I've recently realised that the biggest problem with smartphones is not that they steal your attention (which is bad enough), but that they steal your disattention

I don't know of a better word for it than disattention. Perhaps downtime? But it's not so structured. It's just those moments where you'd previously let your mind wander. Gone forever.

Is this not a form of meditation? I've never been able to keep a meditation habit, but my understanding is that meditation techniques often feature closing your eyes and focusing on breathing, body parts or some other irrelevant thing, it sounds like staring at a wall would serve the same purpose.

OP mentions they are a coffee drinker, and use caffeine a lot to fight tiredness and brainfog. While the suggested methods to refocus are great, maybe there is some improvement potential by looking at root causes?

As a former heavy coffee consumer, I experienced varying degrees of tiredness over my workday, and inconsistent sleep patterns.

Ever since I stopped drinking it, my energy levels have been far more predictable and decrease rather linearly until bedtime. There is definitely no more "hitting the wall" in the early afternoon! Living caffeine free has generally been a considerable QOL improvement (after initial withdrawal).

When I was a kid, I would often sit on my bed and stare at the wall. My Dad would walk by my room and ask if everything was ok. I would always say "yeah", since I was literally just thinking.

It's a great feeling to just stare at a wall and think.

My first thought is usually, "If I could think about anything right now, what would it be?" And this frees my mind up to think about what I want to think about.

I hope people see this comment.

Meditation is to mental training and focus, as going to the gym is to physical training.

Socials killed our attention span. Agents are literally making us context switch even more.

Putting aside the whole "I am at piece and one with the world" part of meditation, it is extremely hard.

I'm also no expert. When I'm waiting for something to finish (agent, compilation, etc), I've found that staring at a wall ends up in a net positive in productivity rather than replying to a message, going on X, or kicking off another agent.

In case someone wants to look at a wall:

https://unsplash.com/photos/red-bricks-wall-XEsx2NVpqWY

> Stay up late because I’m wired on caffeine and dopamine from scrolling.

I wish people didn't overuse certain terms. Dopamine has a half life of 2 minutes in the body. It can't possibly keep you up at night.

It's just the caffeine, which in turn has a half-life of several hours. Also below a certain level it's eliminated approximately exponentially, so there's a long tail of residual caffeine.

As a software developer, when I used to smoke, I would go outside for 5-10 minutes and talk shit with other regulars who had nothing to do with my work. It was a break that would fix my fading focus (probably for more than one reason :)

I could only keep peak thinking/designing/developing for about an hour or so. That's peak matrix level with edge cases identified and documented on the way.

I could do OK for a lot longer, but the same quality wasn't there.

The non-smokers would resent us for it, but most of them would go for a half to one hour coffee instead.

I going to try this. Thanks!

The spirit of this is correct, but a better approach to this is going for a walk with just your thoughts.

Yes, that means no phone, no headphones, just you and your brain enjoying a walk. Let your mind wonder and be free.

Shamatha/Zhine practitioner here. The wall staring practice described is not too unlike these. The main difference being that while practicing Zhine, I'm counting breathes.

I really want to point out that the purpose is not to concentrate so hard that focus remains. It's simply to be aware of attention drifting, and gently bring it back. Repeatedly, over time, this becomes easier and easier.

There is a sense of unwrinkling the mind that I achieve after a session. The inner voice drawing me toward the anxieties of life becomes quieter and quieter. The ability to choose to disregard thoughts and move on becomes stronger and stronger.

Staring at a wall, or relaxing, is not meditation or a cure for losing focus.

Losing focus could be e.g., (1) lacking the attention span (ability, fatigue, disinterest), (2) lacking the working memory to hold the problem; (3) distraction (by more important or interesting things); (4) focusing too hard on the wrong things (and getting no where); etc.

Solutions differ, but like talk therapy, most any approach will have some positive effect just via escape from oblivious continuance or self-defeating (mental) behaviors, if not development of insight (i.e., self-observation).

To me the key is that thoughts are motivated (interesting) and amplified (concerning or exciting); the key is to recognize that you are the source of that energy, and learn to notice and decide whether this energy is helpful in the situation. Usually that means letting it go, but sometimes you need to raise it (e.g., to address an instance of ongoing injustice). Then focus is a function of having the energy needed for a given situation - no more or less.

