Comment by jvanderbot
2 days ago
> Why can I focus for hours on a game but procrastinate when writing an email?
OK I got a bit triggered by this sentence. Not at TFA, but sharing my own experience: Games are fun. And I don't mean Type 1 vs Type 2 fun and the email is somehow type 2 fun. I mean that the stimulation / "hit" from a game is just higher than 90-99%% of work tasks (writing a new CLI or optimizer excluded!!). We pile on much stimulation to the work to get it to hit harder: Working by others (social/peer), snacks (biological rewards), free caffeine, money (sometimes lots), etc. And physical trinkets.
We have studied this to death in other parts of our own biology, like food. Unhealthy food/drink is fun. It's a pleasurable reward sometimes, but if it forms the basis for your diet you are going to have a lot of trouble enjoying healthy stuff. You can't outrun a bad diet. You can't add a kale salad after a bowl of ice cream and expect your insulin levels to go down. You have to treat the underlying problem: A hugely stimulating / rewarding thing is displacing the healthy stuff. Almost every piece of sane health advice after 1900 has focused on removing unhealthy factors first.
Work/hobby is no different. When I'm obsessed with factorio (it happened a lot once or twice), I find it harder to focus on work. When I "fast" from those "treats", work takes on new enjoy-ability. Dopamine diet is probably the wrong technical term, but it nails the practical effects well.
I'm sure phones are just as stimulating for some. We all have our vices.
> I'm sure phones are just as stimulating for some.
This is one of my big objections do 2FA. My work has been pushing it hard, and from a security perspective, I get it. However, it’s all via an Authenticator app on the phone. We can no longer set down our phones and simply work. To start working, and periodically throughout the day, we are now forced to pickup our phones to authenticate. This invites the chance to see other notifications, check and app quickly, or more generally, break flow as we have to switch to another device and back again.
All of this seems like a suboptimal solution.
You should try a CLI-based workflow for 2FA. As long as you can exfiltrate the secret (and you often can by pretending you can't scan QR codes), then you can use oathtool to generate passcodes.
1. use 'pass' to save the secret: 'pass edit work.secret' <enter it and quit>
2. use oathtool to generate 2fa given a secret:
' #!/bin/bash
oathtool -b --totp "`pass show $1.secret`" >&1 '
use it like '2fa work'
If you have 'xsel' you can even do
'oathtool -b --totp "`pass show $1.secret`" | xsel -ib'
to copy it to clipboard automatically.
Even if you only have the QR code, you can download the image or screenshot it and then extract the secret without ever having to use a smartphone by using zbarimg and then manually extracting the secret from the URI:
Output:
If you have some 2FA that you need to enter 10 times per day, then you can also add a global shortcut to automatically paste it. Of course, this undermines the "second device" security. Some PC password managers also support 2FA, e.g. https://github.com/paolostivanin/OTPClient ( sudo apt install otpclient )
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Just to add, 'pass' has an otp extension to simplify this a bit [1]
With that, you can do
[1] https://github.com/tadfisher/pass-otp
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We also have Microsoft authentication that displays a number on the browser and asks you to enter in on the device! :-(
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In my union contract we have language that requires the employer to provide us with a hardware 2FA token for just this reason. I and some of my coworkers don't use smartphones, and we didn't want to be obligated to use one for work.
"So long as [employer's] access management vendor... supports the use of physical two-factor authentication devices (for example, a YubiKey), [employer] shall make such devices available to Employees upon their submission of a request for the device."
I've worked in places that wanted to push cell phone apps on the team for auth and we also pushed for hardware tokens. It worked extremely well. The concerns we had were mainly centered on privacy since the app wanted location/camera access and apps can (or at least at the time could) get a ton of data from your device without requesting any permission at all like getting a list of every app you have installed, or data from sensors like the accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, barometer, thermometer, etc.
I'm old enough to have lived through the era of standalone authenticators. The downsides of that approach are also numerous.
I understand where you're coming from though, and I think this is where OS features like Focus Modes come into play.
When I'm in a "Work" mode, I literally don't see notifications from most of my apps. They don't show up in the notification center, or on app icon badges, or anywhere.
This takes a few minutes to set up, but once it's in place, it's fantastic. I also do this for other aspects of my life: Photography, Research, etc. When I'm in those modes, I don't want to see anything except for the apps that are specific to what I'm doing. It's worth the effort of setting this up IMO, and extends far beyond just work.
