It’s getting harder to focus every day

每天保持专注正变得越来越难

I’m feeling it right now. I had to set a timer for 15 minute on my computer and block all distractions to write this. If I didn’t force myself to focus I would easily get distracted by something after few minutes. Even when I’m doing things that I’ve been waiting to do it, I still feel the urge to do something else. 我现在的感受非常强烈。为了写这篇文章，我不得不给电脑设了一个 15 分钟的倒计时，并屏蔽了所有干扰。如果我不强迫自己专注，几分钟后我就会轻易被其他事情分心。即使是在做我一直期待的事情时，我仍然感到一种去做点别的冲动。

I don’t know how and when this happened. During the last few years I was always studying, working, and doing open source. And actually got stuff done. Doing all of those at the same time requires paying attention to what I wanted to do and ignore the noise. Nowadays, I’m lucky if I get 1 hour of focused time. 我不知道这是怎么发生的，也不知道是从什么时候开始的。过去几年里，我一直在学习、工作和参与开源项目，并且确实完成了不少事情。同时处理这些事情需要我专注于目标，并忽略外界的噪音。而如今，如果我能有 1 小时的专注时间，那就算是很幸运了。

Just to be clear, my goal is not to work 90 hours a week or anything crazy. That is not possible for me. I just want the hour I spend programming, learning, or writing to be just one activity. But instead I spend 10 minute on something then I get distracted, and try to focus again. Ideally, I want to be able to plan to work on something for long hours without any distraction. After that time get back online check for messages and other things. 需要说明的是，我的目标并不是每周工作 90 小时或做些疯狂的事情，那对我来说是不可能的。我只是希望我花在编程、学习或写作上的那一小时，能纯粹地只做这一件事。但现实是，我做某事 10 分钟后就会分心，然后又试图重新集中注意力。理想情况下，我希望能够计划长时间专注于某项工作而不受任何干扰，结束后再上线查看消息和其他事务。

The distractions are not one particular thing. A few examples: I want to do something and I remember there’s a post related to this. I go to find it and in between I click on some links and end up reading something completely unrelated. I am waiting for something then I go browse the web and I get distracted. I’m working on something and I face a challenge I have to think for 10 minutes. I get up to get some water and check my phone along the way and get distracted. Sometimes I get distracted by making the bed. 干扰源并非单一。举几个例子：我想做某事，突然想起有一篇相关的文章，于是去搜索，结果中途点开了其他链接，最后读了一些完全无关的内容。我在等待某事时去浏览网页，然后就分心了。我在工作中遇到挑战，需要思考 10 分钟，于是起身去倒水，顺便看了一眼手机，结果又分心了。有时，连整理床铺都会让我分心。

It feels like my brain finds a way to do something else and avoid painful situations like boredom or hard work. It reminds me of when I was in high school talking to a friend about how laying in bed with your phone can kill hours without you noticing it. It was circa 2015, back then attention hungry apps were less powerful but still lure a teenager’s mind for few hours. 感觉我的大脑总能找到借口去做别的事，以逃避无聊或艰苦工作带来的痛苦。这让我想起高中时和朋友聊天，谈到躺在床上玩手机是如何在不知不觉中消磨掉数小时的。那是 2015 年左右，当时那些“掠夺注意力”的应用程序还没那么强大，但依然能诱惑青少年的心智好几个小时。

I learned that these apps should be used very carefully. At that time I made a decision to never have a charger near my bed. Back then it was mostly about my phone, because when I was on the computer I was either reading, or programming, or playing a game. Even if I wasn’t in the mood to think, I played a strategic game or chess. These activities exercise the mind and are fun. All of them were an intentional activity. I didn’t do any passive activities like browsing or chatting on my computer. 我意识到这些应用必须谨慎使用。当时我决定床边绝不放充电器。那时主要问题还在手机上，因为我在电脑前时，要么是在阅读、编程，要么是在玩游戏。即使不想动脑，我也会玩策略游戏或下棋。这些活动既锻炼思维又有趣，而且都是有目的的活动。我当时在电脑上从不做浏览网页或聊天这类被动的事情。

Later I discovered HackerNoon and Medium, it was the first website that I was browsing whenever I was bored behind the computer. This meant that I had a way to get out boredom easily. It used to have some high quality content. It inspired me to do some projects and learn more programming. I found channels like CSDojo there. Nowadays I don’t even open them. They are filled with slop or click bait articles, probably because of monetization incentives. 后来我发现了 HackerNoon 和 Medium，这是我坐在电脑前感到无聊时浏览的第一批网站。这意味着我有了轻松摆脱无聊的途径。它们曾经有过高质量的内容，激励我做了一些项目并学习了更多编程知识，我还在那里发现了像 CSDojo 这样的频道。如今我甚至不再打开它们了，因为它们充斥着垃圾内容或标题党文章，这大概是商业化激励的结果。

