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John Carmack on avoiding distractions

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321 pointssanketpatrikar102 comments

I do a small trick that seems to work wonders (at least for me).

I don't limit myself at all. When I want to do any activity that seems to be dopamine-fuelling (emails, HN, Reddit, Stripe, other metrics, even company Intercom), I just have to set a timer to certain duration. I can reset, snooze, or extend durations however I want. No rules. Just the action of setting a timer.

Oddly it has made myself way more conscious and intentional. Resulting in almost no actual distractions when I do want to focus. Technical tricks (blocking apps, websites, or DNS) are unfortunately too gimmicky because it's so easy to bypass. And personally I had no results with those.

"One weird trick" for me is keeping a work journal. A simple text file that gets filled with one-liners: what I'm doing, what tasks remain, what angles I already tried to solve the problem at hand. It keeps me on track and more importantly it takes away the mental burden of remembering the wider context. When I switch away from the browser I can continue the work right where I left it off on the last line of the journal. At the end of the working day I can actually evaluate what I accomplished and what I planned to do.

That said, I only write the journal when I'm chronically distracted. Most often due to lack of sleep. On good days I just become so engrossed in the problem that hours just swoosh by.

Lack of sleep is my killer. The effort to figure things out has me hunting for dopamine and on sites like HN.

I hate it, the days I feel truly alive are when I'm totally focused and smashing out code. Only they're so rare now that I have a family and so many responsibilities outside of writing code.

Second that. I often find myself with the worst self-control late at night or after a few beers.

Young kids mean you can't prevent the tiredness and productivity suffers especially when working from home.

I used to drink a couple of beers at home at night from time to time. We used to buy them in the supermarket with my wife. I thought it was normal, but it isn't. This year I have completely stopped my alcohol intake, I stopped buying beer in the supermarket, and for the first time ever in my life I have been able to control my sleep schedule. I also feel less tired.

Maybe give it a try.

I'm not 100% against alcohol - but in the moment I only drink in social settings never alone at home. Not even one beer.

With all the posts and debates lately on this site about the health "evils" of alcohol, this is the most important thing to note about the substance: It absolutely kills your focus.

Don't quit to "be healthy", as the ill health effects are overblown and highly conflated with other poor lifestyle factors in heavy drinkers.

Quit because the GABA receptor agonism completely wrecks your ability to focus and sleep deeply.

I got to the point where drinking wasn't worth it for me. I've had no issues with over indulgence but it still gets me.

There was a period where I'd have 3 or 4 ciders a week. I put on weight like you wouldn't believe.

Then there is snoring, if I have one beer that night my wife won't be able to sleep.

I just don't really drink now.

I don't have a regular sleep problem as such, I train regularly so am usually pretty tired. Just on the occasion I have too many or interrupted sleep due to kids or whatever, self-control goes out the window.

Filling out timesheets does wonders for this, even if you're not billing per hour. The mere act of writing down what you've done makes you so much more aware of where your time's going.

A big shot once told me just write down what you are doing every hour, that will help you eliminate what you shouldn't be doing.

Planning never goes right, but you can always plan what not to do.

I do the same using org-mode in Emacs. It is a plain text: you can start simple and then gets as complex and fancy as you like. https://youtu.be/hnMntOQjs7Q

Funny note, John Carmack did (does?) a little bit like you. He wrote everyday little notes about the day. You can find them on the Internet back to the very old days up to kind of recently.

I do basically the same thing. I use the pomodoro technique (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique) when I'm really struggling to focus. I either use an old school analog kitchen timer or https://pomofocus.io if I'm feeling real web 2.0-ish.

Some sort of self-imposed time constraint, whether basic time tracking or pomodoros, is one of the most effective ways I've found to just power through work I don't really want to do.

If _most_ of my work is hard to complete due to excessive distraction and lack of focus, that usually means something larger is wrong. That's when its time to reflect and figure out if I'm working on the wrong team or project or even company.

The app Goodtime is what I use for this. It's the best pomodoro timer I've used - paid or free - on any app store. https://github.com/adrcotfas/Goodtime

Try the reverse. Use Pomodoros only for the distractions but not the actual work.

Incrementalism and flexibility are key in habit forming and dissolution.

I recommend the Impulse Blocker plugin for a timer on specific websites (youtube, hacker news, etc.)

iPhone has timer tools for limiting app usage and different modes for work, personal time, sleep to filter and limit notifications.

Make use of your email categories and unsubscribing to help filter emails that are a waste of time.