I feel like this is on to something. I remember earlier in my career whenever I hit a really, really hard problem I'd have an instinct to try to stare of into the far distance (especially if there's like a distant skyline) and sort of zone-out. It was like shower-thinking or almost sleeping, and then come back with a deeper understanding of the problem.

Psychology research backs this up -- I think there are studies that show students who have a break between two classes before better in both classes (it's called interference).

Anyways it felt weird to me that our work never accommodated this, I think peak performance requires tuning the environment to the human biology, not management optics.

I use to listen to podcasts to fill in time (while driving, showering, walking) … and also realized it was info overload for my brain, making me feel exhausted & tired.

I’m now so much more relaxed and mentally rested by literally having no music/podcast on while driving/walking/showering these days.

Your brain needs quiet time.

Loosely related, though I don't think Benjamin Bennett's intention was ever to improve focus/productivity

But it never ceases to amaze me the consistency and time spent sitting and smiling and other similar endeavors by Benjamin - https://www.youtube.com/@BenjaminBennetttt/streams

Who ever wrote this has no understanding how eye muscles work.

If you keep looking for hours at a short distance, you should instead take breaks looking at a distance for long term eye health.

That’s why I prefer working next to window or a big open space, not a cubicle where I can stare at a wall.

A lot of these self-improvement sort of hacks stop working when employed at a large scale, repeatedly, so one must keep it in check enough to not overdo it.

However, a lot of my mental performance has become intertwined with the concept of breaking the mental work pattern with some light physical activity like taking a short walk, or just mental inactivity like going outside for a smoke (which also includes a positive chemical reinforcement, coupled with some light environmental stimulation), which might yield itself somewhat similar to the staring at a wall routine, though much less dull.

Why do people constantly have to reinvent the wheel?

This is just Zazen but with less thought put into it...

If you're tired of corpo meditation, go to a Buddhist monastery and learn how to do the real thing. You don't need to pick up the religion, just learn how to reach the kind of deep concentration that leads to joy.

If you're the type of person who can fall asleep quickly, wouldn't a nap be better? I go out to my car and take a 10-15 minute nap when I'm struggling with something at work. I wake up with a clearer head and sometimes a solution to whatever the problem was.

This is extremely true. The instinct to fill every bit of downtime with a quick bit of doom-scrolling is very hard to kick. It's something I have made a point of working on; giving my mind space to just do nothing and let all sort of mental detritus process itself.

I've found the same thing with short walks without headphones. The first few minutes feel almost irritating, like my brain is looking for something to latch onto. Then after a while the mental noise settles and work feels less aversive again...

ugh, this is definitely a great thing to do but it's quite off-putting to see the "improve your focus and productivity" framing. that's uncomfortably target oriented for something that is fundamentally about appreciating and cultivating the mental state in which you enjoy your mind's inner resources and let it wander down serendipitous paths.

I don't stare at walls personally because I find that state easiest to access in a moving vehicle, so my equivalent is sometimes daydreaming rather than reading or scrolling my phone when I'm on a bus or train.

This is pretty much literally what the originator of Zen, Bodhidharma did for 9 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhidharma

I have been doing this for years already after finding out by myself that it worked. Staring at anything works, even staring at your screen as long as you make sure you focus out.

Sounds like this might be activating the default mode network? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network

this sure seems like meditation.

it could probably work as well to close your eyes instead of staring at a wall.

i've always found meditation types revolving around focusing on one thing (candle, wall etc), or nothing (empty mind) to be really hard. my mind just wanders and i end up super anxious, frustrated, and exhausted - resulting in me giving up pretty quickly

What I've found is that focusing on "everything" - ie sitting still and trying to observe your surroundings, your body, all sounds simultaneously seems to work much better. It's easier to get to a calm state this way.

Also, doing this while walking can also work - but perhaps easier to accidentally start thinking about something else

For me it's driving. My best thinking and my best zoning happens on the road, especially if it's limited access highway with low traffic.

I’m sorry, could you repeat that? I got distracted by the large animal with the tusk, over by the kitchen door.

Try zero caffeine for a while. It will not be easy, for the majority of people. After 3 months the worst of it will be over, and most people are withdrawal symptom free by 6 months.

Btw free means no decaf, no chocolate, no tea.

I thought this might have been about zazen, but it's not and no comment seems to mentioned it. I practiced zazen for a while, I want to get back to it. Maybe I will now I've finished studying.