Hmm. I wonder if there would be a market for a super simple TOTP authentication device with an e-paper display. Kind of like those RSA tokens with the LCDs, but more modern and able to hold any number of TOTP credentials.
Getting the credentials loaded could be a bit of a pain without a camera for QR code scanning. Easiest solution would be via Bluetooth to a companion app, which you would probably want anyway for periodic time sync (likely wouldn't be worth it to embed a GNSS receiver just to update the time).
Probably be a pretty small market, but as a niche Kickstarter device? I could see a small but loyal customer base.
Sounds like a job for a second phone, one which you'd just be extra careful to only use for one purpose. It can be cheap as balls, but it will have a QR-compatible camera and whatever else we may have come to expect from such a device. :)
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Make sure your GNSS receiver supports OSNMA, and be _extremely_ trusting of your battery-backed RTC and profoundly skeptical of time jumps over a certain magnitude.
GNSS spoofing is trivial now and it's an extremely useful way to manipulate a target device's idea of time, which breaks all sorts of things. (SSL certificate validity periods...)
This is nearly what you’re looking for (well, not that close, but it’s got the right spirit):
https://blog.singleton.io/posts/2022-10-17-otp-on-wrist/
I would love this, but only if it also successfully implemented a few disparate authentication protocols that essentially do the same things (prove identity) but are regrettably proprietary - like the de facto standard electronic ID in Sweden, BankID.
Token2 make this: https://www.token2.com/shop/product/molto-2-v2-multi-profile...
They also do single-token cards: https://www.token2.com/shop/category/programmable-tokens
Yubikey?
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A yubikey works great for this
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they exist, in my country they are available as alternative to smartphone apps for identity auth. (ie you can choose between android, iphone, and TOTP LCD device.)
Flipper Zero supports that
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Have you tried a smart watch? The Duo 2FA app lets you add an arbitrary TFA code based authenticator with same QR code Google Authenticator supports and generate those from their Apple WatchOS [0] or Android WearOS apps. I have used it successfully for years, it's a huge reason I got an Apple Watch in fact. Now you'll have to configure your watch with a "work" focus mode that turns off all notifications and not install any fancy apps on the watch (do those still exist?), but it can free you from your phone.
Along the same lines the Meta Wayfarer[2] smart glasses lets you take slice of life photos and videos without needing to whip out your phone. You lose a ton of quality but stay in the moment more. The AI features are getting better so eventually you'll be able to use it for basic information lookup.
0 - https://guide.duo.com/apple-watch
1 - https://guide.duo.com/duo-wear
2 - https://www.meta.com/ai-glasses/wayfarer
Yubikey nanos are the way out of that specific problem
I imagine Yubikey doesn't support all the stupid custom-app-2fa that companies push out.
I really wish they'd just stick to classic TOTP.
Is there a way of getting them to store a dozen or so totp secrets? And if so, how do you select which one you want to use?
Check this out: https://github.com/Authenticator-Extension/Authenticator
Taking the 2 out of 2FA since 2017!</sarcasm>
Thanks for sharing a potentially useful tool but I will not use it without a lot more details about how this browser extension secures the 2FA secrets from sketchy websites/ads.
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This is one of the thing that smart watches should be doing, or even better, something like https://blog.singleton.io/posts/2022-10-17-otp-on-wrist/.
First of all, I'm not a fan of constantly needing to re-authenticate.
But for your specific problem there is a simple solution that isn't particularly expensive. Buy a new phone. Install 2FA on it, and don't install anything else.
I just use an old phone that I've wiped clean and removed the SIM. Sits on the desk and I just glance at it when I need a new 2FA code.
I imagine you've considered it already, but maybe your work would be willing to put the 2FA secret into something like 1Password, which you could access on your computer instead of your phone.
Defeats the purpose of 2FA though. I'd argue a cheap 2FA-only phone would be good, if they're struggling to touch their real phone without being consumed by distractions.
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Time to get a “work” phone.
I carried 2 phones for many years. It was more trouble than it’s worth. Especially these days. Working from home, my only work use of the phone is for the Authenticator app.
The optics of that can be questionable. Just ask Skyler White or her brother-in-law.
If it's Authenticator you can use bitwarden from your browser, that's what I do. If you're using a custom app or something different then yeah it's annoying
Apple Watch with Authy is a great solution for this. I don’t need to have my phone in the same room to use 2FA.
