Ask HN: Focus Hacks?
What books, prescriptions or habits have you developed to help you consistently focus on your most important work?
Days that I feel like doing nothing or feel very distracted, I’ll put on some music I like, put a 10 minute timer, and just start doing the next thing I need to do for the next 10 minutes.
The majority of the time the 10 minutes will turn into a productive day, and some other days the 10 minutes are just that and my brain/body are screaming at me that I need a walk or a break
- I also take Ritalin. 10mg. Once a day. I constantly reach flow state 5h/day. It's a light drug, but it'd a drug nonetheless so I can't recommend it.
1. Go study/work somewhere else, I went to the college library or cafe, far enough not to be too much of a hassle (around 30/40min) but not close enough that I can go there for 1 hour and then walk home again in 5 minutes. The fact that you have a significant return trip will force you to stay longer.
2. Just start and power through, each day will be a bit easier. This is the key part. I could maybe work for 1h or 2h at the begging but very quickly (I was close to the finals) started getting more into it, I took more interest into what I was studying and it became easier to sit through more hours of studying. (1 and 3) will help you with this, as it's easy to get distracted at home.
3. Try to keep electronic devices to a minimum, I had my laptop but I can't game in it and wouldn't jump into Youtube or anything because I was surrounded by people at the library. The lid was kept closed unless I absolutely needed it to check something. I know this is harder if you need to perform work with the PC but you can always block distractions with something like Cold Turkey.
4. Divide and itemize all your tasks, in my case it was very easy because I had a list of exercises and I just started doing ALL of them in order, only skipping when one was too hard. This meant I always knew what to do next. Each exercise was simple enough not to take too much time and putting the tick next to it was satisfying. I know this isn't as easy in a work environment but try to atomize as much as possible.
Eventually you might not even need to work somewhere else, work/studying will become enough of an amusement that you will want to do it, and other less-rewarding activities such as watching YouTube will become less appealing, at least that's what's happening to me. But you CAN NOT lose the tempo, if you take a couple of days off you will go back to procrastinating.
Extra tip: many days where I felt like doing nothing, taking a shower (cold is better, at least for half a minute or so, then you can switch to hot), getting dressed and going out for a walk or doing chores will vastly improve my desire to work/study upon return. Staying home is the worst you can do, this is also why working somewhere else is great but if you can not do it because you have children or whatever you can try working-out or going for a walk in the morning.