Directed Attention Fatigue

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subgard
Posts: 109
Joined: Mon Mar 17, 2014 12:53 pm

Directed Attention Fatigue

Post by subgard »

What are your own experiences with this phenomena?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_ ... on_fatigue

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion

How long does it last?
How does it affect you?
How do you deal with it?
Do you even think it's real?

FBeyer
Posts: 1069
Joined: Tue Oct 27, 2015 3:25 am

Re: Directed Attention Fatigue

Post by FBeyer »

Ego depletion is very real. Why do you think every Abercrombie & Fitch store is dark, perfumed, plays loud music, and has half-naked people posted everywhere to distract you?

Have you read Thinking, Fast and Slow by Kahnemann yet?

jacob
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Re: Directed Attention Fatigue

Post by jacob »

Directed attention fatigue, yes. People around me are under strict orders not to talk to me or otherwise interfere when I'm on the keyboard. I can tolerate (shut out) people around me talking to each other or otherwise making noise to a certain degree, but there's a limit. Quiet open office spaces are okay. Open office spaces that sound like a train station are not.

The way I explain it is that I can only juggle N number of concepts in short term memory and if anyone/thing throws any extra ball in there, all balls fall and *poof*, there goes the entire sentence; or worse, a novel concept.

I've also noticed that having existing clutter around me takes away some of the balls, whereas new clutter, say I go sit in someone else's room actually adds them back in. Probably because it's not my clutter (yet). I can see how "writing retreats" work.

Ego depletion not so much. More like mental/creative depletion. If I was highly productive today, I guarantee that I'll not be productive tomorrow. This is like the goose and the golden egg. There are only so many eggs which can be laid sustainably. Creative thinking takes time setting up the structure to do that thinking. And apparently, once the thinking is done, the structure also has to be dismantled. I suppose it's like a worker first needing to lay out a lot of tools before starting to work. I suspect this is also why I utterly detest requests for "quick calls". To me, they're not a quick call. They're something that will waste the entire day for me. See, http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

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