The reverse of do an activity for a set amount of time (read a book for 5 mins, wash half the dishes) has been helpful for myself as well. This can be progressively ramped up as opposed to ramping down attention sinks.

Godspeed to any and all trying to take back some of their attention.

I wonder how many developers fell into the trap of thinking they need to first write a TODO list app before they can really get productive.

I was almost one of them. I think the way people manage tasks and external state is so situationally, personally and contextually dependent that most todo list software gets to 60% of people's ideal workflow and that just isn't enough to work long term.

I went back to a hardback notebook for a while and had quite a bit of success - the UX of pen and paper is really hard to beat, and you can implement whatever processes work on a page.

That's started failing to scale, so I've started to look at software again. I've been trialing Amazing Marvin for a few weeks now, and I'm pretty happy with it. Lots of very different features that can be individually turned on or off to customise your workflow. I'll very likely convert to a paid user soon.

I use a combination of Notes.app and a Moleskin notebook. My handwritten notes are almost unreadable, as I am always quickly brainstorming and not intending to read it again.

I found it far more helpful than I expected to simply wear a watch that emits a small buzz every hour on the hour. So many times I'd find myself drifting off task, get that little hourly buzz, and think 'oh, this isn't what I was meant to be doing' and get back on task.

Curious what watch specifically does that? Thanks

Mine is a Pebble Time Steel (actually now it's a pair of them since the battery life has reduced a little, but my friend who also bought one now has a Samsung Gear and so donated theirs). It's been great and the functionality has survived Pebble's untimely demise thanks to the crowd at rebble.io. Unfortunately the app doesn't seem to be on the Apple store any more and my old phone finally actually died so their days may be numbered.

I use the Mac app Focus for this, even though you find it gimmicky I have it set up in the same way as you do on the most part.

I have a whitelist, rather than blacklist, so only sites that are related to doing productive work are allowed as well as apps. But the application has a break feature, which gives it out in five minute chunks, so if i want to stop and look at anything other than work, I have to go into the menu bar and select break and then i get five minutes.

Once that is up, it resets and I have to go back in and do another five minutes, this limits my time and makes me more aware. I can also set a max time for the overall amount of five minute chunks I am allowed if I want to get more restrictive.

Timers seem to be the key for me with anything though to be honest.

There's truth to this I found aswell. When I was a teenager I could play video games endlessly, but recently I found video games to be mostly a chore (a few here and there make an exception). I think there's an aspect of limit artifically making a thing more desirable -- but I don't find it reliable, sometimes even indulging in this aspect for activities is the actual time waste I want to avoid.

This is like when I need to get ready in a hurry I count the seconds and it's surprising how quick you end up moving :)

interesting idea. seems equivalent to the trick of paying cash instead of by card as it makes you more conscious of what you spend. also, at the end of the day there is no trick b/c if you're so inclined you'll always find a loophole. so it all comes back to simply being aware of impulses and your ability to have control over them. knowing what time you actually spent so far is an important information. as with all dopaminergic activities (cocaine being an extreme one) you lose oversight of time - an hour can (especially in hindsight) feel like 5 minutes.

Yes, exactly the same as spending cash vs. credit. Conscious money spending is even less important than conscious time spending.

It's worth remembering that what works for John Carmack may not work for you.

You may have more distractions in life or job that you cannot get rid of.

Your baseline innate ability to focus may be very different.

You may have less experience training the skills required to focus.

Watching how successful people do things can provide useful inspiration for things to try, but you have to apply your own critical thinking and find what works for you.

True. But he's talking about a universal approach: removing the distraction instead of fighting it. You can implement your own specific method for this, but anybody would benefit from it.

> True. But he's talking about a universal approach: removing the distraction instead of fighting it.

It's less universal than it seems. For example, people with ADHD become distractable if their task isn't sufficiently stimulating. If the environment doesn't already offer distractions, their brain will generate some itself.

Brain scans show that ADHD brains use inefficient subsystems to maintain focus, and don't quiet down the daydream subsystem during focus time. Removing distractions doesn't do much because the brain is neurologically happy to manufacture some.

This supports the GP's point: what someone else needs may not help you in particular at all. Someone like this is better off finding ways to keep work interesting, or structuring their day around bouts of interest instead of unbroken working sessions.

> For example, people with ADHD become distractable if their task isn't sufficiently stimulating.

Yep. "Removing" distractions is a fools errand, because I am the Da Vinci of creating them. This is why I need structure.

Sometimes it helps a little.

I keep a clean desk because I will read that lunch receipt 10000 times instead of fixing this next issue.

People think I'm organized, neat, tidy, etc and it's really the opposite in my head.

