. (I myself went in to double-check that that wasn't my problem; it wasn't, but it was worth being sure.)

Coursera offers a course about "Learning How to Learn" which I found very helpful. Once you understand what's happening in the brain it can motivate you to do what works (e.g. spaced repetition). In that course, they talk about using the Pomodoro method for tacking procrastination and distraction. It works pretty well for me. Especially if you reward yourself at the end.

I have ADHD and it has effected every day of my life since I flunked out of Stanford in 1968. I have a few coping skills that might help you. They focus more on things involved in getting an education rather than directly on learning itself, but are never-the-less powerful aids to learning.

First: Some kinds of work are better suited to ADHD folks than others. Try to devise an academic career that focus on these activities. Writing on a word processor is an example. The non-linear aspects of re-writing to improve what you have written is a good fit to the non-linear thought processes ADHD folks live by. Begin with stream-of-thought writing, then re-write as inspiration dictates. Structured and Objective programming also is well suited because visual rigorous structure makes is easy to refresh focus with a glance following a distraction, and strict objective practice isolates a single function into a small package that is easy to complete before attention wanders. That programming takes place in a graphical/word processing environment is an additional advantage for ADHD folks. Graphical work like drawing or painting is easy to re-focus on for the same reasons. Any program that offers a dynamic editing environment that permits non-linear editing or permits ratcheting forward a task and easy review would have similar advantages. Planning any activity or writing and organizing notes using a outline processor works well. The point here is don't try to work like other folks. find ways to work like you think: non-linearly.

Second: Dealing with procrastination. Getting started on a task is a massive problem for ADHD folks. Read "Getting Things Done" and implement it on a outline processor. You can't overcome procrastination if you don't know what needs to be done. Next here is a little procedure that works wonders: Sit down on the couch and work up a substantial feeling of guilt for not starting a project. Then make a deal with yourself. If you get up and just get the job started (e.g. scraping the dishes and putting them in the sink or launching an IDE and defining the variables) you will have pushed the task forward and will have earned the right to sit back down. Once you are started however, it is such a relief to have started that there is no way you will want to sit back down.

I realize that these programs are not specifically target at learning for ADHD folk like you are looking for, but they do help quite a bit. For decades now I have pondered what sort of program might directly address this problem. I've been working on something along these lines for a few years now. It might help someday.

Hang in there my friend.

Adderall.

Question (as someone who has been told by friends and family he has attention problems but has never been diagnosed with anything):

What is the difference (or where is the line drawn) between laziness and attention issues? Do they have similiar affects (procrastination, etc)

I don't have specific advice, as your particular causes may be very different than mine. I would however recomend the following books as good starting points:

"The Information Diet": http://www.informationdiet.com/

"Mindset": https://mindsetonline.com/thebook/buythebook/index.html

"Peak":: http://peakthebook.com/

"Deep Work": http://calnewport.com/books/deep-work/

I've found it useful to pair-study something. I've also found it useful to just sit next to someone who is also studying/working. If you and the other person are aware of your tendency to distraction and commit to keeping the both of you on track, it is a big help.

You can also use a screensharing program like appear.in to do this remotely. Anyone in this thread should feel free to email me if you want to spend a weekend learning alongside someone else. Bonus points if you are in London.

Do yourself a favour; remove the distractions. The first few times, you'll probably give up pretty quickly, but as with everything, you'll get better at it.

I visualize how the information being studied could apply to my particular situation, then I practice what was studied in the same day.

Probably adderall, assuming you can get it prescribed.

Otherwise, I've heard good things about caffeine with L-Theanine (though I haven't tried this combo yet myself). Apparently L-Theanine takes the jitters out of caffeine and lets you focus more.

I've got ADHD. Here are a few things that have helped me...

* Asking myself if I really need to do something. If the answer is no, not doing it is one thing less to distract me.

* Asserting myself by saying "I'm not finished" when interrupted in a conversation (helps when you give others a chance to speak)

* Turning off the ringer on my phone whenever possible.

* Choosing a career that is both interest (you wanna pay attention to it) and doesn't demand being interrupted as part of it's duties (such as answering a phone).

* Working with people who naturally want answer questions, because reading is harder.

* Noise cancelling headphones.

Medication might help, but you'll have to figure that part out yourself.

I've not been diagnosed with ADD, though I show signs of it and mild dyslexia. Sitting in a quiet library with kids shuffling papers? That's a horrible environment.

So the first things first: Figure out how to deal with the environment. I prefer either to be in a silent house, alone, but that isn't doable often, so I tend to like music or something like NPR, BBC News, and so on because that minimizes the effect. Sometimes headphones are a bonus.

Classrooms are different altogether. Granted, I recently completed 2 years of language classes (Norwegian, because I moved here). The first year was difficult. Class moved slowly, and I'd get bored. I doodled in class to help me focus, and always took notes. Anything physical to keep me in-tune with the words. The second year was much better, as I was learning health-care stuff along with the language. I stopped doodling because the pace of class was on-target. In addition, we'd change activities often.

Studying on my own has proven more difficult, as I procrastinate. I'm going to need to start being more interactive. My solution is more a work-around: I'm gonna volunteer, probably to talk to someone elderly that requested some company. I'm more motivated to broaden my language skills this way. And I try to do this sort of thing as much as possible.

