Ask HN: How do you focus on work for long periods of time?
I've used Adderall (not ADHD diagnosed) a couple of times, and it helps a significant amount. However, I know it can't be the real solution - my problem is concretely that anytime I work on something, I can't work on it for long amounts of time - every 15 minutes, I will either visit HN, Reddit, some game, or have to get up and physically leave the desk. I can't bring myself to work on things for extended periods of time. How do you guys do it?
147 comments
[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 188 ms ] threadGo get tested for ADHD, man.
Ctrl-f "fite timer"
https://www.friendlyskies.net/maybe/the-balance-first-approa...
Start with 45m break, 5m clarity through planning, 10m direct work tasks.
Ctrl-f "debrief" after that and use the debriefing module.
If you are still struggling then look at the words you are using to describe the problem you are experiencing, they are probably not accurate or they leak too much leverage in your case.
Try to keep all square/T list items to less than 2m each and in batches not to exceed 10m per long timer cycle.
More troubleshooting:
https://www.friendlyskies.net/maybe/defeating-procrastinatio...
https://www.friendlyskies.net/maybe/what-do-you-do-when-you-...
Foundational:
https://www.friendlyskies.net/maybe/the-productivity-triangl...
Good luck & hang in there, you got this.
If this is always true, even when you're working on something that interests you, maybe consider getting that ADHD diagnosis? If it's just something you struggle with occasionally or when you're slogging through boring tasks that's something you should be able to improve.
It really depends on the type of work you're doing though. I doubt there'll be any one trick that works for everybody in every situation. Sometimes having music or a podcast or a TV show in the background keeps my mind engaged while I'm working on something that isn't exciting enough to keep it quiet. Sometimes I just need lots of breaks to keep my sanity. For work that requires a ton of focus I tend to work best in quiet dark places where there isn't much to pull my attention off of what I'm doing. Caffeine never hurts no matter what I'm working on.
Mental illness doesn't respect borders. Of course it's "a thing".
See for example: https://adhdeurope.eu https://www.eunetworkadultadhd.com
It sounds like you don't have ADHD, so you experience normal things like procrastination. That's fine, but ADHD is something else entirely. It's a neurodevelopmental disorder that results in executive dysfunction. A lot of ADHD symptoms are things people without ADHD do encounter occasionally, just less often and to a lesser extent.
ADHD is a thing in humans, not countries or cultures.
It’s honestly still very early days in terms of research and understanding, as for the longest time they thought people grew out of it. You don’t grow out of it, you just get taught by society how to hide it—unless you’re lucky enough to put the piece’s together and get diagnosed.
> I know plenty of people (including) myself that would struggle to focus on things their genuinely want to be focusing on.
ADHD isn’t really an issue with focus. We can spend a day wanting to focus on something, but not. And we can spend a day fully focussing on one thing and forgetting to eat. It’s an executive function disorder. Deploying focus is hard. Switching focus is hard.
Everyone struggles with focus from time to time, especially when the world or life gets stressful.
We’re currently in (hopefully) the tail end of a global pandemic, watching what may be later referred to as WWIII, going through the second major economic downturn in as many decades, and watching some western countries’ democracies under threat.
I know there’s always a lot on in the world, but recent times do seem more stressful than the years before. So it’s reasonable for everyone to have issues with focus, and yep I agree with you that’s not reason enough to suspect ADHD.
> Sometimes, though, I won't wash the dishes because I just don't feel like it.
I just want to point out, as someone with ADHD when I don’t wash the dishes it’s almost never because I don’t feel like it.
Rather, I might be doing one task when I notice the dishes need to be done but doing them at that moment would involve an expensive and painful task switch.
Then when I’ve finished the task, I have a good chance of forgetting the dishes, and might only catch them again in the middle of another task.
I always watch something (often a tech talk from a conference on YouTube), because even with meds dishes a woefully under stimulating.
I wanted to add this context because those with ADHD are often blamed as being lazy, but that not the case. It’s more like you and your mate are going for a run, and you’ve got an invisible 100lb rucksack on and you just can’t keep up. Meds is like someone removing most of the weight from that rucksack.
To start, do a task without distractions for your current ability - 15 minutes. Set a timer and stay on task until time runs out.
Take a short break - 5 minutes, maybe 10 at most.
Repeat the above 2-3 times, then take a longer break, something around 25-30 minutes. If you feel OK, do another 2-3 rounds and then go do something less taxing that doesn't take deep focus.