That's interesting! I would like to know more. Do you have a source?

Here you go: https://www.additudemag.com/current-research-on-adhd-breakdo...

Thank you!

> You may have more distractions in life or job that you cannot get rid of

s/cannot/choose not to/

Carmack walks his kids to school, occasionally plays video games with them, and that is the extent of his "dad" time, from what I can gather.

Some people don't consider social/family life to be as critically important as others. Not a judgement at all, but there is no such thing as "cannot" get rid of. We all make choices and tradeoffs.

There's an old blog post that I really liked on John Carmack's work ethic http://bookofhook.blogspot.com/2013/03/smart-guy-productivit... from someone who worked with Carmack.

That resonates. Smart kids can get a long way without working hard but eventually they meet someone who is smart and works hard anyway and that is not an even contest.

That's a great post, thanks for digging it up.

But now I feel bad that I slacked off for two minutes checking HN, then another four minutes reading the blog.

To me it was worth it. That was really a great post. It made some great points I'll actively try to remember. Especially:

Accept that "the grind" is part of the job. A friend of mine's father has a great quote:

  "Son, i don't wake up every day and go to a place called fun. I wake up and go to a place called work"

You can't get irate or frustrated that the bulk of the day is typing in boring code and dealing with bugs and other people.

The military talks about 'embracing the suck'. Some people like to trace this focus on work and the grind to the US's puritan roots.

I think learning to be ok with the grind is one of the biggest life hacks a person can make. Whether it's eating healthy, exercise, or shipping your startups first product, there comes a point where it's grind - almost every single time.

There is a danger of falling in love with the grind and losing sight of why. As long as a person keeps sight of a goal, grinding is skill to help get them there.

Accepting the grind is a skill can be developed. Carmack talks about wrestling and then grappling which is an absolute grind. I developed the skill through sports and powerlifting, and now I also train Jiu-Jitsu. There's very little at work that moves my emotional needle anymore.

> Carmack talks about wrestling and then grappling which is an absolute grind.

I had no idea he was a wrestler. My oldest son and I train BJJ together and he finally got interested in high school wrestling after we did a standup seminar. I'm really happy as it tends to develop mental toughness better than any other sport.

That's great! There are some dads at my gym whose sons train, and watching them roll together is a treat.

From a toughness angle you're spot on. I've never done anything harder than learn to relax and survive underneath someone bigger who is also attacking. You want to panic, which is the absolute worst thing to do.

"If it was fun, they wouldn't pay you for it."

Productivity is tactical.

“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” (Peter Drucker)

It’s all fine and dandy until you have things to get done for kids and family. Dinner is a time sensitive topic.

But I agree with the sentiment of creating urgency in sizable chunks. Good read, thanks.

Carmack has kids, and still makes it work.

A lot of excuse-making in these comments. Jonathan Blow has some good clips on this topic of "Work Life Balance":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alfCi8QoZQ8

There's nothing wrong with having higher priorities in your life than work, at all. But we need to be realistic about what those tradeoffs mean. We have limited hours, and the way we choose to allocate our time has consequences.

Absolutely agree. Just watched the first five minutes of that clip you linked and I 100% agree. Jonathan is an inspiring person that had a huge impact on my personal trajectory.

If you want to be a top notch programmer/artist/craftsman, you need to put in the hours.

I had to come to terms with this when I realized that I was not going to be a famous musician, because I didn’t put in the hours.

Now that I have kids, my priorities shifted and I want to put in the hours with my kids. Which means, I won’t put them into anything else. And I am mostly fine with that.

If someone else chooses differently, that’s their choice to make. With the accompanying consequences.

If you want to put in 60-80 hours a week into your work, that means that you won’t spend those 60-80 hours with your kids.

You might end up in history books, but that might mean you didn’t celebrate your kids scoring their first goal along the way.

Take your pick.

> I go for a four mile walk every day (audiobooks!), but doing it when the sun went down to avoid the 100+ heat was punching a hole in my work day, so I adjusted my schedule to wake up earlier and do it in the morning.

Interesting. I do a mile run at lunch, and find that "punching a hole in my work day" is beneficial for focus, not a detractor. Things I like about my lunch run:

- short, fits into 1 hr schedule with eating/getting food

- guaranteed sun exposure even during winter

- rare to have schedule conflicts due to before/after work commitments, so easy to be consistent

- good reset if needed

- running + mulling things over works well for me

If he's anything like me, the evening might be his most productive time mentally. Also, I live in Texas, and your options to avoid the ungodly heat are either walking early in the morning, or in the late evening, which is unfortunate since that's either the beginning of the day or the end of the day for most people.

