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Reddit mentions of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
Sentiment score: 24
Reddit mentions: 40
We found 40 Reddit mentions of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. Here are the top ones.
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| Height | 8.5 Inches |
| Length | 5.75 Inches |
| Number of items | 1 |
| Release date | January 2016 |
| Weight | 0.9 Pounds |
| Width | 1 Inches |
Your dream life is 100% possible today. You can get remote gigs as a programmer making 6 figures working 5 hours a day if you have the aptitude for it. So if you're fine making $50k per year (which is more than enough for van life), you could work like 15-20 hours per week doing consulting work over a satellite internet connection from your van. And then take all the rest of that time and live your life. :) But you've got to work to get there because it requires lots of technical expertise in something.
These books have good generic advice for getting there if you're interested. They're by a professor who got into a tenured position while working normal hours (most people on tenure tracks work INSANE hours), so he knows what he's talking about.
https://www.amazon.com/Good-They-Cant-Ignore-You/dp/1455509124
https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692/
Try talking to your boss. One of the most important jobs of a manager is to make sure their employees are productive. Talk to your boss about how the interruptions are very challenging, and talk to them about this idea called deep work. Basically, you schedule time every day or every week where you insulate yourself from all interruptions. With this philosophy, you don't even need to mention the ADHD.
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
Podcast about deep work.
Someone deleted their comment about wanting to leave the US in the near future.
I also share this sentiment and would like to offer a viewpoint I have been developing lately.
Yesterday was the first big meeting of the previously called One Belt, One Road Initiative, and now the Belt & Road Initiative. 110 countries are involved, from the coasts of Russia and China to the Middle East and Africa.
A first step in the restoration and revival of the ancient "circulation of blood" in Asia, Europe, and Africa.
President Xi Jinping of China starts his speech poetically for such a historic event in human progress. Be sure to check out him grilling the US at around the 34:50 mark.
So, why move out of the US?
I have three reasons so far.
To deal with climate change, poverty, and to develop all 110 countries of the B&R initiative, the President of Turkey stated at the meeting that "1.7 trillion Dollars every year until 2030" will be needed.
He stressed "Cooperation over competition", something that is fundamental of countries in Asia.
Climate change will test Asia and Africa, both having huge populations near the coasts and underdeveloped infrastructure.
Inefficient Capitalism of America bullshit will not work. Hundreds of millions of lives and future lives are at stake.
Anyway, there is thus a need for highly skilled labor and individuals that can master higher skills fast. I suggest you read this book on doing just that and freelance your skills as you live in Asia and help it prosper.
\3. America's Potential Downfall, if it keeps dirtying their hands with petrodollars.
Get woke on Putin with this 2 hour documentary and be sure to watch the English translations of his speeches and addresses exposing US meddling in other countries through funding terrorists.
America's power and wealth source, control of the sea and maritime trade routes will be rendered obsolete once the 110 countries of the B&R Intiative have open routes on land and sea.
In summary, America is losing its status and power everyday, as well as its prestige not only because of Trump, but how the American government is dealing with hiccups like Trump and how it exposes the dirty dark secrets of even Presidents who hold prestige around the world.
I stopped working nights and weekends (with exceptions 2-3 times a year when a bunch of deadlines overlap). Working too much didn't help me get more done.
It just made the quality of my work worse. Once I got in the habit of taking time to rejuvenate, I realized that I could get just as much done in 8-9 hours a day for 5 days as I could working 10-12 hours a day 7 days a week.
This is only true when
When I do those, it is fairly easy to focus and work efficiently enough to get everything done in 40-45 hours a week.
And I also recommend (listening to) Cal Newport's Deep Work. Pay close attention to how Newport thinks. His lessons apply more broadly than the examples he gives.
What?! NOTHING IT related that you would find interesting enough to learn about on your own time?
Did you do this for the money? That's insane.
No Chef? No Puppet? No Docker? No obscure language? No embedded systems? No Nutanix? No ESXi? No nano server? Nothing IT related tickles your pickle? What about vulnhub? Red teaming? Game development? TELL ME.
/u/ProfFrnswrth -- I can't relate with the sentiment of not having energy after 8 hours. Hell, there are times we were updating systems until 1 or 2 AM and I STILL went home and dicked around in a VM. Do I have an unhealthy passion for this stuff? Probably.
