My mind: initial resistance, I don't really wanna do it. Whatever I started it. Okay, focus on the circle. Wow this feels like it's taking a while. Oh I wonder how other people would react to being presented this. Some people would probably expect it to be some sort of scare jump prank. Back to focusing on the circle. What was the page called again? eyes go to URL bar Oh right, one minute focus. This is distracting I'll just start counting. 1, 2, [...], 42. Oh it finished.

Perfect! Your experience is the exact experience hoped for.

Many people give up on learning to meditation because they cannot clear their mind for X minutes straight. Their mind runs away, and they must bring it back to focus. They see this as failure.

Yet, this is exactly what is expected. How else to learn the invaluable skill of refocusing after distraction. If staring at a circle was so stimulating you never got distracted, then you would have no chance to build your focus muscles.

Note: this comment is mostly about the first steps into meditation. I learned this idea from Shinzo Young.

> Many people give up on learning to meditation because they cannot clear their mind for X minutes straight. Their mind runs away, and they must bring it back to focus. They see this as failure.

This is what we say to our students. It'll run away. Just bring it back. It's OK.

The tool is great, BTW. Congrats. My only small gripe is the pulsation is too fast (for me). My relaxed breathe is 5 seconds inhale, 5 seconds exhale.

> pulsation is too fast (for me)

Was it my imagination or did the rate change? It seemed to slow down a bit at the end.

If it doesn't, that might be a good feature; a progressive slowdown and perhaps a config to change overall rate.

Yes, the rate slows down, but I start with 5/5 directly. I think it's a result of meditating for a long time.

After reading James Nestor's Breath, I went through the Oxygen Advantage certification for fun. Lots of studies that show that the 4/6 or 5/5 cadence (ten second round trip, leading to six breaths a minute) strongly improves heart rate variability and engages the parasympathetic nervous system.

OP had a cool idea -- wish it hit the 5/5 cadence.

Are we supposed to syncing breathing with the pulsing? Or are we just assuming that based on similar apps for breathing?

I think the pulsation is there to help regulate the breathing. Many people take fast and shallow breaths, esp. when they are stressed out.

Because evening out the speed and taking deeper breaths help calming down with a couple of mechanisms.

It seems to me it starts off a bit too fast. But I like the rate at which it slows.

updated with slower time to match animation with optimal inhale.exhale time

> Many people give up on learning to meditation because they cannot clear their mind for X minutes straight. Their mind runs away, and they must bring it back to focus. They see this as failure.

Yes, this is a real block for lots of people. When I was teaching my children to meditate, I tried to head this off a bit by telling them "you'll probably find that your headvoice will keep chattering away at first. Let it. Don't really fight it. Just acknowledge without judgment, clear your mind again, and keep meditating. Your mind will grow quieter on its own as you practice more."

I'll share my ship trick.

This is for those of you that live by the bay. Needs a clear day but no Otis Redding song necessary.

Where I live it takes about a 20-30 mins for a ship that left the harbour to disappear over the horizon. As it leaves I can see all the details, the name of the ship, the containers or people. Lots to think about and observe. I don't take my eyes off it. Gradually it turns into a smaller and smaller square, and eventually a dot. All that it is, all the people and cargo and funnels become an ever smaller world. Somehow that grabs and keeps my focus.

Actually started to do it as an exercise for vision from too much screen time. Apparently it helps to focus on a distant object and I think... maybe... hmm... maybe it helps. But anyway, after a half hour of watching a dot vanish over the horizon, it leaves you with a _good_ feeling. Like I used to get from astronomy before moving to the city. YMMV.

If I let my head voice chatter away, I never get the opportunity to clear my mind. The entire meditation session would simply become a sort of internal monologue, jumping from idea to idea.

What I meant by that is more "don't fight it", as in "don't let it dismay you, bring you stress, and don't judge the fact that it happens." That it happens is not a failure at all. It's normal. Just acknowledge and recenter.

When people first start meditating, they often find it very difficult to get a "quiet moment" and think that's a sign that they're doing something wrong or something isn't working. Neither of those things are true, and while you might get just a few seconds of "quiet" at first, as you practice more, that time will expand.

The basic point is that it's part of the normal progression (of anything, really). When you're doing anything new, you're going to suck at it at first and improve as you keep doing it. It's counterproductive to feel bad about the stage where you aren't good at it, and giving those judgemental feelings power can cause an unwarranted discouraging force.

The most useful analogy for me is that it is similar to lifting weights. You don't go to the gym and just hold a weight in tension for 60 minutes. You lift for a moment and relax for a moment, over and over and over. In meditation you're not (often) purposely "letting go" the way you do while lifting, but your brain will do that anyway. That's fine. The important thing is you engage again. Each time you detect your attention drifting and you bring it back to your practice is another "rep" of the workout. Hold it for as long as you can, and when you detect it's drifted again (as it will), you've already started another rep!

Some people give up because their brains simply don't work that way.

I decided to start going to a therapist for some issues I've encountered over the years. He took my background information and immediately dove into an entire diatribe about meditation. Without addressing a single thing I actually said. The thing is, I've attempted meditation over the years. Not only had I already read all of his recommended source material AND watched the videos he recommended, but I knew other sources that I rattled off to him as well, including entire books on controlled breathing. I spent 2 years with it and never got anywhere.

It does not work for me and I'm not putting myself through it again. I've got three or four separate trains of thought going on at all times. It's impossible to put a cork in all of them, it isn't helpful, and it's about as useful as prayer is to an atheist.

Asking someone who has been abused as a child to instead stare into the abyss is a cop-out. Meditation as a solution to depression and anxiety doesn't bring me calm. It makes me angry.

Yes, this. There's almost an inverse "no true Scotsman" element to the way mindfulness and meditation are taught and spoken about. No such thing as failure, no such thing as doing it correctly, doing it at all is better than not doing it. All based on the unproven premise that it's a positive thing for everyone and/or that everyone will be able to get stronger at it with practice. Seemingly no consideration to divergent neurotypes, psychological trauma, physical limitations, or deep cultural differences.

It reminds me of: years ago I came across a book profiling the journey of a young western Jewish man seeking a path in Zen Buddhism, studying under gurus with other seekers in monasteries. As he progressed through his meditative practice he couldn't avoid feeling unsettled by the sense that none of it was "working" for him no matter how deeply he understood and how much he practiced. The gurus all just kept trying to help him improve his practice. Until he came to the most enlightened and compassionate guru who basically let him off the hook, saying, in essence, that this stuff will never stick to him and that he's just meant to practice Judaism.

For those who think this is a cop out; it is known that for most people the ability to learn new languages changes around puberty. The ability to learn, recognize and pronounce phonemes changes when kids are very young. Babies brains are flexible and can be shaped in many ways. Adults, not so much.

