[Disruptive_Dave]

Meditate. Expose yourself to the feeling of letting go.

Meditate: Literally train your mind to focus. It's going to the gym. Won't happen in a day, week, even month. Consistently do it and you'll eventually see progress.

Letting go: I have a long track record of starting while not going deep. Eventually, I just had to jump in the cold water and start letting things go. Literally put away physical gear for hobbies I wasn't actively engaging in but that took up a bunch of emotional and mental space and energy. Store it away and move on. Part of that process was telling myself this doesn't mean I failed or gave up or even that I would never do XYZ again. Just not now. I started learning the drums a bit ago then I also decided to try to get good at golf. Amongst other things, something had to go. Bye bye drums. Closed all the drums-related tabs. Put away the training material. It's golf time. Maybe in the cold months I'll pick back up, but for now, I'm relieving myself of the self-prescribed duty to practice drums. After doing that for a while, you feel a weight lift.

For some people, starting a bunch of things might be a way to protect against failure (or hard work) since they never actually commit to pushing something live. For others, like me, it's a lot of fun to learn something new (learn, not master).

[sumgame]

I second this strongly.

Meditation helps me be less reactive to stimulus and also decreases the occurrence of random thoughts.

Think of the human body as an IO system. Your sensory organs constantly giving you inputs from all directions.

Your mind deciding what the output should be.

When you meditate - I feel like you add a latency to your responses which allows you indirectly to focus better.

Second thing that really helps is a non distracting environment (decreasing potential inputs) - have a space where there isn’t much distractions.

Phones with push notifications id say are one of the biggest sources of distractions - I have most notifications switched off and check different messenger/mail apps periodically as I finish blocks of work - this absolutely helps in terms of focus.

[hackingthelema]

> Meditate: Literally train your mind to focus. It's going to the gym. Won't happen in a day, week, even month. Consistently do it and you'll eventually see progress.

Indeed! I'd add on -- keep in mind that this focus might be very fleeting at first. You might focus on your breath or mantra for one, maybe two repetitions... and that's it! You've already lost it. You barely made it two seconds and now your mind is drifting and you have to remind yourself to focus. You might've even been drifting or daydreaming for over a minute after only two seconds of focus. That is perfectly normal. It's ok to just try meditation for a couple to a few minutes at first until you get the technique down. You slowly increase how long you can meditate -- keeping one-pointed concentration on your focus -- from a couple seconds, to a few seconds, to minutes, etc. It's like training a muscle. It takes time and effort.

Resources to check out, available free online: The books Mindfulness in Plain English and Keeping the Breath in Mind and Lessons in Samadhi.

[spencerf]

I recommend transcendental meditation. It’s very basic. Pick any nonsensical phrase. I chose “oohm chah kahh.” You close your eyes for twenty mins and repeat that phase in your head. You can repeat parts of it and change up the rhythm by elongating the vowels or whatever. Focus on the phrase as much as you can. Your mind will wander but always come back to it. You do that once or twice a day.

There is a bit of controversy of the science and spiritual side but I find that the way to improve focus is to limit stimuli and practice focusing.

Outside of that, sleep is probably more critical.

[Flankk]

Meditate and do it properly, for at least 15 minutes a day. Focus on your breath. You will hear sounds, feel sensations in your body, and have thoughts come and go. Observe these things but bring your focus back to your breath. I think you will begin to see the benefit after a week.