Frequent breaks are another solution, if you can. It isn't so bad to commit to 15-30 minutes to study something... Kinda like the advice they give to people starting to meditate.

And that's all I have for now. Much luck to you, your struggle is real.

To slog through it, you must learn to work especially when you don't want to. Swear to yourself to do only one thing and finish it. Don't reward yourself with additional projects. Single task like hell. Break work into smaller components. Give yourself no break when you don't want to work, no tv, no games, no internet, no eating. Just sit, stare at your work till you cry or get back to it. I'm speaking from experience, the struggle is real but you must tough it out.

Person with ADHD here; the following works for me, YMMV:

1) short afternoon bike ride; I'm typically losing focus about an hour after lunch and need to get outside;

2) Terrible at learning in a classroom, excellent at learning from video lectues and textbooks where I can pause and take notes;

3) drink a lot of water and coffee so you have to get up to go to the bathroom a lot, change of scenery is really nice;

4) I disabled my facebook account and put my browser on Desktop-screen-2 so I totally shift over to a new environment when checking the internet;

5) Found a job in which constantly checking email and paying attention to new stimuli is a virtue.

Context switching is not a good way to do things. I've found listening to music and using my tendency to get distracted on finding songs and artists that go for 10's of minutes to keep myself occupied while doing work.

Active noise cancelling headphones. Also, very important, train attention span, just by doing that ancient 'trataka' exercise, when you look at small flame as long as you can with no blinking, tears will fall, but its ok. Do it at least once a day. In a month you will gain some terrific skill of controlled attention span.

ADHD here, managing since high school. Thankfully no more pharma drugs, here's my tricks:

* Noise cancelling headphones. Especially useful with no music playing through it. If music, ambient or techno without words seem to help depending on what I'm doing.

* Understanding your most productive times of day and taking advantage of them (for me, its the morning. Afternoon is the worst)

* Reducing all distractions as much as possible. Turning off WiFi, putting your phone on silent (or better, keep it in your bag out of sight) really helps.

* Making lists. Breaking things down into smaller tasks that I can see myself completing and then giving myself small rewards for completing them.

* Rest and daily exercise is a BIG DEAL. Exercise especially helps my willpower and ability to stay focused throughout the day. Try Yoga!

* Natural light keeps me feeling fresh. Artificial light wears me out.

* Take walks on your breaks, avoid surfing the internet or extra stimulation... doesn't help and makes focusing even harder.

* Marijuana. Low doses of indica dominant strains either via edible or smoked helps keep me locked and focused way better than any stimulant drug.

Your question specifically called out 'learning' as opposed to 'focus', so I'm going to offer a slightly different take to what I've read below. (all great advice, especially daily management)

I've found the biggest factor is having a clear picture of what I'm trying to learn, with a practical use case / example to work on, which ultimately becomes my reference point.

Learning then becomes a process of making the example work to achieve the expected result. A series of problems I can tackle, using my "mental skillness" rather than fighting it.

There is overhead in context switching, but I balance that with the mental effort of fighting distraction.

If I feel like I'm struggling to focus on my current task (say, reading about "High Availability and Failover across a set of database nodes"), I'll switch to a different task that's still related to getting my example working (maybe draw some diagrams to visualize the pieces I've learned about so far, or set up a few servers and install the database software ready to configure, etc...).

The trick is to try to make constant progress relevant to what you're specifically trying to learn, but vary the sort of stimulus you're feeding your brain to keep yourself engaged.

I've come to see my subconscious as my personal OS:

'struggling to focus' is like blocking that thread on I/O or some mutex lock. I see it as an indicator to give some CPU time to some other thread (ideally all part of the same high priority 'process'), flush the buffers, etc...

To build discipline and focus, try using a timer. Variations of this are called the pomodoro technique. Set a time for work and a time for play/breaks/distractions.

One possibility is 45 minutes of working, 15 minutes off. Use the 15 minutes to read HN, reply to emails or IMs, read about that thing you just remembered on Wikipedia. If you have ideas or compulsions that get into your head and feel urgent, take a moment to write them down to look at during your break time.

If your work is less pressing or your distractibility is more intense you could try 15 minutes on and 25 off.

The cool part about this technique is you can increase the amount of work time as your focus improves.

Context switching has more overhead cost than we usually estimate. I've found that focusing on a single activity (assuming that activity requires considerable mental effort - maths/CS etc) in a day, and then gradually increasing that count to 2-3 activities over weeks/months while carefully measuring the context switch cost, has been consistently effective for me. Instead of fighting distractions and draining your mental energy, use simple tricks tips to block them out, such as - switching your phone off putting it in a separate room, or blocking websites etc - the idea is to create enough friction/blockage to make it difficult to indulge or even get started with them.

During the breaks from your work, every once in a while try to push yourself to seek boredom - this does 2 things - first, you're building your will power against those quick dopamine hits of info/media we keep craving for, and secondly depriving your brain of any kind of interesting stimulus or any mentally stimulating task makes your brain better at seeking those through your work, because your brain is not getting it from elsewhere. On other occasions, you can put that time for your hobbies, too. Generally, you should try seeking for activities that require longer attention span and are fun.

Headspace.com learn to focus