As a child, very awkward, you can imagine, I had a computer and I was trying to play Deus Ex. The colors were terrible and the game stuttered and spewed, eventually freezing on that terrible sound looping: "EEHN, EEHN, EEHN, EEHN, EEHN, EEHN, EEHN" -- being borderline retarded as a child, I didn't think to turn off the speakers, I just ran and told my Dad the computer is broken.
Being a good father, he assumed what all good fathers assume: porn. I was lectured and berated about not getting caught with my weasel in my hand, my dad unplugged the computer and turned it back on. I was defeated, never again to play this game my friend told me about.
The next day, whilst at school, I told my friend, the one in which of whom recommended the game, that my computer couldn't run it, I was doomed.
"What, ho?! Nay! Bringith thine tower to my domicile once within we leavith our studies!" -- Told you, fucking awkward.
So I bring this HP wanna be Blue Bubble Macintosh computer to my friend's house. My friend and his father ripped apart the internals of that poor HP tower, and replaced what looked like the internals to the backup for Johnny Five. Some brown circuit board and a lot of fans.
I was terrified. I was instructed by my friend to take my computer back home and try Deus Ex again. So, I get home and connect everything. Fearful of being sternly spoken to about pornography again, I left the speakers unplugged.
My God, man! It's beautiful! Normal colors, smooth textures, fast movement. But there wasn't any God damn sound! Oh, the speakers, right, so I plugged the speakers back in.
From there, I said "I want to be able to fix anything". It was very humbling and earth shattering to be honest.
I mean, if you think about it, as a preteen, you don't know what a computer is. You use it and you play on it, but you don't know what it is unless you're born into a family that teaches you or you're some Matilda freak that reads CPU and motherboard manuals in your free time.
But here... My friend, my peer, my ALLY! He knew exactly what it took. He took an impossible problem (can't play a video game), and not only made it a reality, he did it with spare parts in his closet LOL!
So, because of him, I am where I am today. Do I know how to fix everything? No, of course not. Don't be silly.
But! I have taken to using scheduled, distraction free time to learn something or get better at a skill. I go into that with a furious frenzy and get shit done. An hour? Half an hour? Five hours? I don't care, I'm going to tackle the living shit out of my objective.
Scheduled, distraction free time? What in the name of Almighty Christ on his Throne is this?!
First, I recommend a very subjective and biased book:
Deep Work
The concept of "Deep Work" is not foreign, but you may not have heard it called that before. It's a great book about finding time to get work done in a world of distractions.
Second, I recommend Earl Nightingale's "The Strangest Secret". You can find the audio on Amazon or Youtube, whichever you prefer. In YouTube he sounds cooler but speaks much quicker.
Earl Nightingale, again, came up with nothing new. This is some Oprah shit before Oprah was out. This broadcast changed my life. It builds off Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich and takes concepts from Philosophy and Religion. The best "Power of Positive Thinking" speech I've heard. Listen to it, and see if it vibes with you.
Anyway, get your goals down, write them. Don't put them in your God damn phone, WRITE IT DOWN. Look it everyday. If you miss a day, you have to see it, you can't just delete it from your phone (yeah, you can rip the paper out of the notebook, but I'd like to think you're not a destructive person ;) ).
You like Podcasts? Yeah? YEAH?
Check out Entrepreneur on Fire. He doesn't talk about tech, sysadmin, hacking, NOTHING. But he's super positive, he is successful, and he loves sharing his tips for success. He markets his little notebook a lot (yeah, I bought one), so take it how you will.
This last part is what no one wants to hear. Everyone knows this and rolls their eyes:
Take care of yourself. Seriously. Drink coffee, that's fine, but don't drink 6 - 10 cups a day. If you have a desert, that's fine too, but don't rely on cakes, cookies, Starbucks, Monster, Redbull, etc. as your daily driver. Eat fruits and vegetables. No, not V8/Naked/Sunny D. Eat some celery and hummus, or a salad with lettuce, kale, and olives.
Short on time? Almond Milk + 1 Orange + 1 Cup of Kale + 1 Cup of Spinach + 1 Cup of mixed berries + 1 Banana + 1 scoop Sunwarrior Protein powder. Or whatever. Don't use whey or casein. Don't buy into this hype that you need 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight or any other dumb shit bro-science that's out there.