Get a keyboard with a usb port on the side. Insert yubikey nano. Now instead of annoying 2FA you just reach your finger over and touch.
Why does it have to be an app on your phone? IT should be able to support yubikeys (or similiar) and even printed OTP lists.
I see some evidence that yubikeys are used somewhere in the organization, but not sure where or how.
The only information we were sent to get this all setup was specifically for a phone. The portal that exists to add devices only appears to support phones.
I have a co-worker who simply tried to use Authy instead of MS Authenticator and it didn’t work. There is a lot of bureaucracy that typically makes it not worth the fight.
> However, it’s all via an Authenticator app on the phone.
Why not save the secret on your laptop and generate the OTP on your laptop?
I use MS Authenticator for work too. It doesn't do standard TOTP, at least not for Entra. The QR codes don't contain the secret. IDK that anyone has been able to exfiltrate a secret and generate codes with a third party app.
I personally use an Android emulator on my laptop, which achieves the same goal. It saves and restores state automatically for quick startup.
You can use the Freedom app.
url freedom.to
Or just disable notifications. The iphone has a do not disturb mode that can be scheduled.
Ever since I disabled all the notifications on my phone my life has been happier. It won't work for everyone (50% of the time it doesn't even work for me), but I can't help but write this anecdote here.
These look swish https://www.reiner-sct.com/en/produkt/reiner-sct-authenticat...
For Windows, here's a free little authenticator app that lives in your system tray: https://github.com/richard-green/Authentiqr.NET
Get a Yubikey or similar, have a USB port close, one finger tip, done.
Reminds me of when I was developing an application 'in' Facebook (when it was mostly friends but with adds for addictive games in the sidebar)
1Password can be your 2fa and autofill those fields. It has a built in scanner which will look at your screen and read the QR code on the screen (no separate device needed).
The comments here have the genre of "2 factor, 1 device"...
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Invest in a password manager that stores it all, including the rolling codes
Use a yubikey
Most password managers (Bitwarden, 1Password etc) have a function for generating TOTP codes.
do you use a pw manager? bitwarden (OSS) has it built in if you pay for premium. i think it's an extra 1-3/mo but well worth it to support the team
It's not your job's responsibility to cater to your lack of self control
Even doing nothing beyond the authentication, it is still requiring task switching, changes devices, waiting for codes, entering them, switching back. It’s very disruptive to any type of flow state.
But it's in their best interests.
I often trick myself imagining life is a game that throws boring or difficult tasks (boredom often equals difficult ) at me that I need to survive. It often helps because I I can picture finishing these things as rewards that help me get to the next "level". It was particularly helpful getting beyond difficult times (many bad events coinciding). Not sure if this can be transferred to others, or if it works because of my brain chemistry.
This stops working after a while. The real deal is you begin the realise the 'points' you accumulate playing this game can't be redeemed to do something fun or satisfying. This game begins to appear totally pointless as you age(Points are less useful as you age, and dying with lots of points means time and effort was spent to acquire a thing that can't be spent now). Which causes even more procrastination.
I think humans crave freedom and free time, with good health more than anything else. This frees you up to care about doing things which we feel more rewarding and fun.
Several times you are better off skipping the drills and rituals and just focus on making lots of money as quickly as possible. And of course competing to accumulate more money just for the heck of it is equally demotivating as well. Focus what you want from the money and that is likely to move you along better use of your time and effort.
> This stops working after a while.
yeah and i figured thats fine !
I take time spent on HN as an example. I used to think if i limit my HN time to under 10-15 mins a day, would be ideal. But the slippery slope was stopping. It felt rude. And i had no one but myself to get angry on. Weird loop.
I then go the opposite, allow myself to binge. Kinda forced looking at HN every occasion i had a few mins. I get bookmakes to avoid typing the url. Browse on every device. Add comments, browse past lists, front page, best comments, etc. All the dopamine boosts. And I notice the dopamine effect reduces. The fun in comments, upvotes and finding something new just evaporates. A day or two of this makes me sick of the orange banner and the beige background. I delete bookmarks, remove everything. Make a new account to start fresh. Add a rule to block the domain, all out of a natural reaction, mind you.
i dont have real stats but it feels like over 2 years of this, i've spent less time on HN, than before. I'm not constantly fighting myself. It comes and goes in waves, like seasons of nature. Right now its spring and slowly getting into HN summer as explained by my flurry of comments past few weeks.
