I have a difficult time sometimes maintaining focus. For example, to get better at go, it would be good if I focused more on it. I should be disciplined to study for a few hours each day to improve.

In reality, I might study like this for a couple of days, but then I get distracted, and want to do something else. I might start to read a book. Then I jump to something else - maybe try to study up on probability a bit, or go on a programming spree, or sometimes study language.

But this lack of consistency doesn't let me get really good at anything. I just move around like a fly jumping this way and that.

Any strategies for focusing? I feel I need more focus.

_________________
be immersed

Oh no - you read a book?! We can't have any of that.

Well, that's the problem. I might have read part of a book. Maybe a few chapters. Then I do something else.

Sometimes I'll read a book all the way through, but then I still jump to something else.

_________________
be immersed

Maybe it's not focus but discipline what's causing problems?

_________________
My "guide" to become stronger in Go

You could combine all your hobbies into one.

Try and make some sort of go probability program.

That way when you feel like programming you can work on the code.
When you feel like studying go you can use the program.
and when you feel like studying probability you can improve the program!

and whatever you do, don't download stumbleupon.
i haven't logged onto kgs in like 2 weeks... around the same time i downloaded stumble...

I'm like this too, and have a similar sense of frustration that I can get reasonably good at a bunch of things but not exceptionally good at any of them. I'm a bit older than you, and I guess I've just pretty much accepted that it's part of my personality to get interested in a wide variety of things and jump about from one to the other and back again.

One thing I have observed from time to time is that some people who have a different approach and get really good at one thing are able to a certain extent to apply their in-depth knowledge to other fields. If you would like to be more like these people, I would suggest focusing on getting really good at your job. This is where you have the most time available to devote to the subject, and if you succeed, it gives you the personal precedent of knowing that you can exceed at something. Of course it has the added advantage of potentially allowing you the monetary freedom to pursue other interests at your leisure at a later time.

If you use your 80% rule, you should still have enough time to enjoy a few other things along the way.

_________________
Patience, grasshopper.

By the way, right around New Year's I discovered Habit RPG. It was pretty good at forcing me to do things that I wanted to do... although staying logged on to my computer record stuff on it was a bit of a drag, and the website kept going down. You should try it. Habitrpg.com

+1 for them using Chrono Trigger music in their demo video

There's no shortcut around being undisciplined, but I think this approach has a lot of merit: http://calnewport.com/blog/2012/08/10/y ... -learning/

Also, for me, what often snaps me out of focusing on a single topic is happening across something that's really interesting, and relevant to me, but just not right now. If the thought is "I'll need to know this sometime, but it's not something I need to know right now," then I don't want to not read the article and forget it. So I've started keeping a lot of notes, links, article references, etc. And ideally, one day, I'll come back to those topics. Instead of reading one article on set theory every time I see a link, or it strikes my curiousity, one day down the road, I'll devote myself to studying it for a long chunk of time. And I'm pretty sure that if I do that, I'll end up knowing more about set theory than if I read those things as I came across them.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

I have the same problem. I fact when I discover something new I may become completely obsessed, do nothing else for a month or two, then start something entirely different and never look back.
I can't say I've solved it as such but I have developped a sort of workaround: I have a minimum daily requirement for all my important hobbies. The minimum daily requirement takes no more than five minutes to accomplish, so I can do it even when I'm busy with something else. But I have to do it every single day, no excuses and no exceptions.

It doesn't replace studying several hours every day, obviously. But I don't get completely distracted anymore. It helps getting back to my serious projects more often and more easily.

I never finish anythi

I have the same problem wonderful condition. I used to think it was a bad thing back when I was ambitious about my hobbies. At the moment I'm barely playing any go. It doesn't matter. I'm not trying to be the best player, not even the best player in the country... I don't even care that I can no longer beat Uberdude ..(OK maybe I care a bit).

Generally when my mind says, 'this looks interesting' it's because it is. I like doing interesting things; it makes me happy.

It's like the world is a massive garden with so much to look at. Go is a beautiful flower in that garden. Some could try to argue it is the most beautiful, or the one with the deepest roots; it's certainly a special one. Sure you could dedicate yourself to capturing as much of the beauty of that particular flower as you can, but then you're missing out on the rest of the garden.

I'm sure that most people in this forum (like me) are the kind that only appreciate the beauty of one of the flowers after they've studied it somewhat. They are not satisfied just wandering around glancing at superficial appearances (though there's nothing inherently wrong with choosing this path). However, this doesn't mean that focussing on only one thing to go as deep as you can is the best approach. I'd like to be able to give a tour of my favourite places in the garden and be able to show people a glimpse of some of the beauty hidden beneath the skin at each point. I'd like that tour to be fairly long.

If go is your career or you're particularly ambitious about it then I could see a lack of focus as a problem. If you're using your time to do something else that interests you more (at the moment) then that seems like a pretty good idea to me.

I just had a look at habitRPG.

The first thing I did after learning to program was make a GoRPG program that let you level up Strength (Tsumego), Dexterity (Blitz games), Endurance (Slow Games), Wisdom (Pro games) and maybe others I forget. You would enter any go playing/study you'd done and it would track this and level you up appropriately. You had to have a balanced approach though as you couldn't let one stat get too far ahead of the others (otherwise anything you did would be wasted). After you'd got each individual stat to the next level you'd level up your character (from 30k to 9d).

I've managed to lose it over the years though It had animal pictures representing your current level (from ant all the way to dragon) and everything...

Have you considered seeing a doctor ?

There is a very common condition called ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, that fits perfectly what you describe.

I stopped a while ago wondering why ADHD is so popular because every now and then there is an article saying doctors (and parents) don't bother but simple prescribe/buy medication against this so called disorder and the world is peachy again. Mostly this affects Kids since turning them down with mediaction is surely easier than spending time with them.

So yeah, it's like diagnosing yourself with Google.

_________________
My "guide" to become stronger in Go

There are other reasons (modern lifestyle and eating habits tends to favor ADHD and it partly accounts for its prevalence) but generally agree, yeah. We do have a tendency nowodays to make a mental illness out of whatever is annoying at the moment.

And I'm no doctor but I don't think what Kirby describes is pathological. It looks quite common to me.

Like most mental health issues, there is no on/off switch for it, but a range of people exist on a spectrum at which one end is ADHD and the other is not. If you look all the way at the ADHD side, these people clearly have issues that affect their ability to live and work normally, but as you move away from that, people still exhibit symptoms but they affect their work and life less and less. Whether someone is diagnosed with it or not can unfortunately be somewhat arbitrary, since there is no clear delimiter, and the trend unfortunately seems to be more and more inclusive, but that doesn't mean that there aren't people who truly need help to live a relatively normal life.

The nature of this help is open to debate also, of course. I'm inclined to believe that many children and adults would be better served by cognitive behavioral therapy and learning coping mechanisms than by medicating, but again, this is not true for everyone.

I don't deny that. I'm familiar enough with ADHD and other conditions to know that medical help is needed for people who truly suffer from it. I just get a bit jumpy when people start advising medical advice as a way to deal with a mildly distracted personnality.

I, on the contrary, think its a good thing. People in 2013 tend to agree that measles, asthma, and cleft palate are not signs of demonic possession or divine displeasure, and the afflicted no longer show any inclination to feign wellness; they go to a doctor and see if there isn't something that can be done help them. The more conditions for which this is true, the better.

Sure, but taking a pill and getting well again are too very different things. Let alone getting a pill and getting treatment.

_________________
My "guide" to become stronger in Go