From distraction to concentration in a few simple steps
https://www.innoq.com/en/blog/wie-ich-meine-konzentration-wiederfand/
Below my excerpt of this article:
July 29, 2022
For years, I enthusiastically produced content: books, articles, blog posts, and talks – averaging a book and a half plus five articles per year. Since about 2020, my productivity has plummeted – leaving me totally frustrated. There were no external causes, even the pandemic didn’t affect me, thanks to a nice home office and online work options — so no excuses. To find a way out of the misery, I put my own working habits to the test – and diagnosed a massive loss of concentration.
Stop Reading the News
News is to the mind what sugar is to the body.
How often do you check the headlines? How often do you scroll through your news feed?
In 2013 Rolf Dobelli stood in front of a room full of journalists and proclaimed that he did not read the news. It caused a riot. Now he finally sets down his philosophy in detail. And he practices what he preaches: he hasn’t read the news for a decade.
[..] I therefore decided to optimize my iPhone for maximum productivity – and to reduce or even eliminate distractions.
Drastic but effective
- A (currently very strict) zero-news-diet.
- (Re)configure smartphone for high productivity and minimal distractions.
- Reduce distractions on tablets and computers. Add to that slight changes I made to my daily habits: I’ve resolved (and managed for a few weeks now) to stop staring at my phone in the morning, and to stop using my iPhone at all in the evening after 8 PM at the latest (exception: setting an alarm for the next morning).
I have resolved very firmly not to read any news at all for a while. In other words, a zero news diet. That was really hard for me for two or three days. Yet that alone was a startling realization for me: I was actually addicted to news and variety… and cold withdrawal is hard with any kind of addiction, as you know. I purposefully invested the hours gained each day: As a kind of early reward for my zero news diet, I treated myself to an interesting technical book as a PDF
Reconfigure Smartphone
The above quote, “Configure Your iPhone to Work for You, Not Against You,” sets the objective: It’s the subtitle of a very long blog post by Tony Stubblebine – who, in addition to configuration suggestions, also gives various advice for being more attentive and healthy, totally worth reading in my opinion.
Optimize First for Single Tasking
#1. Turn OFF (almost) all notifications
#2. Hide social media slot machines
#3. Hide messaging slot machines
#4. Disable app review requests
#5. Turn on Do Not Disturb
#6. Be strategic about your wallpaper
#7. Turn off Raise to Wake
#8. Add the Screen Time widget
#9. Add Content Restrictions
#10. (Optional) Use Restrictions to turn off Safari
#11. Organize your Apps and Folders alphabeticallySwitch to Google Cloud to Work Faster
#12. Choose GMail
#13. Choose Google Calendar
#14. Replace Apple Maps with Google Maps
#15. Install the GBoard keyboard for faster typing
#16. Switch to Google PhotosInstall These Apps for Productivity
#17. Use Evernote for all note taking, to-do lists, everything
#18. The Case for Calm as your go-to meditation app
#19. Install the right goal tracker for you
#20. Store all your passwords in a password manager, probably LastPass
#21. Use Numerical as your default calculator
#22. Put the Camera app in your toolbar
#23. Use this Doppler Radar app
#24. Use this Pomodoro app
#25. Use Brain.fm for background noiseUse These Apps and Configurations for Deep Learning
#26. Subscribe to these podcasts
#27. Install the Kindle app but never read it in bed
#28. Use Safari this way
#29. Organize your home screen for deep learning over shallow learningUse These Apps and Configurations for Longevity
#30. Track steps this way
#31. Prefer Time Restricted Eating Over Calorie Counting
#32. Schedule Night Shift
#33. Set up Medical IDMake The Finishing Touches with These Configurations
#34. Change Siri to a man
#35. Change your phone’s name
#36. Turn off advertising tracking
#37. Set auto-lock to the maximum time
#38. Set your personal hotspot password to a random three word phrase
#39. Turn on control center everywhere
#40. Turn on Background App Refresh
#41. Delete Garage Band
#42. Develop verbal memory for talking to Siri
#43. Set up these text replacement shortcuts
#44. Set your address
#45. Backup this way
I summarize the things most important for me, which he illustrates in his article with many screenshots and explanations:
- Turn off (almost) all notifications – so those red dots aren’t constantly vying for your attention or making you feel guilty.
- Hide social media apps for as good as possible. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter & Co act like drugs. They deserve to be removed from the start/home screen and moved somewhere in the back of your smartphone. I deleted the Twitter app and kept Instagram only because it allows me to catch up a bit with my adult children.
- Messaging apps (email, WhatsApp, Signal and co.) go into a folder, and preferably on the second screen of that folder. For me, it looks like this (K11n stands for communication
- Turn on do-not-disturb-mode, the longer, the better. At least from evening till morning.
- Lifting the phone should not unlock it. This setting is called “Display & Brightness/Activate on Lift” on the iPhone – and should definitely be turned off.
- Turn on the screen time widget – this gives me control over all the things I spend my smartphone time on… Meanwhile, I have made a sport out of getting to the smallest values possible.
- Turn on content and app restrictions. I only allow myself 15 minutes a day for email and Instagram.
- Install a swipe keyboard app, so I can text faster on the phone and not have to awkwardly click each letter. I use Microsoft Swiftkey (yes correct, a Microsoft app on the iPhone) for this, others do better with Google’s Gboard.
