<story><title>Fragmented thinking is a bigger threat to flow state than interruptions</title><url>https://blog.stackblitz.com/posts/flow-state/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>justinpombrio</author><text>&amp;gt; The good news for these internal interruptions is that it should be much easier to control them.&lt;p&gt;For a long-time meditator, this is comedic gold. Just control your internal interruptions, stay focused. That&amp;#x27;s all, eh? Hehehehehe</text></item><item><author>sanderjd</author><text>I think the primary point here is that interruptions don&amp;#x27;t only happen &lt;i&gt;externally&lt;/i&gt;, but also &lt;i&gt;internally&lt;/i&gt;. I think this point is a bit obscured by the article&amp;#x27;s use of this &amp;quot;fragmented thinking&amp;quot; terminology, which it does not do a good job of defining before building an argument on top of it. (I found myself searching for those words to see if I had missed the definition.)&lt;p&gt;However, I do think this is an insightful point! I think these &amp;quot;internal interruptions&amp;quot; are indeed a big problem for me, and one I don&amp;#x27;t think about nearly as much, but will try to more now that I&amp;#x27;ve read this article.&lt;p&gt;The frustrating thing about external interruptions is the inability to control them. Things like turning off notifications and putting on headphones are mechanisms to reduce that frustration by imposing control over those interruptions.&lt;p&gt;The good news for these &lt;i&gt;internal&lt;/i&gt; interruptions is that it should be much easier to control them. But it requires being aware of the problem! So I&amp;#x27;m thankful to this article for making this more top of mind for me.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>makmanalp</author><text>Agreed fully.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll admit I also had a chuckle at the expense of the parent post here (I&amp;#x27;m sorry - the rest of this post isn&amp;#x27;t meant to pick on you or describe you specifically). I think this there is a lesson in here somewhere on the intellectual confidence that comes with being good at one thing, and the silliness that can ensue when it might not translate elsewhere. Not in even necessarily in a malicious or foolish way, but in a &amp;quot;it can catch you even when you think you&amp;#x27;re accounting for it&amp;quot; kind of way.&lt;p&gt;If not empathy for the sake of moral reasons or even good vibes, I wish that we could at least convince the &amp;quot;I read the abstract of 3 papers &amp;#x2F; I read a gwern post about this &amp;#x2F; I accomplished something hard in my life so I know everything&amp;quot; crowd of the utility of empathy as a tool for exploring your &amp;quot;unknown unknowns&amp;quot;. You&amp;#x27;d think that more people would be interested in a dialectic (in the classical philosophy sense) discussion as a cooperative if conflicting search for truth. This is harder to do if you systematically overestimate yourself and underestimate others. Of course as I write this I&amp;#x27;m thinking of all the times I didn&amp;#x27;t practice what I&amp;#x27;m preaching now.</text></comment>
<story><title>Fragmented thinking is a bigger threat to flow state than interruptions</title><url>https://blog.stackblitz.com/posts/flow-state/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>justinpombrio</author><text>&amp;gt; The good news for these internal interruptions is that it should be much easier to control them.&lt;p&gt;For a long-time meditator, this is comedic gold. Just control your internal interruptions, stay focused. That&amp;#x27;s all, eh? Hehehehehe</text></item><item><author>sanderjd</author><text>I think the primary point here is that interruptions don&amp;#x27;t only happen &lt;i&gt;externally&lt;/i&gt;, but also &lt;i&gt;internally&lt;/i&gt;. I think this point is a bit obscured by the article&amp;#x27;s use of this &amp;quot;fragmented thinking&amp;quot; terminology, which it does not do a good job of defining before building an argument on top of it. (I found myself searching for those words to see if I had missed the definition.)&lt;p&gt;However, I do think this is an insightful point! I think these &amp;quot;internal interruptions&amp;quot; are indeed a big problem for me, and one I don&amp;#x27;t think about nearly as much, but will try to more now that I&amp;#x27;ve read this article.&lt;p&gt;The frustrating thing about external interruptions is the inability to control them. Things like turning off notifications and putting on headphones are mechanisms to reduce that frustration by imposing control over those interruptions.&lt;p&gt;The good news for these &lt;i&gt;internal&lt;/i&gt; interruptions is that it should be much easier to control them. But it requires being aware of the problem! So I&amp;#x27;m thankful to this article for making this more top of mind for me.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sanderjd</author><text>Not &lt;i&gt;easy&lt;/i&gt;, eas&lt;i&gt;ier&lt;/i&gt;! For &amp;quot;external interruptions&amp;quot;, you have to do both things, keep people from bugging you &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; control your own mind. I think it&amp;#x27;s definitely easier to only do one of the two, despite still being really hard.</text></comment>