Ask HN: How to maintain focus during long, critical-thinking intensive, tasks | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to maintain focus during long, critical-thinking intensive, tasks

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Hi HN,

As my career has progressed and I have been given larger and more complex software engineering assignments, I am finding that my ability to focus seems to diminish in proportion to the complexity/longevity of the task at hand. How do you all achieve prolonged periods of focus throughout the day? I am especially curious what those who are in a startup, in-office, environment would say as these tend to be very "personal" (i.e. I can't lock myself in an office).

Thank you!

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You should start with reading Deep Work, by Cal Newport. And recognize that there is a limit to just how long you can concentrate deeply. Be conscious of diminishing returns.

http://calnewport.com/books/deep-work/

I really loved the book in combination with the book Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In Deep Work are several strategies explained to get into a state of flow by doing deep work. [0]

- [0] https://www.robinwieruch.de/lessons-learned-deep-work-flow/

In addition to the above, a more general recommendation would be to look into meditation.

Sam Harris's Waking Up, along with an app like Headspace, would be great places to start.

I chunk all work down to 2 hours max. Keep chopping it up until I can get it small enough.

Then I completely focus for the period of time needed, no other distractions, 15 to 120 minutes. It's similar to the Pomodoro method, except with a max of 2 hours. If I feel the urge to do something else, I jot it down to be done in the break.

I then force myself to take a mandatory break after the estimated time is over.

If I expect a distraction during the needed time, like a meeting or lunch, I do something else that fits the time slot.

If I'm uncertain how long a task takes, I put aside 1-2 hours to hack a disposable prototype or do research.

There's always limit on how much one can focus. Here's what I do to compensate:

1. Write everything down, in some sort of structured form.

2. Take breaks.

3. Return to writeup, think about it some more.

This scales from smaller two day things to multiple month projects; see Rich Hickey's talk, which focuses more on the latter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc

Early in my career, I had a similar frustration. I took a paper notepad and documented everything I did. I planned on doing it for a couple of weeks. On the afternoon of the second day, I sat down with my manager and showed that the longest period I had without structural interruption was about twenty minutes. By structural interruption, I mean things that require response and cannot be tuned out (and not things like loud coworkers). My responsibilities did not change, instead other people's authority to interrupt me at will was reduced.

That was many years ago. These days, I pull all-nighters in part due to habit from working in environments where all-nighters until it is done (for some definition of 'it' and 'done') were normalized, but in part because I know that my focus before about 16:00 is often limited and increases throughout the evening and into the morning. I'm not recommending all-nighters, because the fact it works for me has no bearing on it working for you.

I am recommending figuring out what works for you based on what works for you and not based on what works for someone else.

Good luck.

Do work that you enjoy and you should have no problems. When you run out of focus after 10-12 hours, the only cure is to go to bed.

take short breaks ...

for me 5 minutes after every 40 works well ...

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