It is not impossible for all to learn this type of 'skill'. It is more difficult for many, and impossible for some.

My personal belief is that we retain the ability to learn new languages. The issue is that modern schooling has trained us to try and learn in counter-productive ways.

I believe we can learn languages by (1) concentrating on mimicking and (2) learning by speaking with others and being continuously corrected by others.

The problem is that is requires a tremendous amount of work for learner and teacher.

Think how a baby or child learns and do as much of that as possible.

Initially absolutely avoid all reading, and totally avoid learning any rules.

Improve your general ability of mimicking skills e.g. by copying singers and songs, by copying famous people in the foreign language, mimicking accents or people in your own mother tongue.

People with English as their mother tongue have some advantages - we actually recognise a huge variety of vowel sounds because various English accents contain them - we also have familiarity with a variety of grammatical constructs. We also know pronunciation and writing are completely disjoint: anyone coming from a language where you say what you read has a big disadvantage.

Much of my belief comes from talking with people that have English as their second language, and looking for their successes and failures. Some people learn English well and it's interesting to look for why them? Some mistakes are common to particular groups and it's interesting to look for the root cause.

I have applied some of the above to teach myself conversational Spanish. To test my beliefs I'm definitely keen to move onto something more difficult ( I'm middle aged): the block is that I will need to dedicate many months of effort living in another country.

> People with English as their mother tongue have some advantages - we actually recognise a huge variety of vowel sounds because various English accents contain them

Not so sure about that. For example, I noticed it takes a bit of effort to get native English speakers to pronounce the ы sound, or to get them to hear how the ь letter affects pronunciation.

> We also know pronunciation and writing are completely disjoint: anyone coming from a language where you say what you read has a big disadvantage.

I don't quite agree. I come from a language where the spelling is almost phonetic (so, not totally disjoint from pronunciation), and it's very easy for children to learn reading and writing, which means they quickly move on to more important things. Meanwhile, children learning English as a first language are stuck memorising spelling and obscure rules and exceptions just to be able to write correctly. And conversely, when they hear a new word (or name) they need to look up how to spell it. I don't see an advantage, it's just a waste of energy.

It was relatively easy for me to learn the spelling of English words because I already knew a reasonable amount of French, so it was quite intuitive to spell "restaurant" or "renaissance". But for someone with English as a first language, I suspect it would have involved a lot of memorising.

> I noticed it takes a bit of effort to get native English speakers to pronounce the ы sound, or to get them to hear how the ь letter affects pronunciation.

But you are saying English speakers can learn it? How do Romance language speakers do? I'm just making a generalisation, which is not universal and there are plenty of vowel and consonant sounds English speakers really struggle to learn.

> children learning English as a first language are stuck memorising spelling and obscure rules and exceptions just to be able to write correctly.

Absolutely: it is a serious downside of English and plenty of adults never learn to spell well. I have seen the advantages of saying it like it is spelled in Spanish. But that isn't relevant to my point that English speakers have a natural understanding that spelling is disjoint from pronunciation. It maybe doesn't help much - hearing English speakers saying words they have learnt from books is painful!

Secondly, many English speakers often try to pronounce foreign names correctly - another habit that teaches us pronunciation (a little!)

Agreed. I was pressured to meditate throughout childhood / adolescence. I’ve even spent a couple of weeks in a friggin’ ashram. It just doesn’t work for me. That’s fine, I have plenty of other ways to get into flow state, think deeply about things, be aware of my body, etc. It gripes, though, to be told yet again by random internet posters that I’m doing it wrong or ‘just haven’t tried hard enough’. People are different and different things work for different people, but meditation is way up there with lisp in its ability to attract people with sanctimoniously superior attitudes.

To you, what does it mean to “not work”? Or what would it mean for it to “work”?

I’ve meditated on and off, and find it sometimes helpful, but I can’t conceive of what it would mean for it to work, or not work.

I was being told it would help me to feel calmer, help me feel more peaceful, give me amazing insights, etc. so I'd define "work" as "fulfil one or more of those claims in some perceptible way."

It did not. I never felt any real benefit from it and I didn't enjoy the process. So to me, that's "not working."

What's your motivation for meditating? Is it something that you can tell afterwards whether you achieved it or not? And I'm not talking 'achieve' like some sigma grindset maximizing gains type BS, I mean the way if I play a video game, I'm doing it because I expect to have fun, and afterwards I can ask myself "was that fun?" and gauge the degree to which I had fun.

To me it’s somewhat analogous to exercise, eating well, and sleeping well.

The benefits are “small” in one sense, but highly leveraged in another sense.

I don’t necessarily feel that I get a lot out of any single session, aside from a mental interrupt (which could also be achieved by going for a walk, or whatever).

It’s more like, doing it consistently over time moves the needle in some very small way, almost imperceptible. Like, I’ll notice I’m a little more patient with my kids, a little less anxious during a work meeting, a little slower to get angry, a little quicker to let anger dissipate.

And if I wasn’t paying attention, these changes might be so subtle that I wouldn’t even say anything had changed, and I could easily be one who says it “doesn’t work”.

But while those changes are all small and subtle, the downstream impact can be enormous. The difference between staying angry for a minute versus an hour is often the difference between good long term relationships and divorce, or the difference between going to prison, or not. Lots of long-tail negative outcomes get avoided. And the benefit of having a lower idle anxiety level seems to have a cumulative impact, or a thing that kicks off a virtuous cycle. Like, I feel a little less anxious, so I make a less worse decision to not medicate with junk food, so I sleep a little better, and make another better decision the next day, and so on.

It’s hard to really convey, because it’s very subtle but the principle is, I think, that the difference between doing a little, and doing zero, has a way larger impact than the arithmetic calculation would suggest. Like the difference between spending a dollar more than you earn, versus spending a dollar less than you earn. It’s a $2 difference and seems insignificant, but it’s the difference between debt and a path to wealth.

For me it's the different side of a coin: for some reasons after I had a few dissociation episodes, meditating is too easy. Clear your mind? Sure. I can stare at nothing for hours and only be vaguely aware of surroundings. 15 minutes of meditation daily? I plan ahead to have 15-20 minutes more then I need in the morning, because at some point my brain would clear itself and have no thoughts as I stare at the walls in thoughtless wonder.

The only times I do clear my mind intentionally now are the times when I am waiting. Kinda like fast-traveling to the future in video games (or, indeed, meditation mechanic in Witcher games). Makes airport experience a lot better, actually.

Meditation is a tool, and no tool is useful for everyone. And some folk don't use the tool as intended.

