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Comment by utxaa | Hacker News Reader

i am the exact opposite. ha ha ha ... once i get going on a problem, you could fire a cannon next to my ear and i may notice. as a matter of fact, i prefer noise around me when i'm working. i'm not being sarcastic. i'm pretty good at my job, although no genius (not even that smart) by any stretch in any way :)

but i feel that this ability to hyper-concentrate helps me overcome an otherwise average intelligence. anyone else experiences this?

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It's impossible for me to focus if I am not interested in something, but if something is fascinating to me, I forget to eat, drink water and do normal tasks and keep at this thing for hours. It has nearly ruined my life.

yeah. same. but for me it doesn't matter. if it's a puzzle (from number theory to computational geometry and everything in btwn) if i start, game over. it's a problem.

search 'hyperfocus'

set timers

And read "Driven to Distraction", seriously.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307743152/

It's called "Hyperfocus", and is common in ASD and ADHD. You might want to get a proper diagnosis. It does not particularly correlate with intelligence as far as I know.

Somewhat unintuitive too, but there it is. Low filter threshold and hyperfocus co-existing in the same brain. I'm waiting for the fMRI results on what is going on here.

I find that it has changed with age.

When i was younger i could blast music and not get thrown off a line of thought. But these days even a notification ding will get me derailed.

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