When focusing on a javaScript related project, there can be a great many distractions that can interfere with my ability to focus on a project. Some of them are just complete wasts of time, others are somewhat pleasant or necessary. However all of them can derail my chain of thought, or get in the way of me making progress. However with a little effort it might be possible to get some of these under control, ether by stopping them completely, or finding was to keep them from monopolizing to much of my time. Some of them I have made progress with, others still seem to get in the way, but regardless writing about them might help. I do not write these kinds of blog post related posts often but I thought I would break from the norm with this one.

Distracting thoughts

I have a lot of things that I worry about, at a personal, local, national, and global level. All kinds of distracting thoughts about things most of which I do not have control over. It is a major distraction to be lost in thoughts about how bad things are out there in the world, and concerns about how people close to me are also suffering a little for various reasons.

Meditation has helped me get all of this under better control. The basic idea behind what I do is to just get into a comfortable position, and just try to relax and clear my mind. Lots of people say that one should focus on there breath, and that things should be done a very specific way or else you are doing it wrong. I however have found that I like to find out how to do this sort of thing in my own way, the goal should be to just simply decompress by way of any means that works on an individual level.

Once the distracting thoughs go away I have found that I can focus on reading, writing, and coding way better. I have also found that the act of writing abot coding can almost turn into a kind of medatation actually. That is that in place of focusing on breating, and not doing much of anything, what it is that I am working on can be meditative.

Drinking alcohol

On a certain spectrum where on one extreme there is someone that does not drink, and on the other extreme is someone that is drinking themselves to death, I was maybe somewhere in the middle. As such it was maybe not that big of a problem for me, but still a big enough problem that it was interfering with other things I would prefer to do with my time.

As of this writing I have went without having a drink for a little over four months. Looking back I can see that drinking was a bit of a distraction. In addition I feel a little more clear headed, and focused with far more important things.

TV

TV was a distraction of mine for a very long time. It was a bit of a problem for me in the past though. Day after day I would sit down and just watch whatever is on not caring if it is any good or not, just to get my mind off of things.

I am glad I seem to have managed to put this one to rest. Where I live now I do not have a TV, and I can say I care to get one as well. If I do ever have one in the future my favorite channel is indeed off.

Video Games

I am at an age now where playing video games has become a little old for me. I do still find myself wasting time playing one, but more often then not I am more interested in how to go about making one rather than playing one.

What helped me stop is guilt, guilt of wasting time that can be better spent doing something creative. Focusing on this blog, or coding a project, are the only things that help make the guilt go away.

Reddit

This one is still a bit of a problem for me, I find myself taking breaks from work to browse reddit. It’s not like its all bad, but even work relevant subreddits like /r/javascript is often just a bunch of links to posts on subjects that I am ether all ready familiar with, or are not relevant to what I am working on.

There is also /r/dailyprogramer, that’s a great subreddit. I poke my head in now and then, and on the rare occasion try my luck with one of the hard challenges. This is great as I think it does help me understand better where i am as a programmer.

Although there are some great work related subreddits, I do find reddit more of a distraction rather than a tool.

Facebook

I hate facebook, yet I keep checking it once in a while, maybe I am some kind of masochist. Huge wast of time for the most part, I guess the only thing I get out of it is a sense of connection with other people.

Lucky for me this distraction, like many others, is getting old. yeah! freedom!

Phone calls

I hate phones with a passion, often I just turn the dam thing off completely so I can focus. If it is something important I can get back to them later.

Conclusion

Well I do not want to spend all day working on this. Just wanted to make another one of my posts on bloging as it is a nice distraction from the usual posts on javaScript related topics, but now I want to get back to work on my usual topics that I write about.