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Yeah. Sometimes the reason you can't focus on something is that some part of your brain is trying to tell you that you shouldn't.
Unfortunately, that part of the brain usually sucks at coming up with an alternative plan, and "do something else, anything" is not very actionable. And you still need to pay your bills somehow.
The natural reward for work is work done. I don't need a motivational system to do the dishes. The motivation is seeing the dirty dishes gradually disappear, and the kitchen become cleaner. I don't need to create pieces of papers to represent that, because it is already happening right there, in real life.
If I work on a project, it helps to specify all things that need to be done (as opposed to working on something open-ended), so that I can see how I am getting closer to the moment of "done". A nice thing about test-driven development is that you produce a set of checkboxes first, and then you gradually check them off. Even if the work is open-ended, if I keep thinking about new features that would be nice add, it helps to specify a "version 1.0", and after achieving it, a "version 2.0", etc. The idea is that after each version I can take a break and feel that my work is done.
The least motivating thing is probably the job, as an employee. You work for 8 hours a day (generously assuming no overtime). There is no way to complete those 8 hours in e.g. 4 hours of working harder and then take a walk. In theory, if you do Scrum, you should have a certain reasonable amount of work assigned per sprint, and if you do it faster, then I guess you can take a short break and do something enjoyable (such as refactoring). In practice, almost no one does Scrum by the book; you will probably be randomly interrupted by extra tasks, and given unrealistic deadlines to avoid the possibility of completing the work earlier.
Another demotivating thing about the job is that there is no personal consequence of completing a project; you immediately start working on a new one. The natural response to completing a work is to congratulate yourself and take a break. But at work, the vacations are mostly unrelated to projects. Also, you are paid per time spent working, not by the number of projects finished. So it is all disconnected.
So I guess it all needs to be a part of some greater project, which can possibly be completed one day. Such as, putting your money in index funds, and planning to retire as soon as you reach a specified amount. Then each day you can congratulate yourself for getting 0.01% closer to the goal. (Or you can save money for other specific things, if that is what you desire.)
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Really, most people's adult lives are just a constant stream of boring/difficult tasks they need to grind in order to get through: School, work, paying bills, managing money, doing taxes, cleaning the house, cooking food, doing dishes, fixing this, maintaining that... If you don't have a way to trick your brain into grinding these things over and over, you're not going to get very far.
This is the point I think many people fail to understand about consumption. Yes, it is usually perfectly sustainable to spend most of your free time scrolling tiktok or playing high-reward video games, yes you can live without regular exercise or a strict diet, but there are hard to quantify effects on an entire range of other things in your life. I think it is very important for the modern person to pay close attention to their mental state with and without the things they turn to the most, especially if experiencing problems with focus or motivation.
> You can't add a kale salad after a bowl of ice cream and expect your insulin levels to go down
Sorry for being off-topic, but you actually can (not a scientist, just speaking from experience). My guess is the digestion slows down and the sugar gets released into the system at a slower rate (probably because of the lower overall Glycemic index?). Anyways, it actually works! Just eat your salad before the ice cream to make sure it does :)
I think I do some of this, but my framing is not explicitly about adopting monastic practices - rather, it's about having a "novelty budget" each day. Every novel stimulus is an opportunity to careen off course.
However, if the task ahead of me is great and I'm motivated, then I automatically seek less novelty to focus on it. IOW, maintaining a boring baseline of routine so that novelty is selective is important as a way of being able to "jump into action". It's good to get off the phone. It doesn't replace the intrinsic motivation.
There's an aspect to productivity advice that is about shouting down your burnout by adding more productivity hacks or taking stimulants or flagellating oneself. Burnout's root cause has to be approached by asking the tougher questions about life and aligning with a philosophy that is truthful to that. The work itself will have moments of routine boredom, exhilaration, and heartbreak, but the motive has to endure all of it.
And what about those of us that find they have stretches where they don't focus well on anything? Games included. There are several games I'd like to spend a bit of time on. It ain't happening.
When you are feeling this way it's good to take stock of your 3 fundamentals... Food, Sleep, Exercise. If any are suffering, then it's almost guaranteed to be the source of your problem. It sounds elementary but I have to remind myself of this constantly. Particularly the sleep part
I posted in another thread how reliable some old/popular answers can be. Frustratingly so. :D
Exercise is annoying, as without a lot of modern life, it largely takes care of itself. Back when I could just walk to a grocery, as an easy example, it was unsurprisingly easy to stay in decent shape.