If you have truly focused for the time, you'll know it. Just starting out, a couple of hours of work will definitely sap your energy.
Gradually increase you focus works times by 5 minutes. If you can get to 25 minutes without feeling the need to do something else, that's great. If you can do the above cycles with your full attention for a total of four hours, you're doing well. Not a lot of people can do really intense, focused work for more than four hours a day. The rest of your work day, do low-intensity things like answering emails, cleaning up your work area (both physical and virtual), and such.
There's an entire book devoted to this that I can recommend: Deep Work Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, by Cal Newport.
1 https://francescocirillo.com/pages/pomodoro-technique
I will say, it definitely brings you above baseline in ability to concentrate, even with adhd. I was basically unable to do any deep work because of random 30 minute meetings interspersed throughout the day. With vyvanse I can basically leave a meeting and within 5 minutes of it finishing be in the zone working on a different task.
I'm on week 3 now and the intense calmness has faded but my ability to do tasks and focus remains to a certain extent.
Now start loading more into your working memory, after you get N classes deep things will start to get fuzzier, you won’t be able to hold it all in your mind at once, you’ll get unfocused, and then go to hacker news.
Imagine if that fuzziness didn’t start, but you kept that sharpness of working memory easily. Imagine it was effortless to keep reading, and imagine other thoughts (biological needs or whatever) never distract your working memory.
That’s what it’s like for me, unfortunately I get terrible headaches after, and the amount of time it takes to recover causes a loss in productivity that is greater than the productivity I would have got working at a comfortable pace.
Much better is diet and exercise, with diet and exercise I have vastly increased my ability to focus and remember, much better than any artificial chemical enhancement.
There are no shortcuts
It totally doesn't work for me, I can retain max 5m out of every meeting including pair programming.
Most pair programming end up being someone doing the work while the other browse Twitter and pretend to follow.
A somewhat spiritual take on the whole issue is Steven Pressfield's "The War of Art". One of my favourite books, and I'm as non-woo-woo as you can be.
There’s one highly specific genre of music I listen to while I code. Nothing else. If I take a break, I turn it off. If I get distracted, I turn it off. I only listen to it when I work.
I use the sandwich method of booking meetings; only at the beginning or end of the day. Also the times when I look at my emails. Slack is harder to turn off because ops so I let that one slide.
When I need to concentrate, flip on my playlist, and go to town.
Now when I want to focus on coding I can throw my playlist on and get a small boost in focus.
The power of association. Our brains seem to be association machines. Smells and sounds to certain memories, times, or places. A ritual helps you deliberately build an unconscious association.
Can't go wrong with relentless stuff like this
It's like Omegle for focus. Pick a time slot and pair up with someone to be accountable together.
You can get more information on how it works here https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46624137
You can also book a session with me if you like. https://www.focusmate.com/i/nLUDAIR5oh/calendar
Genuine question: do you not end up just chatting with your paired partner?
The session template is: brief greeting > outline what you're gonna do > wish the other person well > mute mics and get stuff done for the bulk of the session > end of session chime sounds > share how well you did (and here you can chat for 2-4 mins if both parties are keen)
Amphetamines worked well for a while but they started having all kinds of messed up side effects so I quit them and I'm glad I did.
I tried a small dose of Ritalin and ended practicing handstands for half the day.
So, why on earth would you recommend them (or even bring the topic) here? I don't get it.
I've actually found that a very small 2.5mg is MORE effective for doing work than 5-10.
I do it once every 3-4 weeks not only to get stuff done, but refresh/reset how to "be in hyperefficient flow" where you just get stuff done and enjoy it.
The first side effects are mental, you also get physical side effects like body aches. I'd rather never experience that level of anxiety ever again.
I'm basically asking, do you think once every 2-3 weeks will be an issue? I think something about relying on it, even at 2-3 weeks, might make it an issue long term. But I'm not sure.
It doesn't affect me the same way as it did 10 years ago when i first tried. Back then it was euphoria and now it's just slight concentration. Which is ideal for working. But the euphoria is mostly gone.
I was using it daily for about a year or two, and it really helped but also caused issues with my personal life, relationship and so on.
I think you're probably ok, keep in mind it is a neurotoxic drug so you'll want to mitigate that, and your usage as much as possible, antioxidants, not overheating and that sort of thing.
Set a kitchen timer for 25-30 minutes (just 10-20 minutes longer than current!) and focus singularly on your task. You can check Reddit, HN, etc after.
