Ask HN: How do you stay focused on work for 8+ hours? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you stay focused on work for 8+ hours?

2 pointssilent_cal7 comments

By the time 1-2 PM comes around, I am usually too mentally tired to keep producing high quality work/code. How do you get through the work day without crashing?

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I find it helpful to consider the physical analogy regarding work/productivity. Just like how Walking, Running, and Sprinting are very different levels of work, coding !== coding. Some codes are like a swamp; you have to sprint through it or else you won't make progress, while others are more like walking through a desert; running will simply burn you out.

Andrew Huberman says that when it comes to focus time(high dopamine states, pupil dilatation, high brain activity), most people can only do two to three 1.5-hour sessions each day. (Note: this is high-focus work)

Personally, I find styling basic CSS to be something that I can do with a podcast in the background. And for those tasks, I can do them for 3-4 hours straight without major problems. But when it comes to implementing something that I've never done before where I need that internal voice to be loud and clear, I might burn out after an hour or so.

Also, since you mentioned 1-2 PM, I'm wondering if your lunch can potentially contribute to your crash. Are you drinking coffee right when you wake up? Are you eating lunch and laying down? Are you getting proper sleep?

Obviously, you mean work rather than hack attacks. Hack attacks can accomplish amazing things:

https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.pyproject=Macintosh&story...

And I’m sure there are other examples of “amazing weekends” yielding neat stuff when somebody good gets into the zone and stays there. Also, trying to get through grad school in physics or chemistry (particularly experimental) will have you working lots and lots of 8+ days. But there’s a career invested in such times.

I can’t do boring stuff for very long at all. Never could, as it’s boring. When I was young, interesting stuff slipped out of time. And I think there’s a few rounds left in the gun but I have nothing to spend them on. Maybe people aren’t doing shit they care about?

I would think y combinator has all sorts of mad rushes before demo day, and they seem to survive. And I had friends go through law school - they bloody well disappeared first year, resurfacing after the last tests.

I don't think most people can do hard core technical work for 8+ hours daily.

There was a 2014 HN thread "Ask HN: How many hours can you productively program a day?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8131116

You could try a nootropic supplement like Alpha Brain[0] and also The Pomodoro Technique[1].

[0] https://www.onnit.com/alphabrain/

[1] https://todoist.com/productivity-methods/pomodoro-technique

You don’t. Just accept it. A very few selected group of people do. Most don’t.

Eight hours of contiguous work at a physical office is an antiquated concept from the twentieth century. We have the internet now.

I cannot even imagine staying focused 8 hours. Is it even physically possible?

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