How do you stay focused on programming Jow Forums?

Eat healthy, no carb shit trash
Exercise
Sleep enough

Cold showers
Meditation
Exercise
Eat healthy
Watch Rocky

These, also
>Limited coffee
>End your sense of entitlement to the job

>bro just eat healthy and exercise that will fix all your emotional and mental problems
>also I'm going to assume you drink coffee because lol how could you not right?

this is why they invented coffee breaks.

I don't

>I get angry when people tell me things I need to hear, but don’t want to hear
sounds like you got the recipe for success all figured out there bucko

But it's actually true. Eating healthy keeps your body healthy and exercise has all sort of benefits and it actually releases endorphins so you feel happier. Cold showers shock your system so it flushes out toxins quicker. Meditation is the exercise for maintaining a laser focus and not wallow in self-destructive and repetitive patterns. And watching Rocky will just pump you up to do all these things and give you a sense of motivation.

I did all those things and I'm still not happy

Well it's not like it's guaranteed or anything. But you should at least be happier

I don't lmao, I'm always switching between 5 different things.

If you find yourself drifting go away and do something else that isn't programming. You're not going to spontaneously achieve motivation sitting at your desk idly clicking through Buzzfeed, especially if you know that the only alternative to that is going back to your boring work. Do a couple of hours, take a break where you actually leave your desk and do something not involving computers if possible, then come back, do another couple of hours, take a break.

Don't use your break to get coffee, if you need coffee during the day to function you're a cockless faggot and you should literally kill yourself.

(((they)))

Yeah I guess I can't spend my life asleep and just ignore all the problems in the world or be a dumb lazy hooked on ssri zombie for the rest of my life who can't do anything for himself

did you do them for more than two weeks?
the point of eating healthy and exercising isnt that eating a salad every day makes you live forever, its about exerting control over your life and seeing something you’ve worked on for yourself paying off to your own benefit.

I mean it's not like I don't have the same problem.

I'm a lazy ass as well, I've just listed some of the things that have personally helped me. The best philosophy to follow when doing any sort of work really is to just do it. Just throw yourself into it and force yourself to start, once you start it will snowball on its own. You'll be drawn to a project simply by maintaining a momentum. But you're responsible for that initial push.

I support your right to choose what’s best for you, but attributing your opinions to some poorly defined and uneducated musings over what people are and are not supposed to do is fucking moronic.

It makes me think you wouldn’t be a good dev even if you did want to.

I've done it for.majority of my life

Yeah man , just do it! Don't think! Ignore the fact that you are literally contributing to societal cancer when you go to work in that software development job. Ignore that you are something less than human . I mean that salary is good right ? Jow Forums told me that if make below $70k I'll be starving on the street . I gotta get a good salary even if I'm actively contributing to the collapse of society and the death of culture . Get a hip technology job! Hey. You use computer a lot right ? As a kid you used computer a lot! You should get a job in computer! Make sure to spend four years getting the modern equivalent of a communications degree. CS degree is something you get just so you graduate. Our society is going up in flames but you just coded up gasoline 3.0 and this time it has an application front end.

I have windows standard account (not admin) and a custom hosts file blocked all news and sites i fuck around with. I tell my friend when hes over to change the admin password on my computer to write it in a draft email and never tell me it so i can never change it. it works better than any chrome extension i can easily disable kek.

starting something was my biggest issue. if you ease into something just a little bit, you're golden.

having the right setup where you can muscle memory common things helps a lot in your workflow to keep you from being distracted. next time you're doing a programming session write down all the little things that you feel you can automate with a couple of keystrokes and write a one stop solution script that will help you get up and running faster.

subscribe to piss bag general. having to get up to go to the bathroom is the biggest distraction especially if you work from home.

jug of water nearby pour into cups because
same can be said about getting up to get water

last and by far most importantly: smoke meth and come down on kratom. if you dont do meth all these pointers above don't even bother following.

hope that helps.

Identity crisis. You'll get over it

I can attest to this.
I went from over 2 decades a NEET, to full time employed in under 3 months. Just by meditating, supplementing my deficiencies, sleeping on a schedule, fixing my posture, fixing my diet, and exercising.

I think in that order, gradually over time. Supplementing my deficiencies was maybe the most important step at first, exercise is the most important step for me now as it keeps me where I've gotten to. Without a solid body, just existing is a chore on you. It's important to build your muscles up to support you if you're going to neglect it all day sitting at a desk.

