Phones and apps reduce your ability to focus even when they don’t distract you

Re:Phones and apps reduce your ability to focus even when th... by pc86 on Thursday March 25, 2021 @04:00PM (#26584699)

You're making huge assumptions that a) people who cultivate this skill are late night folks and not morning people; b) people who cultivate this skill are unable to do deep work during the day; c) even ignoring the fallacies in A and B, that these folks' counterparts are blind to their accomplishments and assume they're lazy because they come in late; d) that someone cannot be capable of both completing meaningful deep work and be lazy and unable to manage their time.

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Re:Phones and apps reduce your ability to focus even when th... by chrisweekly on Thursday March 25, 2021 @04:31PM (#26585006)

I am living proof that it's possible to change from a night owl to an early riser. I used to stay up till midnight or 1am as often as not. By nature? and lifelong habit, for over 40 years I was in the "stay up late, sleep in to compensate" camp. But a couple years ago someone I respect and admire challenged me to reset the pattern. I started setting a daily alarm and jumping into a brief ice-cold shower at 5am. It only took a few days to acclimate, and nearly everything about my days changed for the better. I need 7h of sleep so if I'm not lights-out by 10p, I "sleep in" to 530 or 6. I recommend it highly. The time I spend between 5-7a is, almost without exception, much better spent than 10p-12a would ever have been. YMMV but my point is, being a "morning person" can be a choice.

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Re:Phones and apps reduce your ability to focus even when th... by pc86 on Friday March 26, 2021 @09:09AM (#26591673)

Same - part of it may have been natural shifts in circadian rhythms - in college I'd often be up until 3am during the week, not even particularly busy. Just not tired, so I stayed up. Any class up to and including 10am was an active struggle to get to. Now I am regularly up before 5am to work out and typically start work around 6:30.

People absolutely have natural tendencies one way or the other, but if you want to change you can. Too many people approach it as if they're stuck in one or the other.

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Re:Phones and apps reduce your ability to focus even when th... by balfirevic on Thursday March 25, 2021 @11:37PM (#26588519)

> I used to stay up till midnight or 1am as often as not.

That's not a night-owl (midnight I mean, 1am might barely be).

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Re:Phones and apps reduce your ability to focus even when th... by chrisweekly on Friday March 26, 2021 @06:42AM (#26590551)

Fair enough. But FTR the 12-1a habit was itself a form of restraint against my prior tendency to stay up much later than that -- as a parent of school-aged kids, w/ no plausible option to sleep past 7a or so. Staying up till 3 or 4 and getting less than 4h sleep would've been a non-starter.

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Re:Phones and apps reduce your ability to focus even when th... by balfirevic on Friday March 26, 2021 @09:00AM (#26591582)

Yeah, I feel the pain. I usually go to sleep between 3-5 and need 8-9 hours of sleep. If my work didn't allow for very flexible schedule I fear I'd also need to resort to extreme measures (cold showers - brrr).

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Re:Phones and apps reduce your ability to focus even when th... by dmingod666 on Thursday March 25, 2021 @04:49PM (#26585190)

Yes, you can do deep work late at night.

The elephant in the room question is - "what are you doing during the time that is allocated for work?"

I think deep-work is then a secondary thing. The person needs to solve other more important problems first.

1) are you over-commiting? 2) Should you be more assertive with taking up more work? 3) Are you able to set expectations of people that wait for your work and then also communicate when there are delays? 4) Do you have problems delegating work? 5)...

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Re:Phones and apps reduce your ability to focus even when th... by tremon on Friday March 26, 2021 @07:05AM (#26590674)

b) people who cultivate this skill are unable to do deep work during the day;

For me, it was the other way around: inability to do deep work during the day (due to all the distractions already mentioned) forced me to cultivate a 10h-19h work schedule, with the accompanying sleep schedule (roughly from 01h-09h).

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