Not trying to get you to try again, but I used to feel that way about meditation until someone pointed out the goal was not to be empty and not have thought. When you have a thought you just observe it and make note of it and go back to your breath or experience or body scan. Sometimes you will just have a billion thoughts and you can’t get past that. Other times, and the more you have a practice, this gets easier. Ultimately it’s not about meditation but being mindful as you go about your life, and that’s what you’re ultimately practicing when you are meditating. Good luck!

I'm sorry you've had that experience. It's not necessarily for everyone. And I kind of feel like with trauma therapists should do a better job making sure you've processed the trauma enough to face the darkest recesses of your mind in silence. So it sounds like that therapist wasn't the right one for you.

But for others who maybe have struggled with it but haven't entirely sworn it off, I wanted to offer the following thoughts.

> It's impossible to put a cork in all of them

I know you know this given your background, but for others reading, the point of meditation isn't to silence your mind. It's one of the most confusing things about meditation at first, and it often sends people into an anxiety feedback loop. People notice their mind isn't being silenced and start to feel like a failure for not silencing it, which makes their mind less silent etc. I have an anxious kid, and this fear feedback loop is the hardest part.

But really, stripping away the traditional/religious background, IMO the main thing is activating the parasympathetic nervous system in a controlled way. Putting aside relatively abnormal cases, if one is angry or anxious then one hasn't successfully activated the parasympathetic nervous system, even if one is sitting in a meditation posture and trying to focus on the breath. So this it's pretty easy to tell whether you're deploying this skill successfully.

From trial and error, I've found that asking people to breathe out slowly is the least error prone method to get people to successfully activate the parasympathetic nervous system. Sometimes it helps to take a breath, hold it for a few seconds and then breathe out slowly. Other methods, like telling people to take a deep breath I've found to be less effective and more prone to errors. (For example, some people try to breathe hard or fast or even hyperventilate).

Once you can do that reliably and habitually, then you can start promoting other skills, like watching your mind without judgment. But I'm not sure it helps to, for example, non-judgmentally watch yourself have a panic attack. So IMO the ability to step back from the brink should come first for a lot of people, and then the harder skills should be built on a foundation where you know you have the ability to intervene if you need to.

I really appreciate George Haas as a meditation teacher. He specializes in those of us who are "f*cked up the most" (i.e. attachment disturbances)

Who is Shinzo Young? I just did a Google search for that name and this comment was the first thing to show up.

I believe it is Shinzen Young

Yes. Stupid autocorrect.

Breathing slowly is a way to short circuit the mind.

The stream-of-thought reminded me of this depiction of meditation: https://www.sippan.se/_images/meditation.jpg :)

One of the biggest obstacles to any kind of mind-body practice is the sense that you NEED TO DO SOMETHING ELSE RIGHT NOW. It's a mental habit a lot of us build up over a life full of being busy with various tasks and concerns.

The way I get through it is to remind myself that the only reason to avoid doing anything is fear of death, and I know for sure that sitting here for 1 minute will not kill me, therefore I have no reason not to force myself to just do it.

I save comments from time to time that seem sort of obvious but still resonate with me, and this is one such comment. Thanks! :)

My mind: (1) Open that page for about 3 seconds, (2) go back to HN, (3) skim through the comments, (4) realizing the irony, (5) commenting on that

Try it again, this time keep in mind that your previous record was focusing for 3 seconds. I try to convince myself an effort is precisely as pathetic as it sounds.

Aim to make it all the way to 6 seconds. Tell yourself this is a major accomplishment for you - a 100% improvement.

Then you need to take a break, have something to eat. Stretch your muscles, do some shadow boxing and see how far you can make it beyond 12 seconds.

Scream inside your head, YES I'VE MADE IT!

The other thought processes deserve to be mocked like this.

Damn, i did the exact same...

Meditation in a nutshell.

Agreed. The powerful part is, “Back to focusing on the circle.”

And it's a bit like weight lifting. I started with just the bar. In several weeks I was lifting my body weight. You start with just one minute. Pretty soon it's effortless to calm your mind for several whenever you want.

That is an extraordinary rate of progression!

He could probably already lift that but was smart enough not to get hurt.

No I'm just very skinny. But in a sense also yeah I think I could have pulled that off without much training but yeah I'd get hurt.

Except I rarely think of goatsee when meditating

From Huberman's notes, I think we are suppose to match the expansion of the dot with an inhaling motion. The mechanics, iirc, is to increase oxygen to the brain by deliberate long inhales.

I hate timed controlled breathing exercises like that. The circle doesn't know the current oxygen needs of my body.

IMHO the whole point is your body also doesn't really know how fast it needs to breathe. Often when we're stressed we're taking fast, shallow breaths even if there's no real lion in the vicinity. By telling your body to breathe at X speed, you break the stress cycle

YMMV

My mileage does indeed vary. I always feel either oxygen-deprived or high on hyperventilation after.

Telling myself to breathe slower is fine. Just not at some predefined interval (or worse, whatever interval the yoga instructor feels like I should be breathing at)

This is kind of the basis of an entire field of yoga called Pranayama. Its translation varies, but can be roughly translated as breath control.

A lot of it is breathing slower, or faster than your body requires (including retention of breath, or holding with no air in the lungs), in order to elicit mental and physical states.

Another example of this is Wim Hof, where you over breathe intentionally and then hold the breath for extended periods.

Breath is a really interesting topic, being an autonomous system for the most part, but one which we can take voluntary control over.

If you are interested in learning more, I'd recommend the book "Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art" by James Nestor.

Edit: After trying the meditation, I also found it was a little quick if I was trying to sync my breathing to the dot. It may be intentional if the aim is to improve focus and alertness for an upcoming task, rather than relaxation!

You can breathe deeper or shallower to control that.

Maybe that's the point. Because you have to follow a certain timing, your body is not on autopilot anymore, so you have to be conscious of your oxygen needs, maybe even adjust them (for example, by calming down).

Thank you. Yes. I do too. I had asthma pretty bad as a child, and rate-limiting my air intake, or really in any way trying to ensure that my breathing is meeting some spec, is super stressful for me.

Basically how I felt in my ADHD assessments. ‘You won’t get me. I know what you are testing for. Hold the line. Hold. Oh, that’s why a sort is an expensive database function! Ooops’

I was thinking about a potential jump scare during the process and it makes me wonder if that's relegated to a specific generation (young gen x and older millenails). The early internet was chock full of things that tried to jump scare you. lol

There's a countdown in light grey at the bottom.

Ha. I was bracing for a jump scare also.

I was waiting for the Rick roll.

I was a young internet user at the turn of the century so kept waiting for a jump scare -_-

The first time I used a meditation app I could not stop laughing hysterically at the thought that the guy soothingly giving directions from the app might suddenly go BAAAAUAAARGH! just for the fun of it.