I'm certainly more productive and feel less fatigued.

It's important to balance it too, a healthy body AND mind, make time to meditate just like you would make time for a specific exercise, stretch, etc. Exercise the mind and soul in addition to the body. Fix yourself in every way.

>subscribe to piss bag general
This to be honest.

>smoke the worst drug possible

Also I use cannabis as a meditation aid, but it's not required. One day I think I will be at peace all the time, holding on to it is tough.

Not really

How does one meditate, how does that work?

I've never smoked it but I used to be prescribed it in pill form. It definatley helps me work but I feel like it has its own drawbacks longer term. Although I think the symptoms I had were related to lack of eating and sleeping, as a result of taking it, not the substance itself. If you can manage those with it, maybe it's fine.

It's different for people.

A good beginner's meditation is simply sitting at one spot for 20 minutes without so much as flinching. Let your mind do whatever its wants, just don't move a single muscle for the duration of 20 minutes. You'll find very quickly that it's much harder than you thought.

After a few sessions of that, your task is to observe what your mind is doing. Sit for 20 minutes and observe your mind. Your mind doesn't like that and if you do it for long enough and without getting emotionally involved, it will quiet down on its own.

The third stage is simply to sit for 20 minutes without a single thought. This is what meditation actually is. It's just that you'll never get here if you don't do the first two stages. Your mind is like a wild horse and you have to tame it.

t. lifelong meditator

You're going to have to find your own path. There are many different mindsets and goals people have about meditation.

For me personally I just try to isolate myself in my head, think of nothing, shut off my senses, and see what comes to mind.

I suggest you try sitting down alone yourself and see what comes to your mind, figure out on your own how you yourself prefer to meditate, the goal of what you get out of i will eventually be clear to you if you try enough.

You may also study various spiritual traditions, see what others had to say about their own methods and ideals.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation#Forms_of_meditation

I often find myself having simillar experiences, even without knowing about others having them prior, I read about it after the fact sometimes when stumbling around Wikipedia, and things like "Toaism", "Buddhism", "Shinto", etc.

You don't have to be in line with them, but sometimes they may line up with you.

l-theanine

Take breaks. Work on more than one thing at a time so you can switch to something else when you get stuck (not necessarily multiple projects, just make sure you have something else to do in the event you get stuck or burnt out on your original issue), then come back to it later once you've thought up a solution.
Most of my programming work isn't done at the keyboard, it's done in my head while I'm doing other things.

light therapy with a 10k lux light

if you use l-theanine in conjunction with caffeine

>Most of my programming work isn't done at the keyboard, it's done in my head while I'm doing other things.
I legit think I spend most of my day pacing back and forth thinking than I do typing on the keyboard. I've been wondering if this is bad or not.

I find that listening to music helps me a lot. But ultimately it's on you to have the will power to just do the work. Drugs help too.

> Every development job is the same .
Pro tip from someone who has worked in various industries: all white-collar jobs are the same, not just dev, and they also tend to pay the best and be the easiest. I work exclusively from home 20 hours a week making 6 figures. I can spend the other 20 doing whatever the hell I want, and the salary enables me to pursue any other interests outside of work I might have. Don't knock it till you try it.

I do :^)

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it ain't worth the salary. money has no use to me because theres nothing i want to buy

It depends on what you're working on. If you're solving new problems, you're going to be doing a lot more thinking than typing. Different programming topics have wildly varying levels of mental load.

>I think I just need to stop being a pussy and just knuckle down
Or take a proper holiday. No work AT ALL for a week or more. That's one of the better ways to counter burnout.

Not that user, I tried it, I like it.

>call in to meetings with dress shirts above waist
>below waist is pajamas
>no fixed schedule, just have to get the work done by a deadline
>use the money to buy better workstation, health products, and food
Feels good.

>I've been wondering if this is bad or not.
I do this too and I've found it's not a bad thing at all. I can do 1-3 hours of really intense focused work, but then I need to step away for 5-15 minutes to collect myself, reevaluate what I'm doing, and mentally prepare for the next steps.

I find that I work more efficiently this way than I would just doing 8 continuous hours of work. Especially when working on something new as mentioned. As programmers we have to juggle a lot of abstract information in our heads as we work, and I find taking short breaks is conducive to that. You're basically buffering all that abstract info.