Then hackernews, and YouTube and others took their place. I also found some good people and blogs along the way. I learned to keep a reading list from people I like to read when I’m on the bus. I slowly found more activities for when I’m bored. This made it harder to focus on hard things for me. 随后，Hacker News、YouTube 等平台取代了它们的位置。我也在这一过程中发现了一些优秀的人和博客。我学会了整理一份阅读清单，在坐公交车时阅读我喜欢的作者的文章。我慢慢找到了更多打发无聊时间的方式，但这让我更难专注于困难的事情了。

What kept me on track was that there was no way out. I had to work out some algebra problems. I kept myself to a very high bar of understanding what I do. And I did everything in LaTeX so I couldn’t copy from someone else. I was the only one typing them. 曾经让我保持正轨的原因是“别无选择”。我必须解出代数题。我对自己理解所做之事的要求极高，而且我所有内容都用 LaTeX 编写，这样我就无法抄袭他人，因为只有我自己在输入这些内容。

The first time I saw people not putting the effort and still get the reward for it was at work. You might wonder, aren’t people in the university constantly cheating and copying homework, and get good grades? Well yes, but when you talked with someone in that group it was clear that he is clueless about the subject. A good grade didn’t mean much to me at that time. And as a student cheating does not get you that far. At work it is different. 我第一次看到有人不付出努力却依然获得回报是在工作中。你可能会问，大学里难道不也是有人不断作弊、抄作业并获得高分吗？确实如此，但当你与那类人交谈时，很明显他们对学科一窍不通。那时，好成绩对我来说意义不大，而且作为学生，作弊也走不远。但在工作中，情况就不同了。

My days are mostly spend meetings and over chat. The balance between actual work and bullshit is skewed. I saw people who were barely doing any work and just talk are successful. As long as people give 10% of their attention to work they are considered fine in most environments. Previously I did an experiment to track my time and found out that I spent 8 hours chatting on slack in a week. I don’t care how employers want to shatter employee’s focus. But this made me get used to distractions when I’m programming. I’m trying to undo this damage. 我的日子大多花在开会和聊天上。实际工作与废话之间的平衡严重失调。我看到那些几乎不干活、只会夸夸其谈的人反而很成功。在大多数环境下，只要人们投入 10% 的精力在工作上，就被认为是合格的。之前我做过一个时间追踪实验，发现我一周在 Slack 上聊天就花了 8 小时。我不在乎雇主如何想要粉碎员工的专注力，但这确实让我养成了编程时分心的习惯。我正在努力扭转这种损害。

The next big change is more usage of LLMs. I find myself in this situation too many times, where I outsource something to an LLM and then I start working on something else. And while doing this I keep thinking about what it’s doing. Or when I’m thinking about something I start chatting with an LLM about my idea and instead of getting started on something I’m in research mode only for hours. 下一个巨大的变化是 LLM（大语言模型）的使用增加。我发现自己经常陷入这种情况：把某件事外包给 LLM，然后就开始做别的事。在做别的事时，我却一直惦记着它在做什么。或者当我思考某事时，我开始与 LLM 讨论我的想法，结果本该开始动手，却在研究模式里耗费了数小时。

It’s good that I’m able to ask something else to research some topic for me. But the productivity only comes if I can move on to something else and not think about it. I don’t have any notifications turned on so it doesn’t distract me. But I still find myself thinking about what I just asked it to do and I cannot focus on something else. 能让别的东西帮我研究课题固然好，但只有当我能转而做其他事且不再去想它时，生产力才会产生。我没有开启任何通知，所以它不会干扰我，但我发现自己还是会去想刚才让它做的事，从而无法专注于其他任务。

At the same time if I’m spending the time interactively with an LLM I feel slow. I have to wait for the response and I have to correct every response coming out. The best use of AI seems to be outsourcing what they can do end to end without error. Why do I keep doing this? Presumably because it’s easy and fast, and productive. 同时，如果我花时间与 LLM 进行交互，我会感到效率低下。我必须等待响应，并且必须纠正每一个输出的回复。AI 最好的用途似乎是外包那些它们能端到端无误完成的任务。为什么我还要这样做？大概是因为它简单、快速且高效。

If I realize I have to do something I can write it down to do it later or I can just ask the LLM to do it. The problem only shows up when I start doing so many things at once because it’s actually doing the thing. Then I have multiple things on my mind and can’t focus really. I have to check on it and guide it in the right direction every now and then. And this is overstimulating, in a way that doing something without LLM sometimes is boring. You don’t see the result. 如果我意识到必须做某事，我可以写下来稍后处理，或者直接让 LLM 去做。问题在于，当我同时开始做太多事情时，因为 LLM 确实在执行任务，我的脑子里就会塞满多项事务，无法真正专注。我必须时不时地检查它，并引导它走向正确的方向。这会造成过度刺激，以至于有时不使用 LLM 去做某事反而显得枯燥，因为你无法即时看到结果。