Exercise your body: go for long walks, brisk or light jog. Calisthenics, too. Burpees, push-ups, situps, squats. Don't be one of those bench press monkeys either, do real exercises. Deadlift, Squat, Overhead Press. Don't have barbells? DON'T CARE. Goblet Squat, Farmer's Walk, Lunges, Man-Makers (Push-up + Dumbbell row), Dumbbell swings, dumbbell snatches -- Get to work. Ton of programs on the internet, and you can YouTube the exercises.
If you want to study, learn, stay abreast of tech news you can make time to do it. Schedule time, write it down, and stick to it. Don't be afraid to unplug. Leave your phone and go for a walk without headphones. Go bike riding at a park or through the woods. Go sit at a beach or pool without anything. Just listen to the birds squawking and screeching. You'll enjoy it.
Well this escalated quickly:
TL;DR
Deep Work - Book
EoF - Podcast
The Strangest Secret - Earl Nightingale broadcast
Diet and Exercise
Git Gud
That's the kindle version that was 10.44
https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692?keywords=DEEP+WORK&qid=1540322167&sr=8-1&ref=sr_1_1
On Amazon here.
Submission statement: Cal is an academic and bestselling author of many books on productivity, focus, and effective study. This post talks about the effectiveness of "Indie Social Media" to achieve a completely different objective than other alternative social media failures that try to be the next Facebook or Twitter. The IDW is name checked as well.
> If you’re deeply committed to the Intellectual Dark Web, for example, then Thinkspot will probably return you much more value than Instagram or Twitter, even though its audience size is a minuscule fraction of these giants.
If you're not familiar with the author, I highly recommend his books Deep Work and Digital Minimalism.
I would check out most of Cal Newport's recent writings. He received his PhD in Computer Science from MIT, and is now teaching at Georgetown.
His main thesis is deliberate practice consists of lots of different facets, most of which aren't necessarily thought about. While his work focuses a lot on improving work in "knowledge fields" it is drawn mostly from creative pursuits. He argues that thinking about your habits for practicing and learning (meta-habits) are just as important as sitting down to practice or learn. For example, knowing how to build a clear path of improvement and success in learning the piano is as important as sitting down and working through the hard parts. Sometimes the hardest part is simply figuring out where it is wisest to invest your time.
His article "The Deliberate Creative" I found to be particularly enlightening, among others. He's also been published in the New York Times, The Economist, and has five bestselling books.
On a side note, I originally found him looking for ways to improve my study habits, which is what he originally wrote about as an undergraduate. Any current high school or college students would benefit GREATLY (IMO) from his blog and first three books. Seriously, the guy has some great stuff.
I feel that Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport is a good fit here too.
Sorry for the troubles. I think surgery can play a number on you emotionally sometimes.
Have you read Cal Newport’s Deep Work? Great book on staying focused and getting more done in less time.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1455586692/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_HkCwDbT349AWC
and Deep work https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692
Both of these books are in sync with what you said in your post, and what you wrote is true.
I would highly recommend reading Deep Work by Cal Newport. The book has really helped me in balancing working full time for a silicon valley startup, writing a master's thesis, and having a family.
Hey friend, I'm in the same boat (graphic design.) I need to build my portfolio to change jobs & move this year, but I've been severely lacking in all forms of motivation & discipline. While design is my career & passion and I truly do love it, I never learned the self-discipline tactics to stay on a schedule. Any schedule I've made for myself in the past falls apart almost immediately. And when I do get into the right mindset to work, it's hard for me to focus for long periods of time. The work that I usually love becomes dull and the sweet siren songs of Youtube & reddit beckon me away.
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I've been procrastinating on this for two years now. I know. It's bad.
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A few months ago I realized I'm almost always inadvertently waiting for a "breakthrough" in my mental state. I'm essentially closing my eyes and hoping that a gush of motivation will wash over me. That all my previous excuses will suddenly stop making sense & my brain will eagerly jump forward with all the energy and ambition I'm missing. I've become somewhat addicted to self-improvement tactics, testing every new theory in hopes that it'll be my "big break." It feels like something is off in my clockwork, and if only I could find the one widget or gear to fix it, all my internal hangups, procrastination, fear, and demotivation will be solved.
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Well, it's been two years. A breakthrough hasn't arrived yet. I've realized it's not coming.
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I've exhausted so much self-help that I'm exhausted by all the self-help. I'm tired of tricks and quick-fixes to getting work done. Because they don't work in the long term (a quick-fix, by definition, is temporary.) It's becoming abundantly clear that I cannot manipulate myself into doing work that I don't want to do. I just have to do it.
