[HN Gopher] How I Learned to Concentrate
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How I Learned to Concentrate
Author : ilya_m
Score : 69 points
Date : 2024-03-07 21:12 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| turtleyacht wrote:
| Mental math "tricks" and "thinking hacks" [1] are a couple
| shortcuts I'm trying to cram in order to be more productive with
| my aging wetware.
|
| The first chapter is several memorization techniques, all related
| to hanging vivid associations to numbers, keywords, and physical
| spaces.
|
| [1] Hale-Evans, Ron. 2006. "Mind Performance Hacks."
| cpr wrote:
| As first expounded by Matteo Ricci, a 16th/17th-century Jesuit
| missionary to China.
|
| https://web.mit.edu/uricchio/Public/Documents/media-in-trans...
| sage76 wrote:
| For anyone who is familiar with his work, are his assertions
| scientifically backed or is it more pop psychology?
| miek wrote:
| Not pop psychology. I read his book Deep Work; it was well
| researched (and good). Also, he's a comp sci professor @
| Georgetown and has an excellent podcast.
| skadamat wrote:
| I've read all his books and many of his articles. I would say
| they are science-informed. He works with expert scientists in
| the relevant fields and weaves in his own experiences.
|
| But honestly, most of his ideas IMO are...straightforward and
| un-controversial? He's doing a good job re-emphasizing them and
| making the case for _why_ :
|
| - Focusing on 1 task for a long time is hard, but as with most
| things in human life you can practice & get better
|
| - Deep work = hard, focused work to produce outsized, unique,
| creative value
|
| - Most knowledge work nowadays is too frenetic and it's hard to
| do deep work unless you fight for it
|
| - Switching tasks / contexts quickly has a switching cost.
| Sure, there's some neuro / psychology research around this ...
| but also haven't we like all felt that?
|
| Cal does a good job drawing from his own experience and from
| other leading deep work thinkers and he's distilled those
| learnings in a way the rest of us can embrace & adopt
| progressively.
|
| But he's not trying to pretend that this is scientifically the
| best way to crush it in your career or something
| miek wrote:
| To me, it is "straight forward" in the same way that Dropbox
| was straight forward once it was successful (before their
| success, it wasn't so obvious). Once you read his material,
| you might think "oh yeah, of course," but there's far more
| value in his work than that. It sometimes seemed silly when I
| was reading his book Deep Work, because it's like "yeah man
| just put your head down and focus," but of course there is so
| much more to it than that. There is much more that could be
| said, but I need to get back to work :D I highly recommend
| his work.
| sage76 wrote:
| The point about context switching being costly is definitely
| something that the general public doesn't get.
|
| If you ask most people whether they can multitask, they will
| proudly say yes.
|
| Bosses don't care about deep work either. I have been in jobs
| where they interrupted me every half an hour. I remember
| switching between 4 or more tasks trying to get anything
| done. It would all just get muddled in my head making it hard
| to keep track of what I was doing.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| I'm a big deep work fan and have read most of Cal's books, and
| I would almost say neither
|
| It's more like a set of ideas and practices, with a bunch of
| real-life examples, and tools/frameworks you could use in your
| own life.
|
| A lot of what he's written makes sense to me, so having more
| formal frameworks and examples around that is helpful. It
| wasn't a game changing breakthrough
| 1123581321 wrote:
| It is pop psychology. Cherry-picked studies, anecdotes, etc.
|
| I like his advice but his books don't work to exclude other
| possible explanations or prove casual links/action mechanisms.
|
| I would almost look at them as light philosophical works
| although the logical rigor for that field is also missing--
| again, saying this as an appreciator of his advice.
| complianceowl wrote:
| I disagree with you... . . . . . . . . ...on nothing :)
| jasperry wrote:
| To me, whether books like Cal Newport's cite scientific studies
| is beside the point. The goal of reading a book like "Deep
| Work" isn't to gain objective knowledge of results in
| psychology, but to get some nuggets of wisdom that help you
| manage your own life. Call it "self help", "wisdom literature",
| or whatever; it's ultimately one person's perspective on what
| sort of attitudes help us cope with life and how the world
| squeezes us. Take that for what it's worth.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| What good is a nugget of wisdom if it's false, and how do you
| know if it's true or false without a factual basis?
