Bother Me, I'm Thinking
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
Their idea, strongly supported by thousands of case studies, is that to maximize success (whether in academics, tennis, the corporate world, etc.) one must practice deliberate spurts of stress followed by periods of strategic relaxation. It is easier to apply this in practice than the interesting but hardly practical content in the article. For example, for the past few hours, I've been working hard on understanding some algebraic geometry from Hartshorne, but now I'm daydreaming about neuroscience and salsa.
Thus, a perfect creative effort is a fusion of focused dedication interspersed with lackadaisical goofing around.
http://math.stanford.edu/~vakil/216blog/
In particular note Ravi Vakil's 500+ page book-in-progress on algebraic geometry, as well as a blog -- he is constantly soliciting and incorporating advice from people who are reading the book. (Remind you of any advice you see often on HN?)
Thank you.
http://mathoverflow.net/questions/2446/best-algebraic-geomet... http://mathoverflow.net/questions/3041/the-importance-of-ega...
There's no way they're a teacher. None. You cannot do this in the education system. There's a law against it, or something. Maybe they're on the run, a renegade teacher, like the professor-version of Archibald Tuttle.
Fully aware of LaTeX. Also fully aware a lot of book creators use things like LaTeX and Adobe to build their books and form their footnotes and keep their TOC / index / internal page references accurate.
I'm also painfully aware that tons of books, textbooks particularly frequently, don't use the information they built the book with to build the digital version, so it becomes a glorified scan that you can download and read, and nothing more.
The author, Jonah Lehrer, has an amazing book on behavior economics that I considering a must read for anyone trying to sell anything. It's been incredibly valuable to us at Wistia. It's called "How We Decide".
Jonah always finds incredibly interesting ways to pull apart behavior from a neurological perspective.
http://www.amazon.com/How-We-Decide-Jonah-Lehrer/dp/05472479...
I would say it's good to read his stuff as a jumping off point, but it may be good to follow that with something more scientific on the subject.
The whole premise of this piece doesn't make sense to me - coffee, whatever else is in Redbull - provide energy, not focus. That energy can be used to focus on something you don't want to focus upon. You also can let your mind wander at the frenetic pace stimulants like coffee, ADHD meds and others facilitate. So back to the beginning - Jonah Lehrer is very good at nicely framing a point that he isn't actually making.
I tend to be more creative when I'm letting myself drift, but I need to focus in order to execute. As with most things, balance is the key.
I think that perhaps by spending so many hours in front of the computer, my mind is always in this "virtual world" state, where I think A LOT, but only to myself—and this carries over to to the "physical world." I easily distracted—but can focus really hard on one thing at a time, so I don't have issues learning (if I'm paying attention to the class). Don't know if this is a good or a bad thing.
I'm a very busy guy, but I easily spend 40% of my day not focusing on work. Probably another 20% is walking around talking to the people. To me, "focusing" on random stuff (ie. Hacker News, the newspaper, work-related or personal research) and completing tasks with minimal time is the best way to get things done -- the pressure helps me cut to the essence of whatever I need to do.
The article is talking about on how to start tacking solving problems. People that are easily distracted seem to come up with more creative solutions. Which makes sense.
Also, the studies cited have a selection bias. They studied very smart college students (at Harvard), which means these kids, even though had attention problems, they were successful enough to get there, which means they are high functioning ADD/ADHD. (they manage to get some productivity out of them. And the extra creativity gives them an edge).
The article also mentions that they didn't measure all those kids with ADD/ADHD that were never able to finish high school, or get into college.
ADD/ADHD can be crippling, but for very smart people that manage it (or find way to become productive), it might be actually be beneficial to their creativity and give them and edge.
One comment that you hear from people that start taking Ritalin due to adult ADD, is that while they are a lot less distract-able and are able to perform and complete a lot more tasks, they feel less creative, and more a bit like robots.