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So I'm retraining my brain's habits. When I sit down at my desk, I almost physically crave distraction. I don't want to be faced with my work and all its failures (actual & potential.) I literally grit my teeth and visualize the new neural pathways forming in my brain (or at the very least, the old ones breaking.) The only way to solidify new habits is to DO THEM, because they get easier with time. And it's worth it to remind yourself that if it's difficult today- if everything in your body revolts at the thought of putting pen to paper- this is the worst it's going to feel, and you CAN push past the resistance. Repetition breeds ease.
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I'm a perfectionist and a procrastinator. Creating stuff scares me to death. Putting it into a portfolio for the world scares me to death. Also it's just hard work. You know as well as I do that art is just as much a job as anything else. It takes effort- effort that we often don't have or want to conjure. So I'm relearning how to fall in love with the boredom, and how to crave a flow state, and how to sit down and focus instead of throwing an attention-span tantrum about how I don't want to do this.
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Because there will never be a perfect day, or a perfect mood, or a perfect time. You will never feel insanely motivated and inspired to do your work (I mean, you might, but give up that vision as a solution. It's not reliable.) People romanticize dedication to a habit (have you seen the fans of fitness gurus on Instagram?) but you can't romanticize the work. It's dirty and frustrating, painful and exhausting. But it's meaningful, and that's why you resist it- because it's important to you, and maybe you're scared it won't live up to your expectations or that your goals are unattainable. It's okay to feel afraid. It's okay to feel uninspired, or bored, or tired, or hungry, or grumpy. It's okay to feel like you want to do anything but the work.
Do it anyway.
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- - -
Despite my earlier claim that all my self-improvement research has been more stifling than helpful, there ARE some resources that have helped me:
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- Drive by Daniel Pink - on why intrinsic motivation is essential for getting anything meaningful done
- Deep Work by Cal Newport - how to slow down and focus
- Talk to other artists. Seriously. Like, in-person. I'm the most introverted hermit you'll ever meet but when I'm struggling creatively, just TALKING to another designer pumps up my spirits. I hate small talk and I hate social interaction (hello, social anxiety) but its benefits are exponential
- Therapy & medication - 'cause you can't muscle through a neurological or psychological problem (without help at least)
- Just start. Draw one line.
- Accountability- if you're good with client deadlines but not your own (raises hand,) get someone to check in on you. Sometimes we just need someone else nagging us to get our lives in line
- Downsize your responsibilities- human beings are very very bad at multitasking & juggling a lot of things at once. For something to take priority, other things need to take a backseat
- Sleep! I was diagnosed with sleep apnea in February. Got a CPAP and who knew I could feel so awake and energetic in the mornings?! It's nuts. But even if you don't have a sleep disorder, sleep is way WAY more important than people realize.
-Red Lemon Club- this is a site/blog/group of people (we have a Slack group) started by this guy named Alex who just gets it. The instagram is worth following alone
I had this problem. I read a book by a computer science professor, Cal Newport. He has some Ted talks on the subject too if you can't make it through a book.
He talks about why this is happening to a lot of people who need a high degree of concentration to do hard work. He cites brain studies that show how gadgets and social media and such are literally changing the way our brains work.. it's becoming more difficult for everyone to concentrate, not just programmers.
He also gives direct, practical advice for retraining your brain to do deep work like programming.
I really liked the book, and his techniques were very effective for me. Here's a link Deep Work by Cal Newport
Diagnosed ADHD-PI, professional software developer here; working on an agile team building SaaS apps for large retailers.
Answers:
It's been 4 years since my bachelor's and I have no professional experience; nothing to show for that time really, except a failed grad school project. Is there anything I can do so this doesn't look so bad to recruiters?
What skills could I work on now that would prepare me for professional work? I hear people gripe about recent grads having no experience with version control, continuous integration, etc. I'm familiar with most of these
Should I mention my ADHD diagnosis and the difficulties I had, or just say that I took a year off for personal reasons and leave it at that?
Do you ever have any doubts about whether you like programming enough? Like I said, sometimes I'm super enthusiastic about my projects. Other times I can't get started, so it makes me doubt myself.
Do you have a particular workflow that works well for you and the people you work with? (pomodoro, break the day into 2-hour chunks, etc)
Do you ever lack perseverance when you hit a snag? If so, what do you do about it? I like programming recreationally, because if there's a bug I can't figure out I'll step away (sometimes for hours), and then see it with fresh eyes. In a professional environment this feels like I'm goofing off.