If you can get into flow, keep going. Otherwise, keep increasing your timer by 5-10 minutes until you've trained yourself to work for 60 minutes straight. Remember to take breaks though!
I worked with people with ADHD (not diagnosed and diagnosed) and they all had the same problem of being unable to focus. Pairing with them was quite the experience.
Some of them switched to being product managers to retain a good pay even if they can't code.
I think you have to deal with it but don't stress too much over it (stressing about it will make it worse). In today's bs corporate world in which nobody does crap you'll be fine. Average performance around medium large companies is terrible.
The more I break down a problem into small solvable problems (a pen and paper is all you need), the less obscure the issue / work becomes, then I can be there for 20 hours coding/designing whatever from the point I've understood what I need to do.
Also writing down where I finished and where I need to start from the next day helps me get back into work easily.
TL;DR you're probably overwhelmed and it's easier to watch sexy people doing yoga on Instagram than to actually build something.
Provided I value the thing, my body/mind will come around when demanded of, often slowly.
If I don't care that much, or the downsides don't feel so bad, then I try to practice giving up that thing (in whatever way I can) or just not doing it well.
1. Put your phone in another room and only check it at scheduled periods. For me, after breakfast I put my phone out of sight until lunch and then back in the other room it goes until 3:30 PM.
2. Try to keep separate spaces for entertainment and focus. For example at your desk only do productive work like development or paying bills. If you want to watch a youtube video then take your laptop to your couch and watch it there or just watch youtube only on your TV.
3. Check out this podcast from Andrew Huberman called Focus Toolkit on focus cycles, focus music and more.
Also don’t be afraid to take breaks (without a screen), we aren’t machines. Just walk around and daydream sometimes
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ7lDrwYdZc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique
It's worth reading through the original Pomodoro Technique PDF, since planning and tracking is an important part of the process:
http://friend.ucsd.edu/reasonableexpectations/downloads/Ciri...
My current solution is to:
- minimize distractions (I mute websites and use an extension to block youtube/reddit/facebook), - have a background music that drown out noises (there are online generators[0] but I found a particular song plus rain noise combination [1] to be a great fit for my brain)
[0]: https://mynoise.net/ [1]: https://youtu.be/9kgRHg3TaAI
Nothing useful there. Oh well.
Edit: A lot of people saying you might have ADHD. I wouldn't jump to that conclusion or worry about that. Don't spend time chasing down a diagnosis unless you really, really need the medical assistance. It's probably our modern attention economy: the Web has trained our brains to seek diversion after a few minutes. Call it ADHD if you will, but then pretty much everyone who spends time online has it. It's healthy and "normal" to take a breather / quick break every so often. It lets the mind decompress. The trick is training yourself to do it only when that break won't interrupt a deep stack in your brain that you have to spend a lot of time rebuilding later.
While everyone may experience times that are similar to what is described as ADHD, it only affects about 5% of the general population (and about 8-10% in our industry based on the stackoverflow developer survey).
OP if the meds helped and you find long concentration hard, it could be worth investigating. Worst case you confirm it’s not.
If it is, this isn’t the only place it will affect. And it won’t be recent you’ll have been dealing with this since before you were 12.
Despite its name ADHD isn’t an issue with attention, it’s an executive function disorder. The bigger challenges are with starting, stopping and switching tasks.
Someone with ADHD can be perfectly capable of completing a task, but their brain will not let them do it. No matter their strength of will.
This is a double edged sword with hyperfocus, where you get into a task that you go deep on, and it’s damn near impossible to pull you out of (in some cases, you might not even want to be doing it anymore).
> It's healthy and "normal" to take a breather / quick break every so often.
Yep, Pomodoro is based on this. Depending on the task everyone needs a break.
This will increase your baseline dopamine for normal activities. When your baseline is too low, you self medicate by going on Reddit which spikes your dopamine for a while. Taking a break from stimulation lets your brain accumulate dopamine naturally
https://hubermanlab.com/controlling-your-dopamine-for-motiva...
I sort-of naturally fell into it. I'm just not as interested in HN or Reddit anymore. The whole internet feels like it's arguing, not discussing, and that rubs me wrong. So I feel very bored by the internet right now, which is something I never thought I'd say.
It's allowed me to really focus up on some other things like my fitness and some real-world projects, but I wouldn't say the struggle is over. The dopamine cycle is legit.
First time I took medication it blew my mind that the pain of working on something boring was gone.
I rarely take the medication due to side effects. But I can function somewhat better now that I know what it’s like to basically be normal.
I still get way more done on medication.