Re: Kickoff

[Paul Oppenheim]

Thank you for starting the group! I've started to let others know about it.

> - What aspect of attention tracking interests you most? Number of
> distractions? Focus/intensity? Productivity measures? Something else?

Productivity, as far as it promotes goal achievement and satisfaction.

Also interesting about the session was the people who *weren't*
interested in productivity, but attention for its own sake as part of
mindful living - I hadn't thought of that perspective.

> - How would measure it? Ideally, both on the computer and off?

I keep timesheets of my work, and from the duration of entries can
determine if I came close to "flow" or not. I also write weekly status
reports with planned, completed, failed, and dropped tasks. I can figure
out if it was a good week for goals, and if that correlates with working
hard or not. Theoretically I can correlate with other data I track, but
analysis is hard / rare enough as it is.

> - Finally, given I think most people showed up wishing they did a
> better job at their respective aspect, what change or experiment would
> you propose for making use of your metric.

Correlating other data I have - tweets, email, text messages, phone
calls, etc, seeing what features correlate with good goal achievement
and happiness. Since most features are secondary characteristics, (ie,
phone calls aren't a behavior, but usually come from the behavior of
taking more breaks) I'd have to experiment to find the primary causes of
my behavior (ie, does going out more at night cause more calls which
helps / hurts productivity? What sentiments do I tweet about when I am
productive, and how do I encourage those in myself?). I'd have to track
more to get correlation with actual behaviors, instead of this indirect
analytical mess.

The irony, of course, is that I won't be able to do much of this because
I have to do *work*. ;)

I have a related thought I'd like to advance to the group, but I need to
stew on the words for a bit.

+ paul

Matthew Trentacoste wrote:
> Hello all. I want to thank everyone again for participating in the
> Attention Tracking session. I'm still trying to get an understanding
> of things and I certainly learned a lot out listening to everyone
> else.
>
> The session wandered over a huge number of topics. We didn't end up
> having much of a discussion on actually quantifying/tracking
> attention, so I'd like to start there. To continue the discussion, I'd
> like to pose a few questions to people:
>
> - What aspect of attention tracking interests you most? Number of
> distractions? Focus/intensity? Productivity measures? Something else?
> - How would measure it? Ideally, both on the computer and off?
> - Finally, given I think most people showed up wishing they did a
> better job at their respective aspect, what change or experiment would
> you propose for making use of your metric.
>
> I'm currently doing a round of job interviews this week, so it'll take
> me a day or two still to get up my full review of the session, but the
> URL remains the same:
>
> http://matttrent.com/articles/attention-tracking-notes
>
> I'll post here when I'm done. If you know anyone else that's
> interested, send them this way or advertise the group. I look forward
> to hearing what you all have to say.
>
> Thanks again
> [~trent.]

[Matthew Trentacoste]

Again, slow on the reply here. Such a big backlog.

One thing approach I've considered for blending both the
productivity/goal and focus tracking aspects revolves around the
sprint/Pomodoro system. I'm wondering how good of results one could
get out of tracking tasks done per 25-or whatever-minute block, as
well as taking a ranking of energy and focus levels. I half-heartedly
tried giving myself a score of focus, mental and physical energy for
each Pomodoro I did, but didn't get far enough into it to really get
back any meaningful aggregate data.

Something I hope to return to.
[~t.]

--
[  matthew m trentacoste                                     ]
[                                                            ]
[  doctoral candidate                                        ]
[  university of british columbia                            ]
[  m...@matttrent.com                                          ]
[  http://matttrent.com                                      ]
[  +1.415.508.4002                                           ]

[Greg Tucker-Kellogg]

You mention you use a score of score of focus, mental and physical energy for pomodoro.  Is there any "conventional" assessment by Pomodoro people? 

I'm curious, and share the interest in ADHD, in finding some way to assess productive focus from distration and hyperfocus.  Maybe in each Pomodoro one could score "on target focus" and "off target focus" where the target is the intended outcome of a Pomodoro period. 

I find binaural beats useful, but I have no idea if they are a placebo.  (Any QS data on that?) 

If there is supportive data, I would consider trying out the NeuroSky MindSet, because it includes both a headset to input binaural beats and to monitor attention related brainwaves.  Combined with self-reporting (even as simple as a google form input after each pomodoro) and blinding myself of the NeuroSky data until I've collected enough to analyze, that might be interesting.

[Dan Tasse]

I like the idea of using the NeuroSky to evaluate focus, but the details of it are rather tricky. Has anyone actually used it to do so? I guess you could just take their "attention" score and average it over a time period. (even that would require a little hacking, but it wouldn't be too hard.)

Another idea would be a test. The SART is supposed to measure some kind of attention; there's an Android app for it now. Takes 4 minutes, and then you get a % score.

Others (which I know less about) include the Attention Network Test (links on the left), Stroop Test (more info), and maybe the TOVA? (seems more clinical)

Dan

[Matthew Trentacoste]

I'm not familiar with Pomodoro "best practices". If I'm feeling
distracted, I use them to keep my ass in the chair for a sufficiently
long duration to accomplish something. If I'm feeling focused, I
usually end up head down and work and not noticing when it's ended.
When that starts to wane, I just get away from the laptop and go
outside.

As for scoring, I generally rank mental energy and
focus/distractability. The applicability and what exactly those mean
and personal to me, so you may need to fiddle a bit.

I haven't played with Neurosky or binaural beats at all. I'm mostly
just head down writing my thesis at the moment.

Personally, the 3 biggest benefits to focus I've found have been:

1) not checking email/social whatever until as late in the day as
possible, generally after I've done 4-6 hours of solid work.
2) staying off the computer as much of the rest of the time as
possible, making the computer a work activity
3) sleeping a lot more than previously

#1 is huge for me. It takes a week or two for the "omg, I wonder
what's happening" urge to subside. I don't remember the last time 2-3
hours would go by without even considering something besides the task
at hand.

Maybe that's useful. Maybe not.
[~t.]

On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 7:36 AM, Greg Tucker-Kellogg
<gtucker...@gmail.com> wrote:

--

[Matthew Trentacoste]

I haven't personally. I need to get back in touch with them and see
if they'd be willing to donate a headset for some experiments. I'm
thinking of taking an average attention score per unit of time and
comparing that with some self-reported score. That could be my own
impression, or something more objective like one of the tests you
mentioned. Hopefully the two line up somewhat and the Neurosky can
provide more real-time / less invasive feedback.

[~t.]

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