Brain hygiene
One of the things I’ve been working on while at Recurse Center is brain hygiene – a challenging practice for anyone with a computer-centric career. For me, much of this is the art of curbing distraction, remembering to nourish my body, and staying mindful of how the things I’m doing are aligning with my goals.
I started a computer hygiene channel and have been running a weekly Distractibility Accountability meetup at RC, and a lot of useful discussions and tips have come out of them! Here are some favorites.
Distractibility Accountability FAQ
1. Help, I am perpetually drowning in a sea of browser tabs
The allure to hoard all possible information is strong in the modern era. Fortunately, OneTab is a cross-browser extension that lets you nuke all your tabs while saving the session to local storage so that you can retrieve it later.
The best part for me is immediately realizing the instant I’ve nuked all the precious tabs that I don’t need the vast majority of them, and can just pull out the few tabs I actually plan to follow up on.
2. Help, my note-taking is ineffective or chaotic
Graph-linked tagged note taking systems, or “knowledge management systems”, are often a more cohesive way to retrieve notes than traditional hierarchical filesystem-like methods. Obsidian is a common RC favorite, since it’s not only free, Markdown-based, and local-first (meaning you own all your data), but is also extensible with community-contributed plugins.
Of course, analog paper is another favorite low-distraction notetaking method.
Nourishing yourself
This will vary by person, but personally, my prerequisites for having executive function are breakfast, sunshine, and water. If I skip them, I deflate and become an aimless, shambling husk with no executive function.
Sleep hygiene is another really important one for many people! f.lux goes a really long way in filtering blue light out of your displays after the sun goes down so that your body isn’t artificially scammed out of getting sleepy.
Distractibility Accountabilibuddies seem to vary on their sleep hygiene needs otherwise, though. Some benefit from white noise machines, some don’t. Some need to have sunlight gradually cranked up onto their face in the morning, and some desire perfect darkness until the moment they awaken.
What are your top 2-3 needs to keep your body happy?
Channeling your focus
I love making my devices deeply unengaging so that I don’t feel drawn to check them often. I’ve also written about staying on top of your shit as a flawed human and tidying your digital life.
Taniya and I started tallying how often we get sidetracked during the day. I’m not doing anything with the resulting data, but the simple act of noticing that I’m about to leap down an internet hole such as Reddit, and physically making the tally mark, has been extremely helpful. By catching myself in the act, I can often stop. Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit describes a similar strategy for breaking ingrained habits.
Other common tactics for fellow distractioneers: timeboxed accountability sessions (such as meeting up to say what we’re working on and then briefly presenting 1-2 hours later), pair programming, and pomodoros.
I’m not great at sticking to pomodoros, but do find the recurring timer useful, much in the same way a recurring meditation bell is useful. It’s a good reminder to notice that time has passed, check in, and see if I’m still working on something that seems like a good thing to work on.
Staying mindful
Taniya and I also both find it extremely helpful to have an end-of-day routine where we reflect on the day, make an agenda for the next day, and tidy up our physical and digital workspaces. I use this time to nuke all my tabs and save only the todo items that I actually plan to carry out.
In addition to an end-of-day routine, we also both do an end-of-week routine where we reflect on how the week felt and plan for the next week.
Breaks, movement, and brain resets
Stretchly is a desktop app that periodically reminds you to take stretch breaks. It includes great prompts for stretches, refocusing your eyes, and generally taking care of your body.
Lots of Recursers enjoy completely unplugging from our devices and going to nature to reset our brains!
If you’re not as excited about going outside as you’d like to be, it can be helpful to get a dog or pick up an interest such as plant literacy, birding, or running every street in your city. Also google “self-guided walking tours” in your area.
Hannah’s trick for getting up more often: spread out laundry and other chores during the day. If you’re ambitious, get a very thirsty plant such as a hydrangea, and water it during the day. Growing herbs and vegetables from seed is another way to get up often.
Movement-based breaks are ideal. One DA meetup spawned an exercise accountabilibuddy thread.
If you’re taking a sedentary break, avoid things that can potentially expand to fill a lot of time, such as books, games, or internet browsing.
Staying motivated
Another common distraction complaint is zoning out when doing something boring, perplexing, or blocked (such as waiting for code to compile).
A common boring task is reading through dense documentation to find out how something works. I personally find it more engaging to lean on interactive methods whenever possible – recall the Pythonic motto to “ask for forgiveness, not permission.”
Interactive methods of learning how interpreted features work include: using an interactive console/shell to inspect the API/stdlib, running harmless test commands/queries to double check your understanding of how something works, or using live explorable environments.
I find dependency hell and slow compilation some of the easiest times to zone out and fall down a random internet hole. It’s been really helpful for me to have always-available backup projects I can switch to easily, such as reading material (I’ve been working through Kleppmann’s DDIA) or explorables/tutorials (such as The Book of Shaders).
Staying on track is hard and really takes a lot of foundational work and habit-building to achieve. I’m here writing this post because my week has been absolutely all over the rails and I fell off of a lot of these habits.
The Momentum habit-tracker app talks about the importance of keystone habits – simple habits that help all the rest of your good habits fall into place.
For me that’s breakfast and always having something palatable to switch to if I zone out. I wrote down my “backup” projects on an index card on my desk so I can always see it.
Best of luck in your distraction-curbing adventures!