What does ‘difficulty concentrating’ feel like for you? I often find that value words, like ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘difficult’, ‘happy’, ‘sad’, mean different things for me than for most people.
I spend much of my free time working on a game that I intend to sell at some point. The indie game community talks a lot about focusing, overcoming difficulties concentrating, etc. But I’ve never seen someone describe in detail what ‘difficulty concentrating’ or ‘difficulty getting to work’ feels like. I find myself wondering if they are talking about what I think they are talking about. It’s possible that their tips don’t often work because we are thinking about different things.
Akrasia gets talked about a lot here, as well as ways of improving productivity, and I’m really curious what akrasia or difficulty concentrating actually feels like for other people. Taboo the words ‘akrasia’, ‘procrastination’, ‘distraction’ and other similar words, and tell me what it feels like.
Here’s what ‘difficulty getting to work’ typically feels like for me: I look at my list of tasks and I get a strong feeling of despair. Starting work on the list feels like I’m chaining myself to an assembly line in a grey factory in a grey world making grey featureless joyless objects, and I’m going to be there for the rest of eternity. It’s strange because I actually feel like what I’m producing is colorful, beautiful and interesting. I’m not sure if it is related to the length of the list. I thought it was perhaps due to nebulous definition of the task leaving uncertainty as to what the finished task was supposed to look like, but I’ve had the same problems even with well defined tasks.
Here’s what ‘difficulty concentrating’ feels like: Imagine that you’ve got a good sized dog, and you’re trying to make it look at something. You grab its head and hold it down to look at whatever it is, and the dog fights you the whole time. Sometimes this will pass if I start with a simple task and get going. Other times it feels like every line of code I write is a continual struggle to hold the dog’s head in place. Or imagine that you’ve really got to go to the bathroom, and you’re trying to ignore it and just work. There’s a pressure that demands release. It’s almost like there’s a voice in my head (not an actual voice, it’s not schizophrenia) screaming for me to turn off my brain and play a video game or do something else that requires no brain power.
I would estimate that I have difficulty with these feelings at least 30% of the time I try to sit down and work. Sometimes these bother me at my day job, but they show up most frequently when I’m working in the evenings and weekends.
So what does it feel like for you?
I imagine someone will ask about this at some point: I have been diagnosed with Bipolar Type II, I currently take lamotrigine, quetiapine, and bupropion to manage it. I’ve had problems like this at least since my early teens.
Difficulty concentrating feels like a pressure in my forehead that builds the more I fight it. Thats when it’s strong, other times, I just find myself doing or thinking about something else.
Difficulty getting to work more often takes the second unconscious form. I don’t dwell on it, I just find myself not doing the work. However, sometimes it feels like an empty, hollow chest area and the more I think about the work, the more hollow it feels. However, the more I don’t do the work, the more weak/hollow my arms feel.
I find it interesting how my kinisthetic intuitions match up with your visual intuitions.
That is interesting. Your experience sounds very similar to mine. I find myself wondering what affects the way that concentration difficulties and akrasia feels.
Difficulty concentrating: A mental slipperiness, like trying not to think of something, or clench water in your fist. The harder I attempt to concentrate, the more prone my mind is to go zipping off in another direction entirely. I tend to be most productive when I have a large number of potential tasks to work on, and one critical one—I’ll get all my lesser tasks done in no time at all, as my mind careens off the critical task over and over again. I’m least productive when I have a single task to work on, particularly if it’s trivial to do. Indeed, the faster I can get it done, the harder it is to do it.
Curiously, I have -zero- problems with difficulty concentrating when extremely tired, and if there’s something I really need to do that I’m making no progress on, I’ll generally do it around 3:30-4:30 AM.
Curiously, I have -zero- problems with difficulty concentrating when extremely tired
Not sure it’s uncommon, I have a similar mode when I’m exhausted and still need to finish something. It’s a kinda “you’re not going anywhere until this is done” mode and when I’m tired my speed goes down, but my ability to focus goes up.
I find that it is much easier to enter a state of flow late at night. This does not equate, in my case, to being able to concentrate on undesirable tasks, but does help with tasks that are simply boring.