- Wallpapers in muted colours. I chose a completely black home screen, and a reduced colour lock screen:
In case you fall of the wagon
In case you want to be a bit stricter with yourself, there are various blockers for popular desktop platforms that can prevent access to certain websites or applications for certain times. These can improve your digital self-discipline. I tried ColdTurkey and like it a lot. However, I hope to become disciplined enough to stick to my new habits without this electronic tether… at least in the near future.
Furthermore
Besides the aforementioned settings and the zero news diet, I like to listen to soundscapes for (supposedly) better mental focus when working intensively at my desk. I write allegedly because I like this kind of aural background, but can’t prove that it helps me in any way. My family, by the way, thinks it’s horrible. If you want to try it out: My two favourites are Endel and brain.fm. Works on both smartphones and desktops (but please don’t say afterwards I didn’t warn you…). I still haven’t gotten comfortable with Pomodoro timers, they annoy me more than they help
As a bonus, a nentioned Article in HN reactions:
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
I Hate the News
Some people start their day by reading The New York Times. Others end it by watching the nightly news. Some get it from The Daily Show. Others download it from a variety weblogs. Some keep up-to-the-minute by following CNN. Others have instant news updates automatically text messaged to their phone. But everybody seems to agree: it’s a citizen’s responsibility to keep up with the news. Everybody except me.
I think following the news is a waste of time.
Some people agree with me on a small scale. Some point out that the cable channels are obsessed with bizarre crimes that have little larger impact, that they worry too much about horse-race coverage of politics, that too much of the news is filled with PR-inserted nonsense. But they do this because they think these are aberrations; that underneath all this, the news is worth saving. I simply go one step further: I think none of it is worthwhile.
Let us look at the front page of today’s New York Times, the gold standard in news. In the top spot there is a story about Republicans feuding among themselves. There is a photo of soldiers in Iraq. A stock exchange chief must return $100M. There is a concern about some doctors over-selling a nerve testing system. There is a threat from China against North Korea. There is a report that violence in Iraq is rising. And there is concern about virtual science classes replacing real ones.
None of these stories have relevance to my life. Reading them may be enjoyable, but it’s an enjoyable waste of time. They will have no impact on my actions one way or another.
Most people will usually generally concede this point, but suggest that there’s something virtuous about knowing it anyway, that it makes me a better citizen. They point out that newspapers are a key part of our democracy, that by exposing wrong-doing to the people, they force the wrong-doers to stop.
This seems to be true, but the curious thing is that I’m never involved. The government commits a crime, the New York Times prints it on the front page, the people on the cable chat shows foam at the mouth about it, the government apologizes and commits the crime more subtly. It’s a valuable system — I certainly support the government being more subtle about committing crimes (well, for the sake of argument, at least) — but you notice how it never involves me? It seems like the whole thing would work just as well even if nobody ever read the Times or watched the cable chat shows. It’s a closed system.
There is voting, of course, but to become an informed voter all one needs to do is read a short guide about the candidates and issues before the election. There’s no need to have to suffer through the daily back-and-forth of allegations and counter-allegations, of scurrilous lies and their refutations. Indeed, reading a voter’s guide is much better: there’s no recency bias (where you only remember the crimes reported in the past couple months), you get to hear both sides of the story after the investigation has died down, you can actually think about the issues instead of worrying about the politics.
Others say that sure, most of the stuff in the news isn’t of use, but occasionally you’ll come across some story that will lead you to actually change what you’ve been working on. But really, how plausible is this? Most people’s major life changes don’t come from reading an article in the newspaper; they come from reading longer-form essays or thoughtful books, which are much more convincing and detailed.
Which brings me to my second example of people agreeing with me on the small scale. You’ll often hear TV critics say that CNN’s up-to-the-minute reporting is absurd. Instead of saying, “We have unconfirmed reports that—This just in! We now have confirmed reports that those unconfirmed reports have been denied. No, wait! There’s a new report denying the confirmation of the denial of the unconfirmed report.” and giving viewers whiplash, they suggest that the reporters simply wait until a story is confirmed before reporting it and do commentary in the meantime.
But if that’s true on a scale of minutes, why longer? Instead of watching hourly updates, why not read a daily paper? Instead of reading the back and forth of a daily, why not read a weekly review? Instead of a weekly review, why not read a monthly magazine? Instead of a monthly magazine, why not read an annual book?
With the time people waste reading a newspaper every day, they could have read an entire book about most subjects covered and thereby learned about it with far more detail and far more impact than the daily doses they get dribbled out by the paper. But people, of course, wouldn’t read a book about most subjects covered in the paper, because most of them are simply irrelevant.
But finally, I’d like to argue that following the news isn’t just a waste of time, it’s actively unhealthy. Edward Tufte notes that when he used to read the New York Times in the morning, it scrambled his brain with so many different topics that he couldn’t get any real intellectual work done the rest of the day.
The news’s obsession with having a little bit of information on a wide variety of subjects means that it actually gets most of those subjects wrong. (One need only read the blatant errors reported in the corrections page to get some sense of the more thorough-going errors that must lie beneath them. And, indeed, anyone who has ever been in the news will tell you that the news always gets the story wrong.) Its obsession with the criminal and the deviant makes us less trusting people. Its obsession with the hurry of the day-to-day makes us less reflective thinkers. Its obsession with surfaces makes us shallow.
This is not simply an essay meant to provoke; I genuinely believe what I write. I have not followed the news at least since I was 13 (with occasional lapses on particular topics). My life does not seem to be impoverished for it; indeed, I think it has been greatly enhanced. But I haven’t found many other people who are willing to take the plunge.
October 20, 2006