I can never trust a meditation app for exactly this reason. I know there are too many trolls out there. This also reminds me of this skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLZJxjCOplc

The first time I encountered such a jump scare was someone presenting their animation done in Macromedia Director. Not kidding, it was really traumatic in nature at the time. And I just didn’t get the fun others supposedly felt for this kind of “fun”.

Indeed, my PTSD prevents me from doing this without inspecting the source code.

YEP! Came to the comments to see if I am just paranoid.

Ahaha same, I thought about it for a few seconds

Very timely and helpful, thank you!

A suggestion: the pulse animation would look much better with ease-in / ease-out animation curves instead of the harsh linear curve it's currently using. EaseInOutSine from this cheat sheet would do fine: https://easings.net/

If you'd like to try those easings straight away, you can use this bare-bones rip-off in interactive sandbox [0]. Still basic: animation is symmetrical, so easing "in" has the same easing as "out", just reversed.

Under 2 kB total. HTML, mostly CSS and literally two lines of JS only for restarting the animation.

[0] https://myfonj.github.io/sandbox.html#%3C!doctype%20html%3E%...

Wait, why do you need anything other than CSS? Animations can have easing and loop indefinitely without JS.

Sure, you are right about infinite non-interactive CSS animations. And it's true there are simple checkbox:checked or whatever:active hacks for interactivity without JS. But for "click to (re)restart animation" there is no better cross-browser way I am aware of than toggling on some trigger attribute and toggling it off on animation end event, hence the JS.

Ok, so here is variation that contains zero JS and (ab)uses the "invisible_anchor:focus + sibling_anchor_pointing_to_previous_anchor" trick [0]. I'd prefer the original version, though. This is more or less a hack.

[0] https://myfonj.github.io/sandbox.html#%3C!doctype%20html%3E%...

Or some Newtonian like in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-txrCMvdms (9m47s)

Using tailwind. Animation should be slower and smoother now

A small piece of feedback. I started to breath naturally with the pulse of the circle then found it to be a little too fast. I think slowing the pulse down would be nice. And to add to what others have said, I think the contrast of the colors could be more pleasant. Thanks for sharing!

I feel the same. I've been using "Box Breathing" gifs* for a long while and this one here feels like I'm just making myself get out of breath with shallow breathing that do not fill my lungs. Perhaps it is the point but the page does not go into details.

* https://quietkit.com/box-breathing/

I thought the same, and then thought it's maybe slowing down? And if it isn't, it would be nice.

Right, agreed - it seems fast. What breathing frequency are you aiming for, and is there any science to it?

Also, you could think about extending to box breathing.

Same here and it actually started triggering a little bit of anxiety in doing so (I take short breaths or hold my breath when anxious). Maybe it should utilize the 4-7-8 pattern.

I think it needs a pause at the end of each animation cycle. Like, I breathe in and then wait half a second before breathing back out. Same for the other way around.

Thanks for the feedback. Slowed down and contrast issues have been addressed!

Yes, what I felt too. Is there a secret query param by chance to control the baseline speed?

Its slow now :)

Maybe it would be better if the circle didn’t have such a high contrast. I don’t want a black circle burnt into my eyes after I’m done with this exercise.

I had a slightly different reaction: I was very distracted by the visual artifacts (brain processing, not the actual image), especially around the edge of the circle.

I was as well - everytime I see one of these they also pause too briefly at the change over from inhale/exhale and back.

It's disconcerting because its not how I naturally breathe.

maybe this one works better?

https://lassebomh.github.io/box-breathing/

Indeed. I kept wondering if the circle was actually getting lighter as it got smaller or if that was just how I was perceiving it due to the afterimage and whatnot.

It does change color ... right?

This is a very HN exchange

task: stare at circle

HN, staring at the circle: they could use CSS for this instead of JS

Yes! In my periphery it looked like a polygon but when I focused on the edges it seemed like a properly antialiased circle.

Yeah I saw the same. A rounded-corner polygon.

Interesting, I saw the same!

Hover on top of page to choose bg/contrast

I actually wanted reverse, dark page with pale white circle. it felt too bright.

I use the browser extension Dark Reader and I found it a soothing low contrast.

I believe everyone who wants dark mode actually wants Dark Reader instead. Also, half of the "dark mode"-enabled sites are more toxic to my eyes than their bright versions. Dark Reader allows to set the desired brightness, contrast, grayscale, etc.

It's one of extensions that makes you instantly regret you didn't install it earlier.

Generally I prefer sites that actually implement their own dark mode.

Dark Mode Reader is good, but it's not perfect. And it makes a lot of map-based sites pretty weird.

good feedback! thanks

I enjoyed trying to tell if the circle had a 3d aspect to or not, and also trying to tell if it was completely black or actually dark dark gray. I'm not sure if I'm cognitively more focused but I'm going to try it again when I need that focus.

Speaking of Huberman, I've had great use of the physiological sigh[1] for dealing with stress.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0OBgihk2f8

I recognize the irony of posting this in a thread about maintaining attention, but I could not sit through all that salesey preamble to get to whatever the sigh is supposed to be.

Culture gripe; I wish more creators got to the meat first, and added the long drawn out explanations later. I know why they don't (views == $$), but for real. I don't need your life story, just tell me how many onions I need to buy for the recipe.

Thumbnail for that video is literally "Eliminate stress in seconds", but is an 11 minute video.

The video increases stress so that you can employ the explained destressing techniques in seconds immediately afterwards.

Note: this doesn't mean the technique takes a few seconds, just that the technique will be useful in seconds

> views == $$

No, in the current Youtube ecosystem it's "watchtime == $$". Maybe you meant that anyway, because it matches your actual comment way better.

But if it was done that way, wouldn't the placebo effect be weaker?

A big upvote for this too.

Incredibly skeptical that it could work, but repeating it 5-10 times in a row significantly calms me and fills me with a warm relaxed feeling for at least 10-15 minutes.

Didn’t know it has a name, but I frequently do that when I’m not calm enough to sleep.

I do that, box breathing or even start a simple breathing meditation. Makes me yawn almost instantly.

Short in, slow out when I’m almost sleepy enough, guided 4-7-8-0 (4 seconds breathing in, hold for 7, breathe out for 8) when I need to sleep but am simply not tired enough, and guided box breathing for stress.

cool. so exhale longer than inhaling and repeat multiple times. I think this works. thanks for sharing

It's more of a double-take on the inhale. 1) Inhale 2) Microscopic pause 3) Inhale some more 4) Exhale longer than inhaling.

From what I've noticed, more than two inhales is fine, it still works. It just shouldn't be an uncomfortable amount of air in the lungs.