I don't know if I recommend it yet, but I've recently done the extreme opposite of this concept. I secluded myself for a few months, no video games, no movies, no talking to friends. I did nothing at all other than try to improve my body, mind, and house.

Now I don't feel like I need other people or escapism activities just to exist, I'm currently overwhelmed and I'm still pretty content, a few years ago I was doing nothing but escaping my life. Now I am building a foundation for myself, it's hard right now but it will be easier later, meaning it will always have been harder in the past than it will be in my future.

>money has no use to me because theres nothing i want to buy
AHHAHHAHAHHAHHAHHHAHHAHAHHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHA

This mentality is why I chose these jobs. I make enough money in 3 hours to pay my monthly bills.

What I do is stockpile the money, I work very hard for a short amount of time, then I go a long time not working at all. When I am low on money I start to look for work. In the meantime I keep myself sharp working on personal projects.

user likes this.

To me the mental puzzle of the small details and how you structure/architect the code is like a game to me. In fact I find it addicting.

>I support your right to choose what’s best for you, but attributing your opinions to some poorly defined and uneducated musings over what people are and are not supposed to do is fucking moronic.
You think the idea that for the last 100,000 years nobody had to sit in front of a CLI and program tedious shit for 8 hours a day might be the reason so many people have a hard time with it is simplistic and moronic?

nah

This is very interesting. Meditation has always been described to me in vague and weird terms. This is something I could legitimately try

you probably need a better keyboard because typing is easy.
get rid of any family, friends, or girlfriends you have also.

bugmen: the thread

all jews die first, then bugmen 2nd

isn't meditating and having a power nap the same thing?
except naps are better

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ctrl+f
>fap
no results

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It's different. And meditation is something you can do when you wake up in the morning or go to sleep in the evening, napping on those times doesn't make much sense.
blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/what-does-mindfulness-meditation-do-to-your-brain/

Meditation increases the chance of schizophrenia.

not him but
> blog

How is this any different then praying to a god that doesnt exist?

>MRI scans show that after an eight-week course of mindfulness practice, the brain’s “fight or flight” center, the amygdala, appears to shrink. This primal region of the brain, associated with fear and emotion, is involved in the initiation of the body’s response to stress.

>As the amygdala shrinks, the pre-frontal cortex – associated with higher order brain functions such as awareness, concentration and decision-making – becomes thicker.

>The “functional connectivity” between these regions – i.e. how often they are activated together – also changes. The connection between the amygdala and the rest of the brain gets weaker, while the connections between areas associated with attention and concentration get stronger.

>The scale of these changes correlate with the number of hours of meditation practice a person has done, says Adrienne Taren, a researcher studying mindfulness at the University of Pittsburgh.

>“The picture we have is that mindfulness practice increases one’s ability to recruit higher order, pre-frontal cortex regions in order to down-regulate lower-order brain activity,” she says.

That's a weird way of living, I

You're not wrong. You're just beating yourself up for not being one of those people who can sit at their computer for 60 hours a week and stay focused. Those of us that can, do.

Vyvanse.

Amphetamine is the thinking man's steroid.

Work at a medium to large size enterprise, you'll spend half the day in meetings about the feature.

The trick is to lose your will to live.

all this happens from staring at the wall for 20mins a day for 2 months?

i find that hard to believe

>is sleep exercise?

When I was growing up, our schools had big summer breaks. This is similar, I work for a year, I don't work for a year, kind of thing. Hard work followed by a big break, a chance to revive.

It's not staring at the wall, usually you have your eyes closed. You focus your attention on meditation object, usually breath or maybe a body part. You do this until your attention inevitably shifts to something else(mind wandering) and once you've noticed it you just shift it back to the breath.
You are training your attention and focus so I don't think it's that much of a leap to find out that focus and attention become improved, and since these are just normal brain functions the difference is observable in the brain itself.
You might be wondering, what if I just focus on some task at work, I should get the same focus improving brain benefits. Thing is, you don't, I don't have the citations ready but they've had control group which tested this exact thing. Focusing on a task is different from focusing during mindfulness meditation.

I am not saying you are wrong. But how is focusing on a task like mowing the lawn or something different from focusing on your breathing or nothing at all

I'm no expert but I've got some ideas why.
Supposedly advanced meditators(tens of thousands of hours) know how to be in meditative state even while doing every day tasks like lawn moving. For normal plebs who are just starting, keeping the meditative state is extremely difficult so the way to get started is to do it the easiest way possible which is to focus on just the breath. I don't know why not just focus on 'nothing at all' instead of breath but I'd guess it's easier to focus on breath than to on 'nothing at all', and that's the reason why it is adviced.
Anyway, you should try finding things out yourself, the rabbit hole is deep on this one.