|
| Don't say intuition; our intuition sucks. Don't say the need
| doesn't require some scientific standard of proof; if it's
| false, it's a waste of time or worse, gets a negative return
| on the time.
| gnicholas wrote:
| A related question: is his advice helpful for startup founders?
| From my brief understanding of his work, it seems like it could
| be relevant to later-stage founders, who are not wearing quite
| as many hats on a daily basis, but would be less relevant for
| early-stage founders. But I'd be interested to know if anyone
| here has applied his advice in an early-stage context and found
| it helpful.
| iaseiadit wrote:
| Cal, not Carl.
| dtrizzle wrote:
| Cal, not Carl.
| markhahn wrote:
| Quick read but not worth it.
| Zezima wrote:
| The person's name is Cal
| nosmokewhereiam wrote:
| Curt not Cart*
|
| Edit: Oh have a sense of humorl
| skadamat wrote:
| Cal or Calvin, not Carl :)
| Fervicus wrote:
| My first instinct was "I bet this guy is promoting a new book".
| Scroll down and lo and behold. I should mention though that I
| have no opinion on the author and his books since I haven't read
| them.
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| I gained nothing from reading this piece other than there are
| smart people at MIT (which i've already known) and that this guy
| has a new book coming out.
| yulaow wrote:
| This is just a promotional post for a book, there is no actual
| content in this link
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Maybe that's true if you've read the book? I learned several
| things of interest.
| gnicholas wrote:
| It sounds like many people read the book the first time, when
| it was called Deep Work, or the second time, when it was
| called something else.
| npalli wrote:
| It's Cal (not Carl) and he has essentially been writing the same
| book for the past decade. If you have read Deep Work you have
| read his next five books (including this one).
| numlocked wrote:
| I think a more interesting dichotomy than "productivity" vs
| "business" is "efficiency" vs "efficacy". Our work culture (and
| business pop culture) has come to worship at the shrine of
| efficiency & productivity, but spends relatively little time
| dwelling on efficacy. What is the impact that only _you_ can
| drive? The Effective Executive shaped my thinking about this
| quite a bit, and I 'm a better professional for it.
| tomdell wrote:
| Do yourself a favor and don't buy any books by Cal Newport.
| They're glorified blog posts with a bunch of overblown common
| sense rebranded with marketable terminology. Read Flow by Mihaly
| Csikszentmihalyi if you want something similar that has more
| substance.
| Swizec wrote:
| > Read Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
|
| This is the book every productivity self-help book published in
| the last 20+ years reference. Including the one I self-
| published many moons ago.
|
| Mihaly is the only person who has done actual research and
| experiments on the subject. He basically worked on this his
| entire career from the mid 1960's onwards. Everything else is
| derivative.
|
| While you're there, do yourself another favor and read up on
| Fogg's Behavior Model. That's the other academic research that
| all the famous productivity books base their suggestions upon.
|
| The derivative pre-chewed content is fine, but get the
| underlying steak. It's worth it. The returns will compound your
| whole life/career.
| 3abiton wrote:
| Oof, that's a harsh take, what's your support?
| drlolz wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/books/review/slow-
| product...
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _In his acknowledgments, he thanks his wife for "putting
| up with all the sacrifices involved in having a partner
| with a troubling addiction to writing books,"_
|
| You'd think there'd be fewer sacrifices involved, given
| that he's mostly just writing one book, multiple times. /s
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| I found deep work like a totally okay book. But yea for sure no
| groundbreaking stuff or research there.
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| > I was astonished at how the most impressive of my colleagues
| could listen to a description of a complicated proof, stare into
| space for a few minutes, and then quip, "O.K., got it," before
| telling you how to improve it. It was important that they didn't
| master your ideas too quickly: the dreaded insult was for someone
| to respond promptly and deem your argument "trivial." I once
| attended a lecture by a visiting cryptographer. After he
| finished, a monster mind in the audience--an outspoken future
| Turing winner--raised his hand and asked, "Yes, but isn't this
| all, if we think about it, really just trivial?"
|
| > I was sent all around Europe to present papers at various
| conferences. The meetings themselves weren't the point. It was
| the conversations that mattered--one good idea, sparked on a
| rooftop in Bologna or beside Lake Geneva in Lausanne, was worth
| days of tiring travel.
