[ChuckMcM]

Interesting take on it, I certainly resonate with the "Michigan weather making work the only thing to do" anecdote.

I struggle with productivity, and feeling productive. and when I look back on times when I felt productive the attention thing does stand out.

It occurred to me when I thought of myself as a younger programmer that I used to love the time between midnight and 3AM, there was literally nothing on TV to distract me, the house was quiet, the kids and wife were in bed and asleep. I could spend the time thinking through the problem and then mindfully developing an approach to solve it. These days, not so much.

There is always something distracting in a web browser. Too many times I find I go to check something and poof an hour has vanished as I've followed a bunch of paths that I wasn't intending to follow. As a result my current efforts focus on not leaving a bunch of tabs open on my browser and being mindful about getting done what I came to do for the task at hand and going back to the task. No extra checking of mail or twitter or HN or what ever ...

[dhimes]

There's an interesting hack that works for a lot of people, including me- I've even included it in Study Swami: Keep a time log. Just log what you are doing throughout the day (I also log when my concentration breaks). You only need to do it a couple of times and, just like a food log when you are dieting, you will automatically power through your distractions because you don't want an embarrassing log entry.

It really works, and in a couple of days you'll likely have your focus back.

I started doing this "how long can I concentrate for" game in grad school in the 80s, and tried it again a few years ago when I was struggling. My concentration span started at a super-embarrassing couple of minutes at a time. In a couple of days I was back in the hour range, and before long it was as long as I needed. These days I, like you, seldom have tremendously long blocks like 4 hours available. But I effectively use what I can.

[mark_l_watson]

Hey, I have enjoyed your comments over the years on HN, so I am happy to have some good advice to share with you: use something like Instapaper or a transient bookmark list to note interesting/useful things but do your reading just a few times a week. I find that this keeps me from link-following behavior that afterwards seemed like a waste of time. Make the saved link reading time special by setting aside reading time so I feel like I am doing just what I am supposed to be doing.

[djakjxnanjak]

iOS has a feature “save to reading list” that I use to save stories that seem interesting but that I don’t need to read for my current task. However, I haven’t taken to time to learn to access my reading list :)

[cpeterso]

I use Pocket for exactly this purpose. I save interesting articles from my desktop or mobile browser to Pocket. Instead of reading random junk news or scrolling social media when I have a few free minutes on the go or at the end on the day, I have quality articles on my phone in my pocket.

(Disclosure: I work at Mozilla and Mozilla owns Pocket.)