This PG essay might be relevant: http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

Do you have children?

I do, and am similar to the OP. I do my workout during a long lunch break. I find it helps with my energy and focus in the afternoon.

Right... So now I'm reading about Carmack instead of working. This is going to be great.

I'm sure that checking what advice John Carmack posted on Twitter on how to avoid distracrions already counts as a distraction.

My solution to that ia to not have a Twitter account and not install the app.

Twitter lets you read 2-3 messages before the nag screen, by which time I have already consumed my daily Twitter screen time.

"avoiding distractions"

* is a HN post that links to Twitter *

lol yeah I was noting the irony of clicking that link from my RSS feed before I noticed it was a twitter link that I know I'm going to click...

I suspect I'm a lost cause.

I don't go on twitter for that long honestly

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1562104562219196416.html

Thank you. It’s infuriating to use Twitter as an unauthenticated user these days. If you scroll down far enough you get the uncloseable login gateway pop up, and I can never tell if it’s triggered by reaching the end of a thread, or after X posts in a thread.

Here's a trick to read the bird site without logging in - whenever that pops up, pick your choice of "Log in" or "Sign up" (I prefer the latter, I like to imagine it helps to scramble someone's analytics) then click the 'X' in the corner, and the popup goes away for a while.

Here's another trick:

Just use another fucking interface.

Threadreader is great for threads. If you're following a specific account or want to run some searches, Nitter.

The latter also supports RSS feeds, so you can follow a profile in your newsreader.

Some popular sites have alternative interfaces, e.g. Twitter → Nitter. They are a much better user experience if you just want to lurk. Configure your browser to automatically redirect:

• https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect#custom-inst...

• https://einaregilsson.com/redirector/ (use for Imgur → Rimgo until Privacy Redirect has it)

Nitter's settings page lists a bunch:

Youtube -> Invidious or Piped

Twitter -> Nitter

Instagram -> Bibliogram

Reddit -> Teddit

Most or all have numerous hosts and you can pick the one(s) that are most convenient or memorable to you. It's also possible to host these yourself, and I've suggested in the past that HN might consider doing so for Twitter specifically. Reddit possibly as well. (The others are fairly low-traffic on HN.)

Quora would be a nice addition to the list.

https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect

I saw that.

Chrome/Android doesn't suppport extensions.

Normalising use of alternatives in links and the like (which privacy-redirect may well do) also helps raise awareness and profile of the alternatives.

That said, thanks.

having ADHD I really cant express how frustrating it is knowing that others are able to simply choose to maintain focus on something. i have never had the ability to control that. sometimes it happens, and i never get to choose when it happens.

what could i have accomplished in my life if i had the power to choose to focus on one thing for more than a couple of minutes? i could have accomplished a lot more than i have accomplished, i assure you of that.

once in a while, maybe 2-3 times per year, my brain starts focusing on something i want or need to focus on, and this is an absolutely magical time for me. i progress toward my goals on that topic so quickly when this happens, and i learn so much, but it never lasts. subsequently, i have a lot of shallow understanding of many things that i have been able to focus on previously, and almost zero deep understanding on anything, because the power to focus usually only lasts a week or two.

i guess this is why ADHD is defined as a disabling medical condition in the US. it really is a severe handicap to one’s abilities.

Hey, fellow ADHD brother/sister. If you haven’t tried to talk to a medical professional regarding your condition, I would highly recommend to do that.

Medication helped me and many others tremedously. So much regret that I accepted that I am different and I do need some support only in my mid 30s.

thanks. I take Adderall for narcolepsy already and that certainly helps a LOT, and even with that help, I can still only get a few minutes of productive time on most days.

there's about a 30-60 minute window in the morning where I can mostly (mostly) keep myself on task and/or not get very sleepy, so that time is very important to me to accomplish most of the day's tasks.

without Adderall I would be un-hireable.

I used to use this back in the day.... https://github.com/viccherubini/get-shit-done

I have manually edited my /etc/hosts to redirect some distracting sites to localhost. It has worked wonders to my productivity. Of course my brain seem to find new places to procrastinate so no silver bullet here either.

You get rid of them.

https://plasmabeamgames.wordpress.com/2021/10/08/mitzi-the-c...

I'm reading Masters of Doom right now and this actually upset me a bit. Who gets rid of a pet like that?

“I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.”

― Kent Beck

10x habits?

He's been officially "one day a week"? What does that mean? He only works one day a week?