I have wondered if one of the issues with mobile devices might simply be physiological - using them appears to require constant eye movement that rest does not require. I haven't seen this addressed.

Tech Guy reinvents meditation

Is the title a reference to "Men Who Stare at Goats"? If so, I think few people got it.

This was the name of my blog, back when I wrote one. I often do that when I need to think deeply. https://blog.jdconley.com

John Cleese suggested something similar when solving hard problems that require creativity.

https://youtu.be/Pb5oIIPO62g?si=qML6bM5brI_XES9l

I never expected to encounter such an appropriate time to link to this song... https://open.spotify.com/track/2CODrD7ncpPCyGeKqDKpE7?si=uZN...

> Extrapolating that trend, we would be at about 87 GB worth of data today.

Throw in YouTube Shorts / TikTok etc and it makes me wonder if that estimate is drastically too low. We went from the information age, to the brainrot overload age, to let's both have brainrot and let computers think for us.

Even better, stare into the distance to adjust your focus and help them recover from staring at screens. Makes them relax looking at something far away or at least flex them into another state for a little.

I thought it'd be the male version of https://www.thehairpin.com/women-laughing-alone-with-salad/

Bonus focus points if you paint the wall and watch it dry.

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” ― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

Huh, I just realized I’ve been doing a version of this for the last decade or so.

When I’m tired or distracted at work, I do a “magic eye” with my keyboard: I bow my head down close to the keys, then focus my eyes to infinity, and gradually bring my focus closer to “snap” to different focus depths.

When I worked in an office, my coworkers found this disconcerting. Really helps me reset though!

I’ll often use a quick brain break like this to do a tiny bit of exercise, e.g. walk on the spot, plank. This means staring at a wall (or the floor) anyway plus you get the blood flowing. Most appropriate would probably be wall sit while staring at the opposite wall!

I think this is actually valid, if you think about it. Some days I go by with constantly thinking be it about work, in messages, or simply on social media. Taking the time to stare at walls actually provides ability to step back, calm down, and actually random thoughts will start appearing out of which some can be insightful.

It seems you have caffeine problem not scrolling problem :) join us at r/decaf

Goddamn this post reads like my daily challenge / struggle cycle just about every day. I’m gonna go stare at some walls!

Kind of just an unstructured meditation routine no?

And I should really meditate more.

Meditation from first principles.

I could never do this. I would forget that I am staring at a wall within 30 seconds.

The suggestion of going for a walk at least means when you get absorbed by something in your mind, you are still out on a walk, You can't just turn around and start working on some new idea if you are out on a path somewhere.

I've always done this. As I got older I found out that I have really bad astigmatism. It takes a lot of work to keep my eyes in focus. It feels great to just zone out and "stare" at nothing, it's like a bunch of tiny muscles in my skull get to relax.

meditation helps empty hippocampus. its pretty close to what sleep does. 15 mins a day is plenty.

its good to realise its called a practice since u practice it. no one every really things of nothing

Discovering meditation from first principles

Why not just take a quick stroll, if you are close to anything green - park, nature even better. Nature soothes like nothing else.

If staring at walls doesn't do it - try playing guitar instead. Works for me and it's more fun than a wall IMHO.

@aselimov3 Thank you for the reminder! This is something I used to do all the time when I was younger, and I have gotten away from it. Very helpful.

It’s amazing how people recommend very quickly: ”Go to walk in a forrest amongst green leaves, talk to the squirrels…” instead of practice you can do anywhere anytime that cost nothing.

Like do you understand that everyone is not rich working home next to a nice park or great forrest? Like many, many, many in this world people have to travel 1,5h to work middle of an urban metropolitan area with almost no trees and definitely no fresh air, and their living conditions are no improvement? But this practice or other types of meditation you can do even during your remote, or even in a solitary confinement? And if you get good at this hou can do small few minute/seconds of meditations or “wall staring” during the day?

I am very privileged and there’s deers walking 5min from where I live, but I don’t have the audacity to think everyone in this world are as lucky.

Theta re reinventing meditation from first principles

I have to say that the reworded title is what made me read the article. It is almost poetic. I could see it being a title of a campy movie.

A wall or a goat?

A lot of people are referencing meditation. Ultimately that's not a terribly well-defined word. It may match some broad ones, but there's a lot of narrow ones that it wouldn't.

