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Re:Ask HN: How do you focus on work for long periods of time? by srcreigh on Friday November 11, 2022 @01:11AM (#33557808)
Practice long periods of not having stimulating activities around you. Just sit and be bored for a few hours at the end of the day.

This will increase your baseline dopamine for normal activities. When your baseline is too low, you self medicate by going on Reddit which spikes your dopamine for a while. Taking a break from stimulation lets your brain accumulate dopamine naturally

Re:Ask HN: How do you focus on work for long periods of time? by pikseladam on Friday November 11, 2022 @01:50AM (#33557990)
wow. awesome tip. thank you
Re:Ask HN: How do you focus on work for long periods of time? by sshine on Friday November 11, 2022 @02:34AM (#33558186)
There’s a lot more tricks to lowering your dopamine baseline:

https://hubermanlab.com/controlling-your-dopamine-for-motiva...

Re:Ask HN: How do you focus on work for long periods of time? by Bilal_io on Friday November 11, 2022 @11:29AM (#33562820)
Dr. Huberman is great, his videos can run for long (over an hour) but he breaks down everything and explain things in detail. I've enjoyed watching his video on ADHD.
Re:Ask HN: How do you focus on work for long periods of time? by emberfiend on Friday November 11, 2022 @09:50AM (#33561479)
100%. Another tool available is to generally move to lower-intensity dopamine producers. Long/slow/thoughtful videos over short/fast/bitesized videos, books over videos, old/clunky/slow games over new/polished/fast games, board games over computer games, and so on.
Re:Ask HN: How do you focus on work for long periods of time? by cratermoon on Friday November 11, 2022 @01:15PM (#33564494)
One of the many aspects of meditation is "sit and be bored". Of course the mind has a tendency to fill in the boredom with thoughts, ideas, worries, etc. Learning to notice those and return the attention to sitting is surprisingly difficult, and may take years of practice.
Re:Ask HN: How do you focus on work for long periods of time? by freedomben on Friday November 11, 2022 @03:53PM (#33566670)
That's fascinating and probably good advice, although it does raise the question of whether the cure is worse than the disease :-)
Re:Ask HN: How do you focus on work for long periods of time? by srcreigh on Friday November 11, 2022 @05:03PM (#33567491)
Re:Ask HN: How do you focus on work for long periods of time? by mod on Saturday November 12, 2022 @11:20AM (#33574455)
I think I'm, in a way, OP-who-took-this-advice. I could have written his post, and I'm mid-journey on your advice.

I sort-of naturally fell into it. I'm just not as interested in HN or Reddit anymore. The whole internet feels like it's arguing, not discussing, and that rubs me wrong. So I feel very bored by the internet right now, which is something I never thought I'd say.

It's allowed me to really focus up on some other things like my fitness and some real-world projects, but I wouldn't say the struggle is over. The dopamine cycle is legit.

Re:Ask HN: How do you focus on work for long periods of time? by treeman79 on Sunday November 13, 2022 @04:44AM (#33581534)
As a full blown ADHD person. Boredom is physically painful. worse then most other pains I’ve experienced. Basically a terror of being bored.

First time I took medication it blew my mind that the pain of working on something boring was gone.

I rarely take the medication due to side effects. But I can function somewhat better now that I know what it’s like to basically be normal.

I still get way more done on medication.