Hacker News Reader

Comment by harryf | Hacker News Reader

It's one thing to remove distractions but it's another to have real _focus_.

IMO we're reaching the point where the ability to focus on one topic for prolonged time periods will become a new social / class divide; e.g. 80% unable to concentrate on anything for more than a couple of minutes vs 20% who have learnt how to focus. If you're not able to focus, you're effectively disabled from being able to define your own "destiny".

View on HN

Great point, it is an interesting extra dimension to the digital divide. Consumers vs producers.

Well, I also agree, but I'd like to just add something to your small comment on consumers vs. producers. In this case, I don't think it's necessarily consumers vs. producers, but the divide among the consumers. Those consumers who can consume some particular piece of content in a way they understand it well, vs. the consumers who merely are looking for the tl;dr.

Some research already points to this being the case. iirc, they tracked the subjects from childhood to adulthood and the results showed that self-discipline was the prime differentiating factor displayed by successful subjects (no citation, sorry).

You're thinking of Deferred Gratification, and specifically the results of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment. Basically they put a marshmallow in front of children and said, "You can eat this marshmallow now, but if you don't eat it then when I get back you will get a second marshmallow". Then they leave the room and come back something like 10 minutes later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_gratification

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...

It's not mentioned in those articles, but one of the differences in those who didn't eat the marshmallow was that they used coping strategies to distract themselves. Things like singing to themselves, looking around the room, or drumming on the table. I think I recall a follow-up experiment that's not mentioned in those articles where they taught these coping strategies to a group of children then ran the experiment and, sure enough, far more of them were able to resist eating the marshmallow than in the control group.

Thank you very much. That's definitely the study I was referring to.

The follow-up experiments you mention, where the coping strategies are taught, sound extremely interesting. Hopefully us info-addicts are not already too old to develop such "effective attentional control systems."

I installed focus.py this weekend (after seeing it here on HN), and am looking forward to some productivity gains. It was months ago that I read "Self-discipline in 10 days" (probably also on an HN recommendation). The key take-away (which I keep reminding myself) was that self-discipline is a skill that is learned and practiced, a muscle which is strengthened through exercise.

This experiment is apparently very compelling to us geeks, but according to Po Bronson, there are a number of problems with the marshmallow experiment (very few kids took the test as described in the Wikipedia links above, and grades were only tracked for a few of the students).

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/02/19/just-let-th...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com