Viliam Búr

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	639 reputation	bio	website		visits	member for	8 months
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1d	comment	Single tasking vs Mulitasking @Qba-th'Intrepid: See this answer on Skeptics SE: skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/4158/8543
1d	comment	Single tasking vs Mulitasking The most important information about human multitasking is that it DOES NOT EXIST. Someone just blindly used a computer-science concept to describe a human phenomenon formerly called "distraction". -- As you said, the advantage of concentration is that it helps you get the work done and feel good; sometimes so good you don't even notice the time is running. On the other hand, distraction makes the work slow and ruins your mood. -- Now excuse me, what exactly was the original question? I got kind of distracted... uhm... multitasking...
1d	comment	How to concentrate on only one thing? My favorite two sources: 1) Productivity instructor P.J.Eby has PDF chapters of his unfinished book ("Thinking Things Done") somewhere on his websites. Use google. It's like all the good parts from psychology, concentrated, all nonsense removed. 2) Center for Applied Rationality offers paid seminars to increase rational thinking, and this stuff is called "instrumental rationality" in their curriculum. In Moscow, visit your local LessWrong meetup and meet awesome people.
May 14	comment	What are the general steps to increase your IQ? Seems to me that IQ is mostly fixed, but it can be reduced by health problems. Improving your health, having a balanced diet (or simply enough nutrition, in poor countries) helps you reach your potential, but that's it. On the other hand, IQ does not translate to productivity directly, there are many other things -- motivation, rationality, networking, avoiding procrastination... -- so instead of IQ worship, let's just focus on those.
May 14	comment	How to master a large variety of technical literature It is definitely not true that "people are born with a natural talent for one task (say programming) and this means that you can't or shouldn't master something else". Some things come easier and some things come harder for each of us, but many people are awesome in multiple areas. Your time is limited. You can't put 10.000 hours into too many things. But you can have a few hobbies with 1.000 hours per hobby. 1.000 hours of focused practice can make you rather good.
May 14	comment	How can I manage several hours of intellectual work (web dev/coding) a day without getting mentally exhausted? Try taking a 20-minute nap (use alarm clock) after lunch. To me it helps a lot; it's like starting a new day with a fresh brain.
May 14	comment	Task estimated to be 8 pomodori, what to do? Cut the BS. Measure the results. If the results are okay, who cares about the details? If the results are bad, perhaps it wasn't BS.
May 14	comment	How to concentrate on only one thing? I would recommend first trying it at home. Maybe during a weekend. Or if you have enough vacation days left, think about a project, take one full week off, and do a pretend-freelancer work during the whole week. Then you will see whether that could work. -- As a freelancer, you won't have the workplace-forced distractions, but on the other hand you will have a lot of other temptations. And maybe even some specific distractions at home (neighbors, etc.). -- I tried working as a freelancer a few years ago, and I wasn't able to do much. Unfortunately, I am more productive at work.
May 14	answered	I don't want to study. I don't want to think. I want to have fun
May 14	answered	Is It Worth The Time?
May 14	answered	How to concentrate on only one thing?
May 14	comment	How to concentrate on only one thing? Possible solution: Don't read books and watch TV during work. :P
Jan 8	awarded	Commentator
Jan 8	comment	Fear of failure Fear of success is rather common, in various degree. Probably a legacy of our ape ancestors, where saying "I am great" meant you wanted to fight the current leader for leadership of your tribe, which could get you harmed or killed. So unless you felt pretty sure about your victory, you rather avoided doing anything which could make the current leader feel challenged. The rest of my answer was based on impressions and guesses; some parts may not apply. I agree with your point about discipline (with online education the efect will be even stronger). But too much pressure can also break people.
Jan 7	comment	Isolation as a productivity 'drive' An example from my recent experience: I spent a week in a cottage, with a notebook. First four days, I was extremely productive. Next three days I was mostly bored and did very little. -- If this pattern repeats later, it means that four days in a cottage would be the optimum time for me, for this type of task. For other tasks or for other people, other values may work better. Some things you only find by experimenting.
Jan 7	answered	Fear of failure
Jan 7	awarded	Critic
Jan 7	comment	How to be a smart worker rather than hard worker to be fit for the IT industry? Important: You should understand the code samples you reuse. Otherwise, if you make an application from dozen code samples copy/pasted from Google, and something does not work correctly, that can become a problem. (I have seen this problem often; usually in PHP or JavaScript code.) With a library, reading the code would probably be an overkill, but unless it is from a very reliable source, you should test it thoroughly. Because at the end, if the library contains some bugs, it is still your problem.
Jan 7	comment	How do you read programming books? When I read a book to learn a new concept, I sometimes try first to solve the problem myself. Then the book makes more sense to me, because I understand better why is author doing some things. If I didn't try to solve the problem myself, some steps in the author's solution seem arbitrary. But if I did try, then I may be aware that my first simple attempt caused some problems, and this author's code is a solution for them.
Jan 7	comment	Do audio books help our productivity? People are offering their opinions here, but is there any research on this topic? Without a research we can know which kind of book is more comfortable; but it would be also nice to know which kind of book makes people understand or remember the topic better.