I am adult that has been recently diagnosed with ADD, and have to say that the comparative problem solving and creativity advantage has been apparent all of my life (not just to me :) ).
>>One comment that you hear from people that start taking Ritalin due to adult ADD, is that while they are a lot less distract-able and are able to perform and complete a lot more tasks, they feel less creative, and more a bit like robots.
I was afraid that this would happen to me, but thankfully that hasn't been my experience. I'm hardly a robot, and really just as prone to distraction. I am, however, better able to modulate my attention. On the drugs, I can choose what I pay attention to so that distractions are less of a problem.
Time spent with "leisure Internet browsing," though? Not so much.
Brainwaves slow down when watching TV compared to just sitting staring at the grass. Lolling around Gawker and Reddit isn't so different from watching TV for a lot of people.
It's not for everyone, but for me, "leisure Internet browsing" (and leisure creation) over the past 15 years has been step 1 of most of my successes.
If I'd been focused on my "work" more, I probably wouldn't have started blogging in 1999 or even known what it was. Blogging has brought me a book deal, a large share of my income, and many other things since then. I probably wouldn't have come across Rails in 2004 and had some early successes there. I wouldn't have been tuned into the great stuff discussed on HN about e-mail newsletters, which I've now turned into a success for myself too. The list is endless.
I try not to spend too long just noodling around the Internet, but I do quite a bit of it because I can see what an investment it is. By keeping an eye on what people are into, what other people are making, and what memes are catching on, I can absorb those ideas and produce catchier things of my own. It saddens me when I meet smart people at meetups who don't spend enough time casually browsing and who have no idea what's "going on" at the moment or what opportunities there are opening up..
Again, this might only be beneficial because I work entirely for myself. If I were working a 9 to 5 in an office, it probably wouldn't make sense.
I'm a problem solver, i'm recognized to be one, and i don't know much people who have a problem with me wandering on the internet here and there. And if it's not internet, i take a quick smoke break, helps most of the time, specially in the winter when it's -20 outside (Montreal, gotta love it :p ), slap you right in the face.
It would make sense that people with a low threshold would be more easily distracted by weak environmental stimuli but they would also be more likely to be aware of their own ideas and hence would be better at generating ideas.
People with a high threshold would not be easily distracted and would have an easy time remaining focused on tasks which are "not too hard" in that the next step is strongly suggested by the current step. I think much programming is like this.
To be successful at solving hard problems we need to vary our consciousness threshold, as others have said in different words.
Repeat after me: Correlation does not imply causation. Correlation does not imply causation. Correlation does not imply causation.
> The scientists measured the success of 60 undergraduates in various fields, from the visual arts to science. They asked the students if they'd ever won a prize at a juried art show or been honored at a science fair.
Art shows and science fairs, obviously the best / only indicators of success.
Man, either the article is terrible or it's shocking that this passes as "research".
Anyways, there's a huge lack of ADHD research in adults, and how it affects students in higher education, and virtually no research on how it affects people in the workplace.
There is some interesting research regarding creativity and ADHD. Some of it ends up trying to strengthen/disprove the dopamine hypothesis.
I'll also mention that I've recently gotten into Pomodoro, and that has really helped me to pay attention. I never would have thought so, but I'm actually able to code and be a lot more efficient in my Internet usage using the technique.
Reading this article made me really happy that... ooooh, shiny!
It also connects to the old saying "La nuit porte conseil" - aka "the night brings council" - or "best to sleep on it".
"Distract me, i am working" reflects the idea of the article better.
Distraction may not be irritating but bothering someone is always irritating and annoying and leads to stress. But creativity comes from relaxed state (daydreaming etc).
Being easily distracted means you have a harder time to get stuff done. To bring it back to another commenter it also means you have a harder time to achieve and maintain Flow.
So in a typical pop-scientist way the writer of the article got the headline completely wrong. You can't make me more creative by distracting me. If I'm creative I'll have a harder time to maintain focus.