If staring at a wall helps then don't let me stop you but I've sometimes done something very similar by just sitting in a chair without any cell phone, book, electronic item, etc. until I'm very bored. Not like "gritting my teeth, come on we can do another 15 minutes let's goooooo" like an exercise push, but definitely waiting past the first couple of twitches of boredom until it's a constant. It's kind of an interesting way to start a vacation, really helps disconnect from work very quickly. It can be some hours, though.

I do find that this only happens for me if I'm "doing nothing". I see others suggesting exercise, or something else, and those are absolutely good in their own way. But they are not the same thing as just doing nothing. It's still trying to do something and "use the time productively".

The downside is that the family just sees a guy sitting there "doing nothing" and can find a dozen reasons to interrupt... it's hard to do this when there are any other people around, and while I'm not an absolutist about a plan that can be summed up as "sit until you can't" without much loss, the interruptions do very quickly diminish the utility. There's a huge difference between sitting uninterrupted for an hour, and sitting for 15 minutes, putting away the dishes, sitting for 15 minutes, getting up to help reach something, sitting for 15 minutes, explaining that yes you really are sitting there just doing nothing would you please just let me do that, and sitting for 15 minutes.

This particular thing doesn't match "meditation" to me, because I'm not even doing the minimal thing meditation involves; I'm not concentrating on breathing, not trying to "not think", not trying to do anything. If the mind races, let it race until it is done racing[1]. In this point in particular this certainly doesn't match a lot of specific meditation traditions. If the thought of doing something occurs to you, that meditation technique of letting it pass through you until it disappears can be useful.

If meditation is a deliberate attempt to slow down, or a deliberate attempt to concentrate on some particular thing, or a deliberate attempt to empty one's mind, it still has a deliberative goal. If you're willing to broaden the term to encompass not even having that much of a plan, then I have no objection. But this feels to me too low level to even justify the term meditation as most people use it. If you're "trying" to do anything at all, then this isn't really what I'm talking about here. I'm not saying this is "better" than meditation, I'm more saying I'm not sure this even rises to that level, as low as some of them may be. It's really just "rest", a concept our century and culture has largely lost track of.

(Of course the obvious semantic argument about "well are you trying to not try, hmmmmmm?" is there and you are free to debate that in your own head, because like I said, I'm not trying to be absolutist about this. This isn't a program I'm proposing so much as an experience report. You do whatever and call it whatever and argue about definitions as much as you like.)

[1]: If your mind literally never stops this may not work for you... that said, in the 21st century, are you sure your mind never stops racing if you just let it run itself to exhaustion? Have you ever tried? It could be some hours, plural. Again, I fully acknowledge that some people reading this can say "yes". I acknowledge the existence of great neurodiversity. But if you've never tried just letting it run itself to exhaustion you may be surprised what happens if you can find the time to let it.

Does sitting and closing eyes not do the same thing? That's what I do when I'm overwhelmed.

i thought it was called "rawdogging" these days

Reinventing meditation from first principles

John Fogerty used this method to write his early CCR albums. I thought it odd. Maybe I will try this!

Seems like it would be better and easier to just take a walk instead. Whenever you feel information overload, it's time for a break: step outside, get some fresh air, stretch your legs, etc. Not a panacea, obviously, just common sense. Staring at a wall while forcing your mind to "think of nothing"... maybe try it once and see how it goes.

Isn’t that similar to Transcendental Meditation?

I don't get this productivity hacking mindset.

You're suffering some sort of burnout, and you want to try some hack to be _more_ productive? Looking at a wall so I can crank out _more_ work? No, screw that. If I'm ever feeling that way, I'm going to try and work _less_ and take _more_ breaks.

I do not stare at walls, but when I get in this state I go for a 30 minute walk, with what sounds like the same effect.

> What I didn’t expect was how difficult it would be. Sitting for 5-10 minutes staring at a wall without thinking of anything is hard! I relate it somewhat to the feeling I have with working out.

So why not combine working out directly instead of staring at a wall? Ride a stationary bike at low zone 2/lower in my experience allow for uninterrupted focus during that time at work. While on bike, the mind shuns distraction and focus on "what's next" in the workstream (distraction includes HN, evidently I haven't gotten on the bike yet).