Murkier mental health issues? You desire what games used to give, unadulterated innocent fun, but nowadays they don't? You are a bit "stuck in life" (maybe even going through mild depression) and you are not the addictive/escapist type.
This feels overstated. Though, it isn't like current affairs aren't trying their best to make the overstated seem tame. :D
Sleep until you can’t take it anymore. In less than 12h something will appear more interesting than sleeping.
I find this intensely amusing. In grade school, I got "mono" and dang near literally slept for several days. Granted, being sick is a bit different than being disinterested.
My problem is typically more that there are plenty of more interesting things to do than anything I'd like to do right now.
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> I'm sure phones are just as stimulating for some. We all have our vices.
Hard agree, and yes we have our vices, but wouldn't life be better if we had more agency over them?
My phone is overwhelmingly a detriment to my life, it's just disguised as a necessary utility by doing the same things I could do anyway if I didn't have it. It's not never uniquely valuable to me, but those rare signals don't need to be tightly coupled with so so so much noise.
The big one for me lately is the aptly named tethering. It's wild that it's not just built into my mac at this point, if it weren't for that, (maybe 2Fa as well) I'd leave the phone at home so often I'd probably forget about it, and I long for that future.
It's not necessarily true that games being fun is the reason why you can play them for hours.
Think about games where you're grinding doing tedious stuff to level up your character. Not nearly as fun, but still something you can end up doing for hours.
I don't even get that kind of hit from a game though unless playing with friends, and that's because I'm with my friends. If I was playing alone I'd play for 30 minutes max and then stop.
even the Gen Z and Gen Alpha have noticed this effect and came with their own term: Brain Rot.
>When I "fast" from those "treats", work takes on new enjoy-ability. Dopamine diet is probably the wrong technical term, but it nails the practical effects well.
Man no offense but this sounds devastatingly sad. "We must starve ourselves of fun so that the barest excitement at work feels good."
Do you do drugs?
If not then you're already 'starving' yourself of the purest form of pleasure (which is a good thing, don't get me wrong). I don't think taking one step further is that sad.
I think this is more akin to literally starving yourself so that a single bit of spinach tastes great. It turns out you can in fact eat a candy bar and have pizza and not become obese or otherwise damage your health. It's not one or the other and OP might need some kind of professional help to mediate their moods...
Like this is clearly not healthy.
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That’s insanely stereotypical. There is no ”drugs” that is ”the purest form of pleasure”.
Instead, there are many thousands of different substances which can elicit, heighten, prolong or enable pleasure; some illegal, some legal, some included in your favourite meals and snacks.
Even vanilla is a ”drug” which enhances pleasurable feelings. (Vanillin and ethylvanillin are monoamine oxidase inhibitors and consuming them will increase serotonergic and dopaminergic activity)
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> We must starve ourselves of fun so that the barest excitement at work feels good.
Much like people that struggle with their weight need to turn every meal into accounting for lean protein and leafy vegetables.
Eventually, you crave the broccoli a bit more than you used to, and it makes the diet easier.
Yeah, it denies that games are any good, and demonizes fun as a vice. People who talk about dopamine and procrastination are just looking for ways to beat themselves up and start conflicted fights with themselves over what they want.
I suppose in some sense, but how is this sadder than the reality that we're not all doped up on space cocaine?
A desirable (practical) reality would seem to stem not just from first order effects now, but also in summation of all the credits and debits that it leaves us over time.
> "We must starve ourselves of fun so that the barest excitement at work feels good."
Don't worry, that rule only applies to poor people!
.
More seriously, how long does it take to stop the dopamine high? Could we schedule our lives so that we would e.g. spend one month doing the most exciting things ever... followed by three days of meditation... which would make us ready for a few months of hard work... and then do it again?
You know, so that we are still productive at work, but don't have to sacrifice most of the joy in life to achieve that.
I agree with both of you, but when I am fasting and also doing activities with a high level of dopamine release, I actually find it easier to focus on my tasks as well.
> Man no offense but this sounds devastatingly sad. "We must starve ourselves of fun so that the barest excitement at work feels good."
Interestingly these seemed to be one of the messages of Severance, and Dylan's character even appeared to have ADHD
Playing sudoku is not fun at all, it’s Lumon-level shit work. Yet people definitely procrastinate on it.
TFA? the fucking author?
Article, usually