Just at meta where he was involved in Oculus. He's moved on to working on AGI on his own company (see news here https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/19/john-carmack-agi-keen-rais...).

Yeah he still works for Meta one day a week

Some other people have mentioned this in child comments but most of this, for me, comes down to having a good night's sleep.

If my kids woke up in the middle of the night or were up early, I'm distracted pretty easily. With a good night of sleep, I power through my to do list.

I also wonder what the shape of my "productivity / hours slept" curve looks like. In my case, I feel like I am more more productive than most people if I have 8-9 hours sleep. However, I feel WAY lower than most other people when I only sleep 6-7 hours. Not sure how I could ever measure or confirm this but I would love to know if this actually the case.

I don’t think much advice that applies to Carmack also applies to mere mortals.

What helped me a lot was the "focus mode" in the digital wellbeing settings of android. I block my biggest distractions (WhatsApp, Twitter, Reddit) from 9-6 and only starred contacts will ring.

My cellphone is on silent most of the day. During work I only look at it for some 2FA things.

Readable thread:

https://nitter.net/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1562104562219196416

The number one thing that works for me is logging on to HN and seeing a post of some guy struggling with procrastination. I see that, think "wow what a loser", then think "fuck I'm doing that too", and close the tab and get back to work.

Posts from people who beat this don't work. I need to see a loser and see myself behaving like him. Then the break between my identity (I'm fucking awesome) and my actions (I'm doing loser shit) gets me out of it. Whacky, eh?

Thanks for your honesty.

Is 'being awesome' awesome if at its core, it's the negation of losing?

Haha, I try not to peek too closely at things I hold fundamental :)

But for what it's worth, awesomeness requires not being a loser though not being a loser does not guarantee awesomeness. Necessary but not sufficient, as we say in Maths textbooks.

If i could live a life 10% similar to this guy’s life i would he so happy. I am not talking about money and fame. I just think that people like carmack are genuinely free. They are that kid that wanted to make awesome things and satisfy their curiosity and actually succeeded at it and they continued doing it in their adulthood. Just bloody awesome.

The DNS block on my work laptop is something that surprisingly worked for me. I put a few barriers to sudo unblocking it like making the file immutable so I had to go through multiple steps to get it working.

Over time, I stopped looking at twitter on my work laptop and during my working hours.

I just realize I have been care less about procrastinating and productivity

instead doing or targeting stuffs day by day I just set my goals for each week

like this week I should do this this and this its easier for myself instead day by day task list

Sorry but hearing what he said on Lex's podcast about how he aims to solidly work for 10 hours a day or something crazy I absolutely do believe he has "magical discipline"

I think Carmack has been able to consistently work these extended hours his entire career because he's always had the chance to work on really interesting problems that excite him. I can also work long hours for extended periods of time when that's the case. The burnout for me comes in when the work feels pointless, and I have no autonomy. That's when I can barely even put 8 hours in without my entire body and mind shutting down.

Exactly. He is intrinsically motivated because he is always working on things that appeal to him. He found his passion. That is the most relevant thing. Those of us who have no passions and yet still have the skills to work in similar fields have to find another way to make it work...

Insert the passion(energy) in yourself. You have no choice if you have to grind through things you don't want to. Every human experiences some type of "grind" , although to different degrees. I acknowledge the difficulty but you do have to make it work or then life sucks lol

I have no idea how to do that and I’ve never seen someone even suggest that’s possible

wtf the podcast also in 5 hours? really? II can;t barely focus on fully consuming 1 hour podcast

Yeah, John Carmack can also literally talk for hours on a small prompt

Ironic that he posted this to Twitter, which I have stopped using (in part to reduce distractions).

Almost totally unrelated rant about Twitter UI: Elon Musk answers Carmack tweet, you open that tweet to see the replies, there are at least 10-15 useless replies from Twitter randos and then there is the Carmack reply to Musk! I mean, leaving aside the blue checks, the number of followers etc, it's a conversation between two parties with 3rd parties jumping in, why can this be highlighted properly??

> Now I put my Meta laptop in the garbage at the end of my VR day.

Thanks for tip Commander Keen!

Here is something I discovered for myself:

If I work on something that I truly enjoy, then I am 100% focused on it and can't get distracted at all.

If I work off a backlog full of seemingly boring and meaningless tasks which some PO came up with and which I don't find remotely interesting or impactful then it's near impossible for me to not get distracted.

Long story short: If you struggle to stay focused, then maybe your work or your role in the company sucks (e.g. being overqualified for the tasks assigned to you, not challenged enough intellectually, etc.).

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