This XKCD is a fair visualization of what difficulty concentrating feels like. I can be doing an activity (even a pleasurable one), but I get a lot of other stimuli coming in that link to different activities that also need doing or would also be fun or pleasurable. Or while doing an activity or trying to think about one specific thing, my mind jumps to other (often related) topics and this has a tendency to escalate. Think about the way people describe going to tv-tropes. You start out reading about the film you just saw, and before you know it, you’re browser is filled up with dozens of tabs (all of which have links that you’ll probably also click).
akrasia
Akrasia feels, to me, a lot like inertia. Sometimes in a very physical way. It’s a feeling of “being stuck” and often translates to physically being stuck, without anything specific holding you physically in place. It’s like the space between thinking “Doing X would be a good idea right about now” and actually doing X is a steep, uphill climb.
[Note; this was written before reading anyone else’s comments, to reduce memetic contamination. My apologies if it doesn’t add anything new or useful].
Difficulty concentrating: I have thousands of things that I could and should do. I can’t even begin to keep track of them. When I look at my computer, I see a collection of things to do. Some of them will send me off to do other tasks, and when I start on those other tasks, I see piles of papers and random notes reminding me of work that need to be done. Work, life, and everything is a tangled web of random tasks. I don’t even try to stay focused unless something is really important—it doesn’t matter if I’m writing a post but suddenly get distracted by paying bills and then by doing the dishes. All that matters is that all of those things get done “soon enough”. It feels like being a pinball, but without the obnoxious dings and buzzes. Usually it is a good feeling… until you miss a deadline, and then it starts of a minor (or major) panic. But I am much more productive, in terms of work done, when I don’t have to stay focused on one task until completion. As long as I have my checklists on hand and keep them updated, everything is fine.
Difficulty getting to work: A burst of unwant, a wall of apathy towards a task, and a desire to bounce onto a more interesting task. Kind of like jumping into cold water, there’s no point in worrying about it or planning of ways to heat up the lake. Just shut your brain off and start. There’s not much feeling involved, other than “yuck” and then “meh”.
I don’t think there a single feeling that corresponds to “difficulty concentrating”.
If I’m very tired then I have difficulty concentrating, but that’s very different than the feeling of my mind being distract by topic A when I want to think about topic B.
What does ‘difficulty concentrating’ feel like for you? I often find that value words, like ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘difficult’, ‘happy’, ‘sad’, mean different things for me than for most people.
I spend much of my free time working on a game that I intend to sell at some point. The indie game community talks a lot about focusing, overcoming difficulties concentrating, etc. But I’ve never seen someone describe in detail what ‘difficulty concentrating’ or ‘difficulty getting to work’ feels like. I find myself wondering if they are talking about what I think they are talking about. It’s possible that their tips don’t often work because we are thinking about different things.
Akrasia gets talked about a lot here, as well as ways of improving productivity, and I’m really curious what akrasia or difficulty concentrating actually feels like for other people. Taboo the words ‘akrasia’, ‘procrastination’, ‘distraction’ and other similar words, and tell me what it feels like.
Here’s what ‘difficulty getting to work’ typically feels like for me: I look at my list of tasks and I get a strong feeling of despair. Starting work on the list feels like I’m chaining myself to an assembly line in a grey factory in a grey world making grey featureless joyless objects, and I’m going to be there for the rest of eternity. It’s strange because I actually feel like what I’m producing is colorful, beautiful and interesting. I’m not sure if it is related to the length of the list. I thought it was perhaps due to nebulous definition of the task leaving uncertainty as to what the finished task was supposed to look like, but I’ve had the same problems even with well defined tasks.
Here’s what ‘difficulty concentrating’ feels like: Imagine that you’ve got a good sized dog, and you’re trying to make it look at something. You grab its head and hold it down to look at whatever it is, and the dog fights you the whole time. Sometimes this will pass if I start with a simple task and get going. Other times it feels like every line of code I write is a continual struggle to hold the dog’s head in place. Or imagine that you’ve really got to go to the bathroom, and you’re trying to ignore it and just work. There’s a pressure that demands release. It’s almost like there’s a voice in my head (not an actual voice, it’s not schizophrenia) screaming for me to turn off my brain and play a video game or do something else that requires no brain power.
I would estimate that I have difficulty with these feelings at least 30% of the time I try to sit down and work. Sometimes these bother me at my day job, but they show up most frequently when I’m working in the evenings and weekends.