A task is voluntary, breathing is not.
Remember, you're supposed to focus on your breath, not control your breathing. You pay attention to the natural happenings of reality, the motions of your body. You're practicing awareness of the world, not of a thing your control.

>nothing at all
You get there afterwards, it's hard to start there.
When I first started I used many crutches to get me into the right state of mind. The first time I attempted it nothing happened, one day I had a session that lasted over an hour, just me in my room, blindfolded, headphones on, isolated, I reached a certain state of mind. Now I can get there alone in under 10 minutes, I sit somewhere, I close my eyes, I focus, I open my eyes. Focusing on the breath is nothing but a means to the end, it in itself isn't significant at all. It's best not to think too hard on this subject, you need to experiment yourself and see what works for you. Progress should be difficult to start with, but eventually exponential.

How do you find short term contacts that are profitable
What are bugmen

then you need something stronger than coffee like adhd medication
won't make you happy but will make you get more value out of doing things
the drugs that make you happy do worse things than just slowly kill you

>How do you find short term contacts that are profitable
So far, everyone has approached me. Originally someone I knew asked me if I could do a task for them, I said I would. Later a company called his company asking for a similar service, he said they don't do that and referred them to me. Ever since, I have been getting requests.
I assume I am on some "vetted"/"trusted" list because the work I do is almost always under NDA and it's somewhat esoteric. I stick to the contract, disclosing nothing and people who review my work are often pleased.
My CV is also obviously decorated by my past employers.

Unfortunately I think this can be summed up as luck. Classic "networking". I happened to know someone who needed a service, that they knew I could provide, as a result I now have a positive reputation which cyclically benefits me.
Companies employ me because my reputation is good, my reputation is good because companies employ me.

I don't know how people typically do freelance work, I assume they use some kind of service specifically aimed at that, like linkedin, jobs.github, et al.

Just make sure you lose focus to something more important and focus is less important. Then it becomes reprioritization.

Also

Some days I'm quite lazy but when I'm hooked to an issue to develop I easily pass +10 hours straight working. When a complex code is being done it actually is a nice challenge and I feel great exploring solutions, evaluating performance and so.

If you can't find moments where you are sucked inside doing code you probably isn't the best person to do it.

Sometimes time fly when I'm reading undocumented code and testing it map how it all works. It's really awesome when you manage to master a complex code or develop an elegant solution.

It's pretty difficult to focus when people are wasting your time telling you to implement stupid bullshit like renaming variables despite not setting a coding standard.
i.e. right fucking now. I hate this team.

When people say "networking", this is actually what they mean. Not college frat party bullshit.

Congrats. Nepotism is much more efficient than the alternative of playing Where's Waldo with resumes and interviews, if they're actually qualified to do the work.

That’s not what I said.
I’m saying your assertion that
A) we’re ‘supposed’ to do something a certain way because of our history as a species
And
B) you know what the daily lives of humans were like all the way back to “100,000 years” ago, such that you know what this thing we’re supposed to do is

Is moronic.

Drink coffee and only work at work. I cannot work from home because I get too easily distracted. Working in the office makes it easier.

>toxins
you're retarded

>B) you know what the daily lives of humans were like all the way back to “100,000 years” ago, such that you know what this thing we’re supposed to do is
I do know what their daily lives were like to a very high extent. Interacting with other people in person, obtaining food using nothing but stone tools and fucking.

They only rarely sat down alone and wrote instructions for computers 8 hours a day

Yeah? So you’ve done some reasonably extensive reading and study on the matter? You’re genuinely confident in your understanding of the day-to-day lives of humans, around the globe, dating back all the way to 100,000 years ago?

earplugs/earbuds with music+ear protection headphones for maximum silence really helps me, I also take modafinil. Close the fucking web browser unless you absolutely need to know something, and close it again once you know it. I also walk away from the PC and drink some water or whatever for a minute or two whenever I feel very stuck or frustrated.

yes

Nice. What would you say was the most surprising fact you came across while reading about that stuff?

I derive immense pleasure from completing a coding job. It's orgasmic to see my hacks come together. It's been like this ever since I started playing with game code to make mods.

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