I've also noticed that my dog does this when he's about to go to sleep.

yeah basically it is how you breathe after sobbing intensely.

I waited around 30 seconds for this page to load before I gave up.

I can't say it improved my focus but I did appreciate the 30s of calm. Good work!

I like the idea, and the simplicity of the site.

Two minor requests:

- Ability to hide the timer at the bottom completely (one less distraction for my brain)

- Dark mode (or maybe selectable colors?) -- I think it could be useful right before going to bed, clear my mind out etc.

Ideally, both could be saved to local storage so the settings persist.

Thank you for the great suggestions! Will add them to the list

Timer hidden. Dark mode addded!

This is a bit like one of my personal focus hacks. When I'm struggling, especially in the morning, I'll often set a five minute timer, and tell myself: "surely you can focus on something for five minutes." This is usually enough to get me over the hump, and in the mood to actually get stuff done.

I do think there's something that happens after a short period of intentional focus, where you cross a "barrier" into a state of mind that is more conducive to long-term focus. But there's definitely sometimes real resistance to crossing that barrier.

This sounds similar to the "pomodoro method".

The problem with pomodoro is eventually you learn that its a trick just to get you started, so your brain eventually goes back to just wanted to never start again.

That's how it feels for me anyways though.

No technique works without enough genuine desire and motivation to accomplish whatever it is you're aiming to accomplish. (And the belief that you actually have a chance of accomplishing it.) If things like Pomodoro or similar aren't working, then the next step is to figure out if you believe in the path you're on, and are motivated enough to continue on it.

*And a working executive function system in your brain. No amount of genuine desire and motivation can fix that issue.

Of course, I'm just saying I see Pomodoro as more of a mental trick than anything else. More than anything just starting is the most important part.

The abrupt reset snapped me out of my thoughts which felt kind of unpleasant to me. Unless it is an intentional part of the experience, I would probably use a smoother end animation. Something that gently prepares you to get back to work (even if it just for a few seconds) instead of kicking you straight back into the world with unfinished thoughts.

Agreed. Maybe the circle can shrink to it's final size, and then have the word 'restart' appear.

Expanding it to full page would work.

thanks for the feedback! Yea not intentional. Just made it smooth out at bit at the end

I am SO COGNITIVELY FOCUSED on reading this comment section.

Firstly... my ADHD did not allow me to complete this.

Secondly... My distrust of the internet did not let me complete this as it told me a jump scare was guaranteed to happen eventually.

Life's tough when you voluntarily place yourself in the role of the victim and give away all your power.

That phrasing, "wouldn't let me complete this", is a self-defeating way to talk to yourself.

Switching it up a bit can make a significant difference, for example: "That first try was a struggle, it might take some practice for me to improve".

--

In case you or other HN friends are curious and find this technique intriguing, it stems from the philosophy suggesting healthy thinking can reduce distress and promote well-being. The field of study is called Cognitive (or Dialectical) Behavioral Therapy, aka CBT / DBT. Millions of people have found it an effective framework and strategy to permanently improve the way we speak to ourselves and relate to the world.

Here's the book I liked most (but there is an ocean of them):

DBT Skills Training Manual by Marsha Linehan

https://www.amazon.com/DBT%C2%AE-Skills-Training-Manual-Seco...

While you're alive, you might as well live your best life.

Sincerely, your buddy Metadat

p.s. sorry for the medium-length text wall, I didn't realize this would take be more than a sentence, but after initially posting only the first sentence, it was downvoted and it was apparent some explanation would be more helpful.

Worth mentioning DBT is a subset of CBT, not a synonym.

https://www.skylandtrail.org/4-differences-between-cbt-and-d...

DBT originally stems from therapies for Borderline Personality Disorder. While it has applications beyond that for things like anxiety and bipolar management, it may or may not be the right answer for people who don't struggle with negative impulses or behaviors.

I'd probably start with sources on more general CBT for someone just needing a nudge or who is more depressive than impulsive.

Our ADHD might actually be an advantage for meditation. Just not in the pop-culture mediation format that is commonly used here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvuVhCIQgfQ

Would love to know your feedback on this https://breathe.noisli.com - don't worry, no surprises :)

This isn't related to the linked page, but taking a quick look at your noisli.com homepage, I'm fairly certain there are some low hanging accessibility issues you could address. Off the top of my head:

- Your text on that background colour does not provide enough contrast, my guess is that it won't pass WCAG AA requirements

- Keyboard navigation using Tab causes focus to jump down the page's content, skipping its navigation and CTA links

You can use extensions such as "axe DevTools" and "Accessibility Insights for Web" to run some quick automated tests to uncover more issues.

I was expecting Rick Roll, really disappointed.

If Huberman mentioned it in a podcast, it must be true and groundbreaking way to hack your brain to a better life!

I can't wait to stare at this thing !!!!

Huberman's pretty good at taking research he doesn't have the expertise to assess out of context and turning it into some protocol that everyone needs to do.

The vast majority of things he talks about, if beneficial at all, are at the margins and people stand to gain far more from doing things like exercising and eating vegetables more.

Edit: Alan Flanagan has spoken on the Huberman paradox in detail: - https://www.instagram.com/p/CkLPU7BMiIN/ - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Bgc3uGu0uoI

I have a nearly identical take, and every time I try to explain to someone that there are much simpler and higher impact changes they could make to their life, they can't seem to comprehend it.

It's always met with something that sounds like: buT tHe handsome NEuroSciENtiSt sAid !!!

Who's Alan Flanagan and why should I listen to his opinion on Huberman?

From what I can tell, Huberman is a neuroscience Ph.D. whereas Flanagan is one in nutritional science is that right? If so, by credentials alone, Huberman seems like a better reference in matters of the nervous system.

Note that I have no horse in this race, I'm really just curious!

Alan has an MSc and PhD in nutrition and runs Alinea nutrition.

I can't speak on Huberman's assessment of research in the neuroscience space, where he has expertise. Alan has done some breakdowns of Huberman's broad claims related to nutrition, and how they're generally hyperbolic and lacking sufficient evidence (ie they're not based on studies that show outcomes in actual humans in a controlled fashion). The folks at Barbell Medicine have spoken to some of his generic health/fitness claims as well, to similar effect.

I think Huberman uses his platform and title to paint overly broad strokes about all kinds of things outside of his expertise. Some of this could be attributed to a platform like twitter that prioritizes small amounts of text, but overall I think it's disingenuous especially as someone claiming to be an expert. I think if he were more interested in helping people he would focus less on money/fame/views and take a more nuanced approach, instead of (mis)leading people to change based on extremely limited evidence. The problem is he wouldn't be able to churn out so much content if he did so.