|
| God save me from ever having to work with people this pretentious
| aksss wrote:
| Seems meme-worthy. "Just one good idea, sparked over a dish of
| caviar eaten off a naked Slavic woman, or hugging a golden
| toilet at the sheik's 4th house in Dubai, was worth days of
| tiring travel."
| neilv wrote:
| :) But seriously, there's a lot worse qualities a person
| could have, than to appreciate spending time with others, to
| understand the world better, and generate new ideas.
|
| Articulating it isn't necessarily boasting (though it might
| be).
| krsna wrote:
| This must be Cal's twin brother, Carl. /s
|
| Deep Work is a solid book and very quick to read. Most of his
| other books cross over into self-help, which can be tiring.
| Upvoter33 wrote:
| This guy's work - imho - is like many business books. Simple
| idea, stated over and over. Most of the ideas can be summarized
| in a paragraph or so.
| BadHumans wrote:
| There is really nothing to talk about in this piece so I'm just
| going to echo the sentiment here about Cal Newport. Read Deep
| Work, it's a great book, one of my favorite actually. But, once
| you've done that, you've read everything he has to offer because
| every book, blog post, and video is an idea from Deep Work
| recycled and stretched 16 different ways.
| neilv wrote:
| > _Scientists who work in labs, and have to run experiments or
| crunch numbers, can famously work long hours._
|
| Since the author is a CS theory person, I guess "experiments"
| includes CS systems people, who tend to have very time-intensive
| building of systems for experiments.
|
| In that same Stata Center as the author, my young CS systems
| principal investigator (PI) was working at least as hard as any
| grad student or postdoc. One time, probably in the wee hours of a
| morning, when a few of us were still working in the lab, I bumped
| into her, and joked something like, she won't have to work so
| hard once she gets tenure. Without missing a beat, her deadpan
| response: "I already have tenure."
|
| Work ethic and endurance aren't the only requirements for success
| like hers, but they really help in systems-building work.
| swader999 wrote:
| I wonder if he had to pay the newyorker for this 'article'.
| eachro wrote:
| I wonder how he regards his success as a productivity guru vs
| professor. All credit to him for achieving a level of success,
| notoriety that most will never get close to in their life. At the
| same time, I suspect productivity guru is not quite what he
| wanted to become. Or maybe it is. I don't know.
| jkmcf wrote:
| While most people here seem to be dismissive, it's not like his
| books are targeted at the already successful, accomplished, or
| polished. They are meant to show people a way to become more
| successful in a world that has too many distractions. Not every
| job supports deep work and the other approaches, but many people,
| especially students, will benefit. I know I could have used it
| 30+ years ago!
|
| I've only read Deep Work, but I found it very motivating and have
| tried to incorporate some of the lessons into my life. Now,
| (literally) buying into the whole ecosystem of Cal Newport is
| probably overkill, but occasionally listening to his podcast,
| which essentially answers the same questions over and over and
| over again, can be motivating and uplifting for those of us who
| are lacking in the perfection department.
| kashyapc wrote:
| It's that time of the year again.
|
| Newport (a relentless marketer, a bit like Tim Ferris) has been
| on a contract to churn out these filler "books" based on the same
| bloody theme for _years_. I 've been harping on it since 2019[1].
|
| As I noted here[2], "for a guy advocating 'minimalism', he churns
| out [far] too much needless crap. The irony seems definitely lost
| on him."
|
| More comments on this tiring topic here[3]. Stop wasting your
| money buying his crap. What's the alternative? Again, as I've
| noted in the past[3]:
|
| "The alternative to the empty books [...] is to read the original
| classics, and the actual scholars who did the work
| (Csikszentmihalyi, Kahneman, Richard Thaler, Timothy Wilson and
| many others)."
|
| Edit: You can also get far more value by reading one of Plato's
| dialogues from 2000 years ago, instead. (Start with the excellent
| "Five Dialogues" selected by Hackett Classics.)
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20082125
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36024139
|
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29035998
| paulpauper wrote:
| _Newport (a relentless marketer, a bit like Tim Ferris) has
| been on a contract to churn out these filler "books" based on
| the same bloody theme for years. I've been saying this since
| 2019[1]._
|
| Like Ryan Holiday, Robert Greene, or Seth Godin. These people
| make a lucrative career re-spinning and re-hashing the same
| vague advice. They occupy a middle ground between science,
| journalism, and self-help.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Why did people upvote this? Just because it has MIT in the title?
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