Any other relevant/interesting details you can share about your experiences will be super-appreciated.
edit: I am prescribed 30mg IR adderall. I don't take it every day but I do use it often
Well, leave your phone in the car or your locker or something when you go to the library, and stay off the computers if you can. If you can't, DO NOT OPEN A FACEBOOK OR REDDIT TAB. No social media, no phone, no email, and no tabs open to sites that are outside your goal for those four hours. For a break, take a walk to clear your head, again without your phone.
Oh, and check out a copy of Deep Work, or better yet grab it free on an audible trial.
Reading books of course, it will greatly improve your ability to focus which has been really harmed by internet surfing. You may also work on improving some marketable skills, like programming, graphics design, etc., whatever you choose. To dive more into those topics I recommend you to read Cal Newport's books, especially Deep Work and Digital Minimalism, he also has interesting blog: calnewport.com/blog, old posts touch this topic in more depth. Another book that I would like to recommend you is The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains which will show you how damaging internet can be.
Discipline is a muscle that you need to work on. Start small, but continuously practice it and build up your ability to concentrate. Take breaks (look up the pomodoro method). Read some books about this topic (Deep Work is my favorite), search around on the Internet for strategies to overcome procrastination, identify the situations that cause you to procrastinate and build systems and routines for dealing with it.
No other way about it. The tendency to procrastination is human and has nothing to do with ENTP, ENTJ, whatever. It's up to you to find a way to manage it.
Do the work. Be the prize.
Sorry about this. I should have worded the post better. nero147 is correct and defines what I mean by deep work. If you're interested, here's a link to the book.
Put differently, I was just curious if you were going to spend a few months working on a new project where you would go.
I'm a huge fan of Cal Newport! I definitely recommend So Good They Can't Ignore You and Deep Work. I'm also about halfway through How to Have a Good Day by Caroline Webb and really enjoying it so far!
Here's a book you might enjoy and get use out of: https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=deep+work&qid=1568338100&sr=8-1
Thank you for sharing this! I mainly do it to hold myself accountable, but it is great to hear it is helping others in their projects as well. To be honest, this is the first time I have consistently worked on a project for more than a few weeks. Usually, I hit week 5 or so and stop. The thing that made me put together a good strategy for this project was reading the one thing by Gary Keller, Deep Work by Cal Newport Scott Young's Website and Scott had a top performer and rapid learning program that gave me a great roadmap for this challenge. My suggestion to you as you start your project again is to keep things as simple as possible so it will develop into an easy habit. That is why I started doing video updates, it was easier for me to do a minute video then type up an update. Do not fall victim to the rules that you create. I would also just focus on French or algorithms, evaluate which is more important to you, this was the hardest thing for me. I'm sure you have great aspirations to accomplish both, but you need to say No to everything else to successfully say yes to your #1 project. Good luck finishing :).
Have you read Cal Newport's latest, Deep Work? Thoughts?
It can be useful. I've had an account since 2007 and have 14.6k tweets to my name. I follow a mix of professionals from my field (graphic designers), theologians, friends, and public figures.
Michael Lopp has written some useful articles about Twitter here and here.
On the other end of the spectrum, and I'm heading this way, is Cal Newport who argues that there is no professional value in participating in networking tools that discourage deep work. (Pick up his book Deep Work if you want the full argument.)
For a humorous how-to, I like Jessica Hische's site: http://www.momthisishowtwitterworks.com.
I'm reading Deep Work right now and thinking about deleting my Twitter account. I deleted the app from my phone, and I don't keep it open at work anymore. (I need to do the same for Reddit, to be honest.) It's hard though, because I have ten years' of tweets stored up and it feels like chopping off part of my arm. Maybe that's just a sign of my addiction. I deleted my Facebook account years ago and barely hesitated. The only content I had on there were dumb arguments and a stupid Farmville farm.
But I think there is value to be had from the service. It all depends on how you use it.
This book saved me. Get it from Amazon or a library, and read the whole thing, and implement it. https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692
One is often frustrated, or at least I was, when you receive a lot of advice and it doesn't immediately work. This can lead you down a rabbit hole, "maybe this isn't the right technique" or "If I had that I would be more productive". In other words it can lead you to procrastinate about productivity.
