Ask HN: How do you stop screwing around and focus? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you stop screwing around and focus?

26 pointsthe_only_law18 comments

I have a lot of things I want to learn. A large number of these things are not easy, in fact many are considered difficult and not friendly to beginners.

Every time I try to start learning something I end up giving up. There are various reasons for this. A lot of the times, due to a very weak background in anything, there are a lot of prerequisites to learn. Often this is some math. I know what I want to make, what problem I want to solve, etc. but I have to learn some mathematics before I can be productive. Even worse I often need to go back and supplement my terrible math education and relearn concepts prerequisite to the math. Eventually I feel so far away from the actual thing I want to make and feel like it will be forever till I get to actually work on what I was originally going to. This is common among almost anything I’ve tried to make recently. I also hate reading. I don’t know why, but I can’t read more than a few paragraphs without my brain kinda swapping over to me just seeing disconnected words and quickly losing interest. I end up wasting my free time on unproductive things instead because I feel so disinterested being so abstracted away from my actual goals.

Think long term. I see many people that want to "get it fast and now"... My advice would be: be slow but recurring. Think learning in terms of years, not in term of weeks.

It's been debunked, but 10,000 hours for mastery isn't a bad starting point.

A couple of thoughts.

1. I often struggle to really focus and learn/get something done when I have a concrete objective to complete. I have many half-completed ideas on my personal laptop that all taught me something, but never amounted to much because there was no ultimate objective for them. They weren't intended to be released, they weren't intended to get me a job, they weren't intended to make me money. Many were duplicating existing software to satisfy curiosity, but, eventually, if I wanted to get things done, then using the existing software just made more sense. The more successful projects have had the clearest objectives for executing them (this includes learning objectives).

2. In general, establishing intermediate goals is a good way to get past the hurdle of completing an apparently large goal. If you have to learn trig, linear algebra, calculus, a bit of classical mechanics, and a few other things to get to the goal of making some hot new piece of software, then create goals along the way that exercise those learning objectives. This way you can build more deliberately to the final goal, and get some emotional wins along the way (the 6-12 months of effort aren't waiting for a result at the end, but get results throughout).

You need an attention detox. Spend a month hiking outdoors. No electronics. When you get back, don’t tell anyone. Start cutting things out of your life. Mostly people. Us too. You don’t need any kind of news. Be thankful everybody else is here so you can google when you need it.

If you're doing things purely from the ego, then expect things to get complex and feel tedious. Part of being able to hack your flow state is to get inspired early and often. The word inspire is derived from spirit so you need to think of your tasks as a spiritual act.

Build and learn at the same time. If the building part is pushed out to after all the learning, you run the real risk of losing interest when all you're doing is learning / studying.

Whatever it is you want to build, break it down into very small initial components that don't involve learning ALL the math stuff, just some of it. Then build and learn together.

But breaking down your idea or project like this isn't easy. It's a skill all of its own.

For me music/noise always worked. Some good background noise can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheSilentWatcherCom

Further, I would try to do meditations to improve concentration.

In the end it's about how much you are interested in the topics you are dealing with. :)

Just don’t do anything, see if that makes you any happier. You’re not a kid, there are no shortcuts.

It all comes with age.

If you're under 30, you shouldn't be worried too much. We've all been like this.

I got my math education in a tramway since it was the only distraction free place and I had to be there anyway.

Do something 'just' for 5 minútes. This is my productivity hack for my priváte projects. I do this every Day and súdenly i am done :)

Try pomodoro timers. It flips the switch into focus and racing the clock and then you have a measured break and you don’t feel guilty about it.

I find an interesting aspect of the project at hand and start wondering about it.

I do this until I’m interested enough to take action.

Have you tried the Feynman Technique?

what is something that you'd like to learn that has a relatively easy math requirement?

Depends on what you’d consider easy. I’ve been trying to get into some RF/SDR projects which seems like you can get by with some undergraduate level calculus.

Microdosing

Discipline

adhd diagnosis and medication

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