My homeopathic theory is that I have a total mental energy that is the sum of focused energy and a distracting energy. This distracting energy can be temporarily used at task at hand but it results in mental exhaustion, or left alone it leads to distraction seeking behavior. While on the bike, distracting energy is fully consumed by riding, allowing for focused energy stay focused. If I go above low zone 2, it starts eating into focused energy and I lose efficiency.

Instead of a wall may I recommend trees, fresh air, and just enjoying it away from anything electrical.

I had a same issue and I found it helped to just step away and blank out in nature.

Also try delaying your first coffee to after the first hour of being awake.

Would be interesting to understand if walls and short focus vs trees and natural stuff further out is preferable.

When I was working more vision was always a bottleneck ... Staring at yet more close things would be less useful than staring at far away things

If you get in the habit of doing this when thinking, it can bomb interviews with interviewers who don't know that's something that some people do.

In-person interview: the majority of people want you to be making frequent eye contact, and are less comfortable when you aren't. Some people also hear folk myths that looking a certain direction is a tell for deception or fabrication. ("Up and to the left means lying; up and to the right means hungry.")

On videoconf interview: if you look away when thinking, people might think you're looking at (or listening to) AI output or a human collaborator, to cheat.

(OTOH, you might be better off finding thoughtful colleagues already familiar with introvert and neurodiverse thinkers, who are aware that many great engineers are also nerds, and who include that within "culture fit".)

Why not a walk? No podcasts or music, just walk.

This reminds me of an app we made awhile back with the sole purpose of finding 'Boredom'.

TLDR on the app is that you join real time 'boring' livestream rooms with random people.

The app never did really take off, but I still would love some fresh ideas around combatting information overload (outside of the 1000's of screen/content blocking type apps)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47926461

Why do people always have to reinvent the wheel?

Just do Zazen, my dude.

Bro discovered meditating and gave it a fancy title.

a large piece of modern / abstract art works just as well, without it needing to be a blank wall

Much needed advice. Thank you!

basically reinventing breathing practices and calling it "wall staring" is peak 2026, but honestly - whatever gets you off the doom-scroll and into something resembling rest, go off

Some of us "stare" at our breath instead. That is, you put your attention upon the feeling of breath in the tip of your nose (or something like that).

It's nice because your eyes don't need to be open for it, so they don't get all dried out and itchy.

Shikantaza here. It's a big deal.

Consider:

We all know about "paying attention". Pay attention in class. Pay attention to the movie you're watching. Pay attention to where you're walking. Etc. It's important and we do it all the time.

Take that to the next level. Pay attention to a thing for a while. AKA Concentration. That's important too. Deep thinking, careful doing, science, engineering, art. It's necessary for all that.

And then there's meditation. It's more stuff to do with your attention.

Samatha (AKA concentration meditation) is concentration taken to the next level. All that deeper thinking etc that you got from concentration, this takes it further. Possibly much further. There are weird depths. And also, you become very familiar with the ways of attention. How it moves and how it affects the rest of your world and what you can do with it.

And then there is Shikantaza (AKA formless meditation, meditation without a seed...). it's a hard left turn. Serious sci-fi. I'll leave it at that.

Just go for a walk in nature or outside for 10min or so, get a fresh air, walking will activate many positive things, hell, you might actually cross path with someone who might have a better job for you than staring at screens and walls.

The same video showed up on my feed last week. I didn't try wall staring, but I did try a day (last Tuesday) with only a single screen active for the entire work day. I was extremely productive that day... but, and I know this is bad, I don't want set expectations too high. So here I type to you on a screen / device that should be turned off.

> A paper published in 2012 showed that in 2008 the average person was receiving 34 GB of information daily, with a daily information exposure growth rate of about 5.4% per year

The paper linked to justify this just talks about media that people consume which is growing. But that has nothing to do with the point this post is trying to make?

Your eyes "stream 4k video" anytime your eyelids are open regardless if you're watching a movie or looking at a wall? Why would me watching more videos say anything about how much information my brain processes?

Sounds like someone reinvented mindfulness

See also:

Show HN: Improve cognitive focus in 1 minute (oneminutefocus.com) 741 points by junetic on Feb 7, 2024 | 287 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39288039

https://oneminutefocus.com/

Ah yes, when healthy people discover disassociation. Creativity is easy when you spend half of your day on autopilot daydreaming about random ideas just to avoid dealing with reality.

No thank you, my time on Earth is limited.

The title could have been "People who stare at walls". The subtle patriarchy of hacker news users peeps up it's head once in a while.