To avoid this I have this recommendation, don't focus on the tools focus on the work. More specifically Focus on lead measures. Count the amount of distraction free time you spend devoted to your craft or work (this means but isn't limited to leave your phone in another room and focus). If you put in the work results will follow. Good Luck my friend for a more detailed explanation on this tip and others I leave you these recommendations
Cal Newport's Book Deep Work -- https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1520541435&sr=1-1&keywords=deep+work
Active studying (This is in regard to how to spend your time efficiently in a knowledge based work, not my tip but may be helpful) https://www.reddit.com/r/ActiveStudying/
Cal Newport has a good book about this:
https://www.amazon.ca/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692
Transition is your biggest cost maker (there are others).
If you want to understand more I recommend starting with this solid article by Paul Graham. to understand more and get a an angle on why caring about a developers deep work is valuable and its in your best interest to let them work there is a fantastic book Deep Work
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Exercise - I was a total skeptic when it came to this one. Exercise made me feel worse, not better, and I felt as though I didn't have enough time for it. But now that I have consistently worked it into my schedule, it has done wonders to help lower stress and anxiety levels, increase my confidence, and now I actually want to jog.
Physical appearance - This is just a personal thing and varies in importance from person to person, but dressing professionally and taking some time to do hair, make up, buy a new outfit, etc. make me feel more confident when at school. So I basically never dress at school how I would at home.
Don't be too stressed if your research isn't working out, and don't be afraid to share progress - I am in the humanities, so this may be different for other fields, but I had a research paper to work on last semester and it took me nearly the whole semester to finally come up with a concise and definite argument and pull it together. But rather than compromise or give up, I have a good argument and publishable idea. I also decided to present my fairly underdeveloped paper to a conference. I told them that it was an active work in progress and that I was hoping for feedback - and I got just that!
I would also recommend reading Deep Work by Cal Newport. I don't usually take much away from these types of books, but the tips and strategies for time management and productivity really make sense to me and I have been actively working to incorporate them into my academic life.
If possible (I know this isn't always something grad students can do), have a vacation planned far in advance, even if it is just a day or two where you plan to go get out of the house and do something fun. That way you have something to look forward to in the long-term.
Right now, you have your new monitoring system stood up. This is a great time to go deeper and integrate it with more of the systems your team manages and customise it to each systems purpose. Going through this process will help you understand how everything in the company communicates with each other and what dependencies each system has on other systems.
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Your boss is pushing for you to be involved in a new project. He's looking to expose you to more technologies the company uses. You've mentioned nginx, MySQL, PHP and Python above. A lot of these are individual tools which can enhance one system. I would advise at this point you're better off looking at the fundamentals of how everything works in your organisation. DNS, DHCP, general server configuration, virtualisation, certificates, storage etc.
Config management is an interesting area, but if you have gaps in the fundamentals you are back to copying config files you do not understand, creating automation based on assumptions of the requirements.
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Regarding the "always going too deep" comment, this is why it's good to have long medium and short term goals. Long term you want to have a deep understanding of x y and z for a future job role. Medium term you focus on X and have a project to implement it. Short term you have some smaller issues you want to resolve within your environment mainly relating to X with some hints of other skills you're interested in.
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This all said, you really need to sit down and go through what you want to be doing in a number of years time. Keep an eye on what you need for other jobs in the market. Right now you may not want to move on but you should be staying at the company because you want to work there, and not get trapped there because you don't have the right skills to get a job at another company at the same or above pay. And most importantly you don't want to spend time learning a skill that will be irrelevant to your career path as you become more specialised.
I'd recommend giving "Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World" a read as it helped me gain focus:
https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692
This is a pretty curt way of saying it, but I agree. There's probably people here that are a lot better than me at focusing on their research or getting back on track after getting distracted, but it's something I have struggled with throughout grad school. I've recently started getting my political news from 1-2 podcasts I listen to on the weekends; if anything HUGE happens it will find its way to me - I don't need to follow the news constantly.
I'm probably not among the smartest of my peers and colleagues, so I have to stay vigilant to not fall behind.
I find the argument that news/social media/TV/etc. are training our brains to want continuous hits of dopamine pretty convincing and have recently become a convert to Cal Newport's Deep Work philosophy that getting continual streams of information out of your life is a way to be happier and more productive. He is a CS professor at Georgetown, so he's not just some self-help guru; he practices what he preaches. He has a pretty good podcast interview with Ezra Klein (former WaPo reporter and cofounder of Vox.com) on his "philosophy" that's worth a listen if you're interested.
This is a long comment, but the parent made a good point that was worth expanding upon.
EDIT: And if you're wondering "why the hell are you on Reddit then?" - I do my "browsing/social media" stuff between 5-7pm every day to try and limit my exposure.
It's actually "essential" that I eliminate my smartphone & social media. The more I learn about the brain science of app developers stimulating the reward centers of the brain over and over (dopamine), making us chemically addicted to likes, tweets, invites, etc -- that is NOT essential.
An iphone for minimalists is a flip phone that only has SMS.
Being chemically addicted to a cute, slightly radioactive screen is not essential - it's getting your brain hijacked. (sources here and here and especially here if you're interested.)
My tech EDC right now is an iphone SE and a macbook air. I use an internet blocker as much as possible and I'm still tweaking RescueTime to optimize how much time I'm wasting on the net. I killed twitter last month, the detox was a bitch and I'm giving myself until the end of this weekend to kill reddit.
It's interesting to see so many of the top comments are news related. Seems like a big opportunity for Reddit. Is Reddit doing a daily email for curated news? Is the Upvoted newsletter still going?
I like to make things. At one point I thought about building a simple side project to connect your Reddit account and get a daily email with the top news items. I'd probably exclude hobby-related subreddits. I love Reddit and I think the app is great (reading comments could be a bit easier, I always accidentally click into a user's profile) but it's not exactly a good way to improve my productivity. I practice Deep Work and on good days I'm completely offline until 2-3pm. So I was thinking of taking this side project idea a step further for myself, bypassing email and just printing a 1-pager to my laser printer each morning. Or, maybe a simple Raspberry Pi setup in my kitchen.
Get this book. The author got a PhD in CS from MIT and maintained a great work-life balance: https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522946290&sr=8-1&keywords=deep+work+rules+for+focused+success+in+a+distracted+world
Tricky the way that I project you asked this question, but personally I do believe that.
However, the way I hear your question is with the 'just' re-arranged is:
"Do you think that just practicing mindfulness solves this(add) entirely?"
The way you have it written even I project as, "adding this ingredient fixes this." Just add sugar to make it sweeter?
My personal belief, based on observation, is that one who has deeply developed his or her mindfulness will not suffer any forms of add - like at all. However, that in itself is a serious undertaking that one does not 'just' sit down and do (even thought that's kinda exactly how you do it). I am talking about someone who has had a consistent mindfulness practice for the last 20 or 30 years.
I meditate every morning for 20 minutes and it helps a TON, but I still struggle with adhd and executive functions. I have worked with very very experienced meditation practitioners - Bhuddist monks who have lived on a monastery in the wilderness for 30+ years - and they very very well may have been individuals who once suffered from ADHD but definitely no longer do so.
So if one becomes like an NBA level mindfulness practitioner, then yes, I personally do not believe one would suffer from ADHD, but then again, one doesn't just get in the NBA without a LOT of dedication.
Having said that every bit of practice up to that point has a benefit. So there are benefits all along the way.
This book helped me:
http://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Prescription-Adult-ADHD-Strengthening/dp/1590308476
As well as this text, but it's a bit more esoteric.
http://www.amazon.com/Concentration-Mastery-Mouni-Sadhu-pse/dp/0879800232
Don't actually recommend the second text until one has conquered distractions. Otherwise it can just be demoralizing.
Biggest recommendation I have regarding mindfulness and intention is beware of the effect distractions have on re-wiring your brain. The content of distractions are innocent, but the process of being distracted attacks the adhd mind in multiple ways. There is no such thing as a harmless distraction.
Waiting in a line and bored? Not being comfortable with that boredom and instead checking facebook on your phone is literally re-wiring your brain so it will be intolerant of boredom. When you have to write a paper or something that is boring it will be difficult. This comes from the work of Cal Newport in Deepwork, which has been extremely helpful for me personally. http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1462196019&sr=1-1&keywords=deepwork
deep work, currently half way through and it's already helped me a lot, a web developer in training over here
This article is honestly an echo of Cal Newport’s ideas in Deep Work and Digital Minimalism neither of which were referenced. Attention residue isn’t “his idea,” but he definitely communicated it in a productivity sense for the masses in Deep Work.
Also, the entire message of Digital Minimalism was to show that being mindful of non-essential technologies (social media, video games, blogs, etc.) is better than going cold turkey quitting them. If you’re going to write an article on a topic that’s been written about extensively, you should reference those sources. Poorly written and fluffy article.
leggi https://www.nirandfar.com/hooked e https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692