I can easily focus, and actually be hyper focused, when I am working on a project I enjoy and am making real progress. This often happens with new projects because the next steps are clear and I can make tangible progress quickly.
Is everyone like this? Is it always easier to start new things than improve old ones? With coding projects, there’s a common temptation to rewrite from scratch. This is because code is easier to write than to read. I have a few questions around this.
- Is there a similar phenomenon for other kinds of work? For example, is there a temptation for writers to rewrite from scratch rather than make incremental improvements? This would disprove my theory that coders like rewriting from scratch because code is easier to write than read. (I wonder if it’s because code is more fun to write than read? Wait maybe that’s the same thing)
- Is this because my code is bad? If my code was extremely extensible would this go away?
- Do some people find maintaining more fun and some people (like me) find starting new things more fun? With many of my open source projects I find “gardening” them a bit of an ugh. But some people (like my colleague Zeke) seem to find gardening more fun
Going back to my original point about focus — here are two of the signature features of ADD (according to gpt-4):
Difficulties following through with tasks: People with ADD may often start tasks or projects with enthusiasm, only to quickly lose interest or become easily discouraged.
Hyperfocus: Ironically, along with being easily distracted, individuals with ADD sometimes exhibit hyperfocus, becoming so engrossed in a task that they lose track of their surroundings and time.
I have both of these in spades. But I wonder whether these are actually traits to embrace rather than try and fix. Maybe I’m the kind of person that enthusiastically starts projects, ignites new things that other people who enjoy gardening then bring to fruition. Maybe it’s a strength to quickly lose interest, as long as you’re following your interests to new things (it keeps you on your toes and always at the front of what’s happening).
Same goes for the hyper focus trait. I don’t see how that’s bad at all (unless someone was on fire next to me and I ignored it).
Maybe there’s something about my subconscious that knows when a project is promising, and something latches on, and the hyper focus starts.
Other thoughts:
- sometimes I’m in a mode where I feel like I down to buckle down and really focus. I wonder if forcing myself to focus is a sign that I’m doing something that I shouldn’t be doing? Yet, at the same time, sometimes after I get over the activation energy of starting a task I can switch into that focus state and be good
- Maybe none of this is insightful at all. But it’s helpful to think through the way I work.
Improving focus
In order to focus at the level I want (abnormally excellent focus, elite focus, whatever you want to call it), I’m going to need to take some abnormal routes. The first is Charlie Zen mode, this app I made to block out domains and apps. Going on telegram and iMessage and, worst of all, twitter while I’m working is a clear recipe for not getting much done and reducing my ability to focus.
The second thing I plan to try is meditating more often.
Focus keeps coming up as the most important thing
In every interview I’m asked what’s the most important quality a novelist has to have. It’s pretty obvious: talent. No matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literally talent you can forget about being a novelist. If you don’t have any fuel, even the best car can’t win. If I’m asked what the next most important quality is for a novelist, that’s easy too: focus—the ability to concentrate all your limited talent or even a shortage of it. I generally concentrate on work for three or four hours every morning. I sit at my desk and focus totally on what I’m writing. In private correspondence the great mystery writer Raymond Chandler once confessed that even if he didn’t write anything, he made sure he sat down at his desk every single day and concentrated.
- [[What I Talk About When I Talk About Running]]
then at dinner, bill gates sr. posed the question to the table: what factor did people feel was the most important in getting to where they’d gotten in life? And I said ‘focus’, and bill said the same thing it is unclear how many people at the table understood “focus” as Buffett lived that word… it meant single minded obsession with an ideal
- [[Snowball]]
Woody Allen wiki: Similarly, after he wrote for Bob Hope, Hope called him “half a genius”.[47] His daily writing routine could last as long as 15 hours, and he could focus and write anywhere necessary. Dick Cavett was amazed at Allen’s capacity to write: “He can go to a typewriter after breakfast and sit there until the sun sets and his head is pounding, interrupting work only for coffee and a brief walk, and then spend the whole evening working.”
Seinfeld Tim Ferriss The secret to good comedy is to sit down and DO THE WORK.
Isaac Asimov From the Tyler Cowen Seth Godin interview: apparently Isaac’s secret to writing 400 novels was that every day, from 7-12, he would sit at the typewriter and he had one rule: don’t stop typing. When you type enough bad stuff, good stuff comes out.