Your Brain Can Only Take So Much Focus | Hacker News Reader

Your Brain Can Only Take So Much Focus

hbr.org

38 pointsrognjen11 comments

I was all set to disagree with the article after seeing the title because I take some pride in being able to totally focus/concentrate on work or writing for 60 to 90 minute sprints. But between those sprints I sit quietly in our living room, or outside and just enjoy doing nothing and generally not thinking about anything serious for several minutes. I can also get from my home office to a national forest hiking trail in about 90 seconds and being in nature, even briefly, helps me reset.

So, I ended up agreeing with the article.

Good article. I've been thinking along the same lines.

While working at home, I initially tried to focus for 100 percent of the time. I played music and always tried to be in the flow. It didn't work and my mind would break; by break, it seemed like my mind got stuck in a repetitive loop.

What did work for me was meditation (just focusing on something neutral like an object I held in my hand) and Pomodoro. Pomodoro naturally has intervals to shift from focused mode to unfocused mode.

Another thing that helped me is a lowkey activity of reading something light on my E-Paper tablet. I'd play an audiobook and read on the tablet so that I can follow along and then catch-up with the audiobook; my mind would wander or unfocus then I can focus it again by catching-up my reading with the audiobook.

Meditation I think is also just shifting from focused to unfocused again and again. The mind wanders then is brought back or focused to a neutral place and then it wanders again. It's not about always being focused on the neutral object but letting the mind shift between the two modes again and again.

The article also reminds me of the Barbara Oakley course on "Learning How to Learn" in which she highlights the importance of the focused and diffused mode.

I think you're right. There seems to be two sorts of attention in the mind, narrowly focused attention and broad diffuse attention.

I see the goal of meditation not so much as alternating between the two modes but rather like balancing them and running them both in parallel.

This entire video is really excellent, but see particularly this bit here, where Iain McGilchrist describes the concept.

https://youtu.be/dFs9WO2B8uI?t=88

Interesting, a lot to ponder on with regards to "The Divided Brain".

The diffused mode could be the broad diffuse attention while focus mode is the the narrowly focused attention. It seems like there is specialized parts in the brain for attention with one hemisphere for narrow and the other for broad. But I think that this is just one theory and it could also be the case that these two modes are more evenly distributed throughout the brain.

I wasn't really focused so much on where in the brain the two types of attention were located. It may be as he describes it in the video, or it may not.

For meditation, however, I feel strongly that the goal is to achieve a balanced state of mind, and the balance is as I understand it, is between these two types of attention.

My (admittedly strange) meditation practice is like this but also includes reading and writing. All mental states are welcome: ingesting external input, taking notes on the input, reviewing notes, rewriting notes, writing fresh thoughts, pondering with a goal, pondering without one, and pondering nothing, just sensing my environment.

I have ADHD so it takes me a lot to finally focus but when I really get into a grind I'm obsessed with finishing, I go for 8-24 hours straight depending on the goal. The most I've done is 36 hours, but that was when I was younger. Then I rest for a day or so.

I've done this all my life, for books, essays, programming, shows. I much prefer long sprints versus whittling it away with a small amount each day. You can really snowball your momentum.

That's true, but you (well at least I) can also commit the sunk cost fallacy, brute forcing my way through a problem when if I had stepped back i would have found a more elegant, easier way.

Usually if I meet resistance I backtrack and try something else sooner than later within the same sprint.

You can usually feel if your codebase isn't flexing properly and the change is going against the grain.

I don't think that is different whether you split up the work or do it in a single sprint. Personally I think you can see from the top down and get a better vision the longer you are working in something which helps with that specific problem.

Taking breaks and accept that there’s a limit of how much I can achieve on a daily basis is important to me.

Otherwise the brain gets overstimulated and mine starts to context switch constantly. Another thing I observed is that I become way more impatient when my brain is overly stimulated — it’s bad.

I recommend Chris Bailey’s talk https://youtu.be/Hu4Yvq-g7_Y.

BTW, is it just me or that this type of articles are kind of repeating themselves?

When I was younger I would do focus sessions for every waking hour of a day. I remember 14 hour physics homework sessions that would leave me exhausted. I think part of that is why I have so much anxiety in my later years. Sitting down and doing nothing every hour, even for a few minutes, is just so necessary to my sanity.

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