Ask HN: What helps you focus at work? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What helps you focus at work?

12 pointsthroawayfocu9 comments

I have been having a problem for the last 6 months or so. I'm working as a software engineer and at my regular job I can't seem to focus more than a few minutes at a time. This has been getting worse as of late. This is not an issue with programming in general since when I'm working on side projects in the afternoon I find that I can't stop working until I'm tired/have to got to bed. The weird thing is that I'm working with Python both on my day job and on my side projects, it's just that it's something with my day job that I can't seem to find the motivation to keep going. Obviously I can't quit, to work on my side projects now full time (though I would like to progressively/eventually do it). I would like to ask how have you dealt with similar problems before?

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Mainly it's because it takes more willpower to do something at work. This makes sense; that's why they give you money.

1. Get enough rest, especially sleep. Without enough rest, your mind has little time to defrag. Without defragging, it wanders off easily.

2. Let your mind wander, but not at work. Avoid social media and gaming as these give your brain more things to process. Games and social media are especially dangerous because you think you're taking a break but only make yourself more tired.

3. Don't do anything tiring before work. I found my work productivity increasing greatly by avoiding morning exercise. These tap into willpower reserves.

4. Avoid caffeine. YMMV, but I found that caffeine made it difficult for me to focus. Caffeine tends to be a counter for lack of sleep.

5. Train yourself to be bored. Part of the problem is that your brain is already trained to reach for something whenever bored. When you feel the urge to look at HN or Reddit, just give yourself at least a 5 min time gap, to consider whether you really need to. Even better if you could give yourself 30-60 min gaps between the urge and the action.

Good points but I know a few people that are more productive at work if they work out in the morning. I mean, they aren't running 5ks or lifting heavy lifts, but a few coworkers go for a quick run in the morning and they say it helps them a lot.

Ah, a quick run might help. Maybe to some people, it's the only exercise they get, which is better than nothing. I usually do my workouts on my break days. They help me sleep a lot better too, which keeps me rested for the work days.

As you say, it's motivation. So you need to figure out how to align motivation between what you're doing at work and your own motivations. Motivation isn't just about technology you're using, it's about whether you're learning, how you feel about company's goals, and so on.

So you could:

* Switch to a more interesting project at work.

* Find a new job that's more compelling.

* Focus on second order motivations, like "I am making money to pay for food." This is harder.

More here: https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/08/03/stay-focused/

It sounds like what you're working on in your day job isn't as appealing as your side projects. You might take some time to reflect on the reasons why - it may or may not be programming-related. It could also be about what value you see in your day job. For me to get out of my struggle, I identified some roadblocks that were preventing me in my day job, which included communication skills. Once I had the realization that communication skills was something I needed to develop in order to be successful in growing my own startup, I took every opportunity in my day job to take it as personal development.

Dumb as it may sound, have a list of todos that each takes no more than 10 minutes. We generally think linearly, so go through the list of what you must do one at a time, and make the physical gesture of crossing out the item on completion.

Turn the internet off. Focus will return. Use zeal docs and offline stackoverflow (via kiwix) and it will help get most dev work done offline. I mentor new devs and this is the number one issue I hear from them.

If you were asked to explain why the project you are currently working on is useful to someone, could you?

Loud music.

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