I have no reason to doubt any of his academic qualifications. But I have a lot of appreciation for the breadth and depth of knowledge required to speak confidently about the latest evidence in a field. This becomes a problem when the field is outside of one's expertise. Alan goes into this in detail on his instagram post.

I realize the post is based on something Huberman said within his expertise. But I think the context is important to understand, as it makes me wary of listening to him in general.

For 90% of people the most in impactful thing they can do for their health, focus, and success is to eat well and sleep well. Unfortunately no one actually wants to do this. Instead they'd rather find "life hacks". I get the appeal, I honestly do it too. But the most important stuff here is, as often, pretty boring.

Haha. Well have you tried meditation?

only after breaking a fast with a cold plunge and sauna afterward

if you didn't time your caffeine intake this morning it's all a wash /s

This is basically the "Breathe" meditation helper from the mindfulness app on the apple watch (not sure if Android/WearOS has something similar…) Useful if you don't have one but the watch version is a bit handier for my use.

Indeed seeing this reminded me of the Breathe app, which was renamed to Mindfulness and has Reflect and Breathe exercises. It’s nice because you can configure the breathing rate, the visuals are pretty nice looking, and I even like the haptics.

Huberman seems to be well-respected, but I just can’t shake my feeling that he’s constantly trying to sell me stuff.

Don't shake that feeling. He has a whole line of supplements that he has endorsed, and you better believe there's money in what he's doing.

He talks about supplements sometimes but I don't ever feel like he pushes them and usually says you can get them wherever but I suggest here. I don't agree with everything he says but it's clear he puts a ton of time and research into the episodes he does and I don't blame him for trying to make money. So many of his guest episodes contain invaluable knowledge and that's a fine trade off for me.

His podcast is sponsored by Athletic Greens. He has promoted their product in every single episode that I've listened to. That's a bit more than sometimes.

In general he's good at not being so pushy, but that part bothers me. There's nothing explicitly wrong, but it's not a great look. And it's a little bit unethical depending on how you think about it.

One of the lesser discussed aspects of ADHD is rapid eye movement. This exercise brought mine into focus. Every ~18 seconds I noticed the circle jumped to another size as my gaze was rapidly averted and reset. I tried it a few times and focused intensely and had the same outcome. It’s one of the ways neurotypical folks can intuitively use to (subconsciously) discover our traits and deem us untrustworthy. Shifty…

If you find that last statement to be outlandish, please take a look at these resources.

https://neuroclastic.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Thin-sli...

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep40700

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-41654-9

One more on ADHD eye movements from an interesting study that used VR in a novel way:

Based on these studies, ADHD manifests as deficits of goal-directed attention, such as reduced ability to suppress saccades, less accurate saccades to target location, and difficulties in maintaining fixation on a target object.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-24552-4

This does not work if you have ADHD and you notice how you can see your own reflection in the darkness of the dot and oh look I forgot to shave this morning… wait where did the dot go??

I agree... the first (few) time(s) I did this kind of thing I could not for the life of me keep my mind on track, instead it was jitteringly jumping to this or that visual detail, this or that sound, or whatever spark of thought popped up.

Every single time I could not help but hallucinate gigantic infrastructure from the tiniest speck of dust, and I further digressed into blaming my stupid self for being unable to perform such a simple task.

It felt hopeless.

I felt hopeless.

But I kept at it, a day at a time. A moment at a time. I accepted that failure is part of the process. I let go of blame. Oh, here's a thought, oh well, I lost focus; well so be it, let the thought float, a soap bubble drifting wherever it fancies, I could physically feel it wandering around my head while I went back towards the goal, if only for just a little bit, if only for just a little while.

And then, one day, the magic happened. The stray thought vanished, the bubble faded away. I did notice the thought popping up as usual, I did take note of its presence, but I did not notice its later absence. I was there, in the moment, but I did not notice being there in the moment. I only noticed that retrospectively.

I had let go.

I had let go on my mind, but also, and perhaps more critically I had let go of the illness. I am not ill. I am different. This is who I am. This is me. There are others like me.

It does not work at first with ADHD, but long term it does work, and it's a fantastic tool for one to manage ADHD without medication. It's training, like so many other things, one can't reasonably expect to be good at it overnight. And with continued training it gets easier.

Mind you it's not a silver bullet, but now I have one more tool up my sleeve in that endless struggle.

True, but this isn't really something the page author can address

Are you sure it doesn’t work with repeated or sustained effort? Maybe it’s too short, surely one single 60-second sample isn’t enough to know, right? I was just googling a little, while there isn’t a ton of research, there seems to be growing clinical evidence that mindfulness & meditation practices do help people with ADHD. I don’t know that the 1 minute dot counts as mindfulness practice, but I’m also not aware of reasons to count it out.

https://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/adhd-mindfulness-meditation-y...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4694553/

https://www.healthline.com/health/adhd/adhd-meditation#get-c...

I read your comment before going to the site. After starting the session, within a few seconds my mind drifted off into noticing how I couldn't see my reflection since my laptops screen is matte and why I prefer matte screens over a glossy one...and I've lost track of the dot too :/

I first got distracted by the "dot" starting to change size, then noticed my reflection while thinking about how the animation was probably supposed to represent breathing and ... yeah, I gave up when I started thinking about Black Mirror because I was thinking about how this problem could have been avoided and black is more reflective than white.

nothing to do with ADHD. meditation takes practice, whether you have ADHD or not.

Of course it takes practice regardless of if you have ADHD or not, but ability to focus on something absolutely has something to do with ADHD.

right, so just like pretty much every other aspect of life you can still do it with ADHD, it's just a bit more difficult than it is for the average person. hardly seems worth pointing out when it applies to virtually everything.

Responding "nothing to do with ADHD" to someone complaining that their ADHD is making it harder to concentrate is simply incorrect.

they weren't "complaining that their ADHD is making it harder to concentrate", they were claiming that it straight up doesn't work if you have ADHD, which is nonsense.

meditation takes practice for everybody, it literally is absolutely nothing to do with ADHD.

You can try this https://breathe.noisli.com

and the dot changes are not smooth but jump when the browser gets lost on other tasks.

:/

You could make some $ if you presented an ad instead of a dot.

Gamify it, pro paid version shows more and more distracting ads on next levels. Buy bundle with adult ads etc.

And then port it to the Apple Vision Pro to leverage eye tracking.

haha love these ideas

Made it to 45 seconds before looking at the clock - though i had the mouse over the circle so it was greyed and in the middle I needed to move it around because it was distracting.

Cool site though. How long does the "mental boost" last for? I.e. 1 min of focus for x amount of boost?

