Comment by swozey | Hacker News Reader

Comment by swozey | Hacker News Reader

I guess this is an adhd "superpower" of mine. I leave youtube on 24/7 and pay almost no attention to it.

A big reason why I can ignore it though, when it's on 24/7.. mine plays the exact same documentaries, almost always WW2 or US Revolutionary War stuff over and over and over again. I watch a LOT of history documentaries but I have absolutely no interest in either of these time periods and have probably never searched for or liked any American history video. I'm a swords and shields guy.

The last month straight it's been on a revolutionary war kick with some 3-5 hour long George Washington documentary in between another one about how Goebbels ran off to argentina and his wife wouldn't join him so he married his dead brothers widow. I know everything about the guys now.

My theory is it plays the same stuff over again because it's already cached and saves them bw, them assuming you're not actually watching anyway but they can still pump viewership numbers for advertising.

RE: Thread.. I'm awful at getting off the computer after work. I'll move on to personal projects and everything else and just sit here for the whole day. My adhd + being able to instantaneously get dopamine has me chained, I like to go camping to detox.

Been forcing myself to go for a walk at 5pm now that it's not pitch black out then anymore.

ADHD-haver here. I do the same thing but with music. I created a playlist of albums I've heard hundreds of times. The songs are in album order and when I play the list I play from the start of an album somewhere in that list.

It keeps that part of my brain occupied, but not focus, while I work on the task at hand.

I go through really weird phases with music. Music is a huge part of my life, sometimes I play piano, guitar, produce.

There's points I'll realize I've gone 6mo+ without opening spotify except for when I'm driving. Just months and months of the news or youtube as background and no music.

I hate this characterization of ADHD. I have it as well (diagnosed and medicated), and more distraction is the last thing I need. I cannot for the life of me imagining doing anything useful with youtube running in the background.

I think it simply depends if you were growing up with TV in the background. I haven't, so it's not soothing, it's maddening to have noise, loud chatter and unwanted sounds going on when I'm trying to direct my uneven focus.

The only thing that do not detract from focus is droning, instrumental music: psytrance or techno. But only when the workload is low. Otherwise I need absolute silence.

I definitely have my "ok I need no sound to focus" moments which is probably a good 20-40% of my day.

I sit in quiet a lot so I'm not distracted like you mentioned. It made working in an open office awful for me because I HAD to have headphones on with noise playing so I wouldn't hear other people and get distracted by THAT, and I DON'T want to sit there forced to have music on.

But if I'm not doing anything complex, hopping around social media or just relaxing yeah I've probably got 20 different things going on at once. Music, youtube, 350 tabs spread across 3 monitors. Can't sleep without audiobooks/tv on, etc.

I absolutely hate the ultra silence it gives me anxiety.

For me it depends on what I'm doing. Sometimes music works, and sometimes lyrics are too distracting, and sometimes having a TV on in the background is helpful, but sometimes it tanks my productivity. I tend to need something in the background though unless I'm working on something that takes a ton of focus or my own brain will distract me .

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