So what does it feel like for you?
I imagine someone will ask about this at some point: I have been diagnosed with Bipolar Type II, I currently take lamotrigine, quetiapine, and bupropion to manage it. I’ve had problems like this at least since my early teens.
Difficulty concentrating feels like a pressure in my forehead that builds the more I fight it. Thats when it’s strong, other times, I just find myself doing or thinking about something else.
Difficulty getting to work more often takes the second unconscious form. I don’t dwell on it, I just find myself not doing the work. However, sometimes it feels like an empty, hollow chest area and the more I think about the work, the more hollow it feels. However, the more I don’t do the work, the more weak/hollow my arms feel.
I find it interesting how my kinisthetic intuitions match up with your visual intuitions.
That is interesting. Your experience sounds very similar to mine. I find myself wondering what affects the way that concentration difficulties and akrasia feels.
I’ve also another kind of ‘difficulty concentrating’, which feels like a fog in my brain, a not-unpleasant feeling of floating without direction.
Difficulty concentrating: A mental slipperiness, like trying not to think of something, or clench water in your fist. The harder I attempt to concentrate, the more prone my mind is to go zipping off in another direction entirely. I tend to be most productive when I have a large number of potential tasks to work on, and one critical one—I’ll get all my lesser tasks done in no time at all, as my mind careens off the critical task over and over again. I’m least productive when I have a single task to work on, particularly if it’s trivial to do. Indeed, the faster I can get it done, the harder it is to do it.
Curiously, I have -zero- problems with difficulty concentrating when extremely tired, and if there’s something I really need to do that I’m making no progress on, I’ll generally do it around 3:30-4:30 AM.
Not sure it’s uncommon, I have a similar mode when I’m exhausted and still need to finish something. It’s a kinda “you’re not going anywhere until this is done” mode and when I’m tired my speed goes down, but my ability to focus goes up.
I find that it is much easier to enter a state of flow late at night. This does not equate, in my case, to being able to concentrate on undesirable tasks, but does help with tasks that are simply boring.
Disclaimer: I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD.
This XKCD is a fair visualization of what difficulty concentrating feels like. I can be doing an activity (even a pleasurable one), but I get a lot of other stimuli coming in that link to different activities that also need doing or would also be fun or pleasurable. Or while doing an activity or trying to think about one specific thing, my mind jumps to other (often related) topics and this has a tendency to escalate. Think about the way people describe going to tv-tropes. You start out reading about the film you just saw, and before you know it, you’re browser is filled up with dozens of tabs (all of which have links that you’ll probably also click).
Akrasia feels, to me, a lot like inertia. Sometimes in a very physical way. It’s a feeling of “being stuck” and often translates to physically being stuck, without anything specific holding you physically in place. It’s like the space between thinking “Doing X would be a good idea right about now” and actually doing X is a steep, uphill climb.
[Note; this was written before reading anyone else’s comments, to reduce memetic contamination. My apologies if it doesn’t add anything new or useful].
Difficulty concentrating: I have thousands of things that I could and should do. I can’t even begin to keep track of them. When I look at my computer, I see a collection of things to do. Some of them will send me off to do other tasks, and when I start on those other tasks, I see piles of papers and random notes reminding me of work that need to be done. Work, life, and everything is a tangled web of random tasks. I don’t even try to stay focused unless something is really important—it doesn’t matter if I’m writing a post but suddenly get distracted by paying bills and then by doing the dishes. All that matters is that all of those things get done “soon enough”. It feels like being a pinball, but without the obnoxious dings and buzzes. Usually it is a good feeling… until you miss a deadline, and then it starts of a minor (or major) panic. But I am much more productive, in terms of work done, when I don’t have to stay focused on one task until completion. As long as I have my checklists on hand and keep them updated, everything is fine.
Difficulty getting to work: A burst of unwant, a wall of apathy towards a task, and a desire to bounce onto a more interesting task. Kind of like jumping into cold water, there’s no point in worrying about it or planning of ways to heat up the lake. Just shut your brain off and start. There’s not much feeling involved, other than “yuck” and then “meh”.
I don’t think there a single feeling that corresponds to “difficulty concentrating”. If I’m very tired then I have difficulty concentrating, but that’s very different than the feeling of my mind being distract by topic A when I want to think about topic B.