Good question on how much boost. I'm not sure. Will try to dig up the original studies

Not trying to make work - more just a curiosity. :)

Huberman passes studies conclusions as settled science.

Huberman wildly oversells and overgeneralizes. Apparently that's what listeners want.

I think he’s just a curious guy who loves to experiment on himself, and talk (a lot) about it. The problem comes when people listen to his podcast looking for magic bullets and take everything as strictly true or false.

Isn't that what science is? Our understanding changes all the time based on new experiments. "Settled science" isn't a thing imho.

Science is the art of prediction. When I say settled science I mean that the predictability has overcome all possible experiments so far. For example, how planets move around a star is settled science.

Huberman sometimes passes the results of a single experiment as if there are no more hurdles to overcome.

And uses a lot of words in doing so. “Effect” and “size” together are usually absent.

Now that I've been acquired by a cat, I've learned to sit quietly for longer periods. She has endless patience if she's not disturbed.

Yes. What is going on in their minds?

My cat would sometimes sit close and directly facing the wall, eyes open, for many minutes at a time.

Maybe your cat was angry with you and that was the way to tell you "I don't want to talk to you"

Here's a free, ad-free phone app that does a slightly more engaging version of the same thing: https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/the-breathing-app/id1285982210 , https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ayny.breat...

The technique it implements is called resonance breathing AKA resonance frequency breathing: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8924557/

If you've wanted to try meditation but haven't made time, try 3 minutes in that app and work up to 5-10. 5 minutes is enough to measure a difference in HRV.

That was amazingly disturbing.

I'm generally not disturbed by my noisy visual field, but this.. Giant halo around the breathing dot, as the contrast faded in and out the roundness started to disintegrate and as it changed size while fading to grey it started straight up breaking into geometric patterns, like the geometry was chopped up around the edges.

I have no problem looking into nothingness for a long time (I can stare at ceilings until the lines disappear, or into the sky until the clouds seem to meld away)..

Given how this was probably not intended to be a visual illusion, it did a great job of it! :D

Nice one! The first version of Sit. was just a dot to stare at: https://sit.sonnet.io

(Felt like too much UI for me so I dropped it.)

I enjoyed this version more. While less focus oriented it was more calming than the high-contrast dot. thanks for sharing!

It would be great if you had a link or source for the claims on the page before you start.

Instead of spending a minute reading their sources, you could just try it out and see if it works for you.

Fun!

I wonder if this lets you measure the average attention span of visitors? I'd be curious to see the impact on the average of the various platforms where this is shared.

My gut says it should breath out slower than inhale. (shrink slower than expand)

I have a fun test where I blank my mind and look at the seconds on a clock. This is great to see how fucked up your state of mind is. Ideally there are no automated bodily processes that override that what you intend to do on the short term. That you should sleep eat drink, go to the toilet and stretch your legs is obvious. It's worth fighting those processes a little bit but unless you have a sensible excuse (like losing weight or driving a car) there is no need to meddle with them. Short term distractions from within should be suppressed when trying to get something done but also embraced when you are not.

I love the idea that narrowing your field of view makes you more focused and do work with less effort and faster. I do think easier is not always your friend. A fancy bicycle that takes less effort and shortens your trip does make the trip less of an exercise. Maybe you should widen your vision before easy tasks.

as a side project - neat

as a focus tool or means of understanding the self - anyone that hasn’t tried to just sit or lay quietly, for the sake of doing so, ought to. it isn’t hard, it isn’t easy, it just isn’t something modern society really seems to encourage, let alone understand. you might find you feel different once you are done than from when you began. that might be a good thing.

On an iPhone mini, the circle at maximum size extends a bit beyond the left and right screen edges (slightly more on the left it seems, so not exactly centered). In addition, the page is scrollable vertically by about 10% (except that the “About” doesn’t scroll), despite there being no content that would require scrolling.

Back to focus on the dot that flattens on the edges.

I started trying meditation ten years ago, and initially, it was going well. However, after I developed anxiety, the imagery in meditation often triggered a sense of panic in me. Does anyone know about the relationship between long-term meditation and depersonalization? There are some papers discussing this topic.

I'm not sure if this is exactly what you're talking about, but i'm going through a book called 'The Mind Illuminated' and the author has a section of the book called the 'Dark Night', which talks about how you can have a lot of issues if your meditation practice develops but your everyday life does not reflect it. He mentions a specific type of anxiety comes with this as well. My be worth looking into.

Thanks for your reply, I am going to check this book. We've been talking a lot about the advantage of meditation in this society, but it seems there are also some dark sides of it...

The year is 2024 and a website requires running untrusted scripts on your computer to display one dot on the screen.

I like it! Have you considered adding a little easing to the animation so that the changes are more gradual?

Neat idea and implementation!

I'm a bit jaded from the internet so I couldn't relax. I was waiting for something to jump out or a big eyeball or something.

the white and black contrast was nice... though it started to mess with my eyes as I stared. maybe awkward for light/strobe sensitive folks?

it messed with my eyes during (there would a white-blue-ish halo around the circle as it retracts), and _after_ (I saw a white circle of the size of the black circle) for a few seconds.

Not that I had any subsequent tasks at hand, but thanks.

Few things I'd consider:

1. Make it to not stop when the time's out. New users will wonder if a minute passed and see 0:00, happy. Regular users will know the trick and will learn to spend as much time as they need around a minute, instead of feeling interrupted. Some will be angry, they failed anyway.

2. Make the "dot" smaller and blurry to avoid sharp halo.

3. Fade-in unintrusive "vvv" under 0:00 to suggest scrolling down for a random short advice/info. What was expected, how to deal next time, and so on. Educational and praising component.

4. Dark mode for those who can't browser extensions.

5. Click on a circle is probably barely discoverable due to the nature of the process. I'd push it down to #3.

For all the ADHD people saying that we are unable to meditate, just know that ADHD might be beneficial in some forms of meditation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvuVhCIQgfQ

I found the animation end point and start point to be rather abrupt. Can you add/tweak the easing function so the stopping isn’t sudden? For me it produces a cognitive thunk that takes me out of concentration on breathing.

Otherwise it seems it could be effective.

It looks like the hackernewsverse really needed this.

What unexpected positivity in the comments! And when I read this I feel somewhat more connected to you others. It’s not just text that was already plastered here. It is someone’s written thoughts.

I started looking at it and forced myself to not look somewhere else. Without directly looking I saw some vague thing below the circle. Was it a timer? Was it some kind of "too bad you lose" text. I did not watch.

Yeah, I saw that, and Didn't Look (I'm so proud).

How can that be useful for people who are following the instructions? (Very strange.)

Recite your baseline.

