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These notes are primarily based on how i fuxed my attention span by Answer in Progress.
(I am currently in danger of becoming homeless. If you can spare a few dollars, it would help a lot. PayPal.me/Guard13007)

Improving Your Focus

1. Attention is generally awareness. Focus is the process of controlling awareness. (Concentration is specific focus.)
2. Focus is a limited resource that is easily exhausted. You can only focus on one thing at a time, and your ability to focus tires out the longer you are awake.
3. Focus is used to filter out distractions. The more distractions there are, the more focus is wasted.

Training may be able to improve focus, but it is not currently understood how.

Eliminating phone distractions (not very effective):

1. Uninstall apps you don't use.
2. Set time limits on apps you use too much.
3. Mute all notifications except for essential ones.
4. Increasing effort to open distracting apps may be useful.

Keep a notebook nearby to write down distractions your brain generates. You can organize them later (by actionability, importance, time sensitivity).

• These are useful for scheduling!

While scheduling is not the most effective thing for me, it is useful.

• When scheduling, keep in mind the amount of focus it takes to complete a task. This is more important than the amount of energy it takes.
• Sleep is critical. Distractions before bed probably correlate with less productive days following them.
• Doing Nothing is Vital For Work. Meditation can be a useful way to do nothing for a while.

Remember that humans are only capable of a couple hours of productive work per day. Do not fight it, accept it and work with it.

• How much of my notetaking today is stealing from those hours? How much of it is trying to fight past them?

Meditation

Broadly exists within 2 types, and is correlated with better ability to focus.

1. Open Monitoring: Observe experiences in real-time without reacting.
2. Focused Attention: Concentrate on something specific.

The biggest difference between pop-sci / modernist statements on focus and religious / old-school thought is that the modern ideals focus on ruthlessly removing distractions, which is difficult or impossible to maintain in a modern lifestyle. The mindfulness approach is to target the ability to focus directly and improve it, which is ironically more effective in a modern setting.

(Apparently also called MBI: Mindfulness Based Interventions)

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