(2023-03-23) Baschez Supercharging My Focuswith Help From Ai

Nathan Baschez: Supercharging My Focus (with Help from AI). When I was about 12 years old, my mom took me to a doctor’s office... I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

I have tried a lot of things: medication, meditation, counseling, journaling, tutoring, drinking water, sleeping more, lifting weights, eating ice cream—the list could go on for a long time. But of everything I’ve tried, one practice has consistently worked for me: writing.

I started writing in Lex—the AI-powered writing tool I’m building—and the process got way better. I don’t think it’s entirely a coincidence that the past five months have been some of the most focused and productive of my entire life.

But focus is much easier said than done. Why? For me, there are two main failure modes:

DISTRACTION

DISINTEREST

for me, focus is not primarily about willpower. Instead, when I’m struggling with focus, I have found it more helpful to take a step back and ask one simple question:

Why?

Writing is a great trick to soothe the distracted mind. If I have the urge to do something outside my area of focus, then by writing about it, I am, in a way, acting on that urge. This allows me to go with the grain of my energy, rather than fight against it. But instead of acting on the immediate impulse in a literal way, I explore it and reflect on it first

I ask “why” until I get to the bottom of things.
What is my goal here?
What are my values?

Before I started journaling in Lex, this was a clunky process for me. My mind would often go blank and I would get stuck. I would sometimes barf out words onto a page, but it often felt like I was meandering toward nowhere. This is where AI comes in handy.

You can use ChatGPT or any other AI tool for this, but what I like about Lex is that it’s just a blank sheet of paper, like a Google Doc, so you can edit the text that comes back from the AI and morph it into something that brings you clarity.

After I read the list of ideas from the AI, I started writing about each one, then realized I was probably overanalyzing and being a perfectionist. I knew the essay wasn’t good yet, but only at a subconscious level. This lack of awareness stressed me out. Once I wrote about it and became conscious of it, I could come up with a solution

If I hadn’t journaled about my block, I would have probably just kept beating my head against the wall

But writers’ block is not the only challenge that journaling works for

It just gives you a few semi-obvious thoughts to react to. But if I’m being honest, these “obvious” thoughts usually don’t pop out of my brain spontaneously

For me, the hardest part about finding focus is seeing and accepting hard truths that I’d rather avoid

Here’s a current example from my life: I can think of about 10 different ideas for software that would be fun to build using AI.

Building software is hard, and always takes far longer than I think it will.

when I wrote it down it was harder to lie to myself.

Once I let it sink in, I started to feel better. There is serenity to be found in surrendering to reality.

By putting our thoughts into words, we have a better sense of control. We can imagine radical new choices just by pressing a few keys. We can go back and make adjustments, like cutting an idea here and editing a thought there.