> And blood-black nothingness began to spin... a system of cells interlinked within cells interlinked within cells interlinked within one stem... and dreadfully distinct against the dark, a tall white fountain played.

So, does the fact that I have zero trouble focusing on the dot for 60 seconds mean I DON'T have ADHD, contrary to what so many people on social media have been trying to convince me?

Very nice :)

Feedback: mostly I need to do this at work currently, which means I am going to retreat to a quiet place and grab my phone.

Phone Screens going to sleep and the thing being interrupted by tapping anywhere on the screen are not compatible. Not sure if other people face this issue, but for me tapping anywhere on the screen in order to not make the phone go to sleep should not interrupt or restart this meditation. A small X in a corner would be better.

Nit: The scrolling on your site is horrible broken on mobile. Keeps rubber banding and bouncing around.

Ack. Just applied a fix on the scroll. Not sure what to do with when mobile phone goes to sleep. Will look into it

Awesome project! Reminds me of donothingfor2minutes.com from Calm, but with a different end goal of focus instead of calm.

Regarding mobile phones going to sleep, Wake lock [1] might help, unless you can reduce to 59s since I believe 1m is the threshold (make sure to request within the context of the user hitting "start"). Unfortunately on older mobile browsers [2], the best workaround I found was using this NoSleep library[3].

Source: ran into this same issue when building https://www.phonefreehour.com

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WakeLock

[2] https://caniuse.com/wake-lock

[3] https://github.com/richtr/NoSleep.js

I could only make it for 30 seconds before I couldn't stand the sharp corner in the animation curves any longer and opened the Dev Tools to try to fix the easing! :)

in say the late 90's, i remember getting an email with a link to a webpage that explained, "your CRT can be used as a camera, and if you stay in position in front of your screen we'll take a picture of you and display it"

i'm maybe 12, and thinking of all sorts of things as i sat proudly waiting for an image of me to come back.

after 15 odd seconds, i was shown a picture of a laughing primate. who was neither me or human.

staring at this circle, i thought i was gonna get pranked again

I fell for this one when I was 10. Was a fun mix of terror and amusement.

And now you've meta sidetracked me with your Show HN post.

Sorry :D Back to your task!

Now I'm back again to view your reply. I'll get nothing done now (which isn’t much different than before this).

Related, on the meditation side, "Sit" was posted on here the other day

https://sit.sonnet.io/

Feedback:

- This is great to link to breathing

- After reading multiple breathing books (Breath by James Nester, Outlive by Peter Attia, Oxygen Advantage, etc.), there's a lot of evidence to breath slower. Specifically, 5.5 seconds in, and 5.5 seconds out, make the dot match or be closer to matching that rate could actually cause a lot of physical benefit by people matching with it

- Alternative if you don't want that, make it a control setting so someone (like myself) can do it.

A friend of mine was asked to do "cohérence cardiaque" breathing exercises so I made them something similar [1]. The circle will slowly change hue, before cycling back to blue after about 5 minutes (They were supposed to do this exercise for 5 minutes and I thought having a timer wouldn't be relaxing)

[1] https://souf.dev/cc

I just get some error after gray ball was dispear from screen

Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information).

main-b85113564a892656.js:1 DOMException: Failed to execute 'removeChild' on 'Node': The node to be removed is not a child of this node.

I like it, but it overflows on my iPhone SE screen.

Thanks. I will check it. Let me know if it helps you with mental focus after (It actually does for me).

iPhone 13pro also slightly overflows left and right side when circle expands to its max size

Huberman’s opinion on cognitive focus; possibly an opinion he has some authority on!!

(As opposed to all the other opinions he seems to love to opine)

why he only has authority on cognitive focus?

I assume because he’s a neuroscientist/neurobiologist, so this would be in his personal field of expertise.

The problem of focus is a problem of motivation, you could band aid it by doing this but if you can’t solve why you are not drawn to the task you will always have this issue.

Can you focus hours playing a good game? Yes? Then why is this game innately making you focus and your task isn’t? Maybe it can be looked at differently? Can it be fixed?

I often think this to myself. Why is it when I start on something "new and shiny" I get this burst of enthusiasm and motivation, but when it loses its novelty it becomes hard work?

I keep trying to think if there is some way I can trick my brain into thinking things are always interesting and novel so that I can reliably get into a flow state and feel happier about what I'm doing.

Good to get people to try things for mental health. Huberman has a ton of content.

I’ve used this one and it’s pretty good also. Trataka meditation with Dr. K, a gamer->monk->doctor.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=vBdgpxqYkQ0

Related term is trataka (see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...)

Nice work! Does the trick for me.

Tangentially, I would love to have something like this in which I can "program" my own breathwork routines (reps and sets including breath holds). Been trying various apps, but haven't yet found one that ticks all my boxes. (Tips welcome.)

I would also like to know! Breathwork is important and it'd be nice to follow some routines and also somehow track my breath during sessions or throughout the day

> ...has been proven to...

I came here looking for the paper or research that proves this. Do you have a source?

I usually watch my desktop background or other art. The more you watch an art piece the more interesting nuances you tend to discover. This could also ruin an at first perfect looking art piece once you see discover some very disturbing details ;P.

about 20 seconds in: Can I vape while focusing?

My ADHD (in Darth Vader voice): "Your powers are weak, old man."

Awesome! I've added this to CJS Chrome extension and randomly (2%) it will throw me to the site. So during the day I'll do some breathwork to manage stress and get into focus.

Great work, helped me to calm down a bit!

There was a bit of jumpscare for me at the end though: when the circle jumps back to being a button again. May I suggest adding a slower deflation?

Trigger warning: I have narcolepsy and the dot induced a cataplexy

I recommend https://breathly.app/

It's open source, runs on iOS and Android and has aboslutely no clutter.

Thank you! I watched a podcast episode with Rick Rubin and Andrew Huberman and they did a breathing exercise at the beginning with an app like this. Rick Rubin never mentioned the name of the app and when I tried to search the app store for something like this it was all freemium junk.

I got so annoyed I was about to make my own damn app, but now I don't have to.

IMHO the breaths are too fast.

There is a type of breathing recommended for calming the body which is something like 4 seconds in, hold 4 seconds, 4 seconds out, wait 4 seconds, repeat.

Went from start to finish, but it hasn't helped a bit. :(

The button doesn't work without JS enabled, but just staring at the "start" button for 1 minute would probably work just as well right?

I hoped for something from /r/unexpected or /r/AbruptChaos at the end to verify that my focus really improved ;-)

This reminds me of the old Headspace meditation app circle that was used to help steady breathing before beginning a session. I like it!

The mindfulness app that ships with Vision Pro has a similar 3D sphere thing made of what look like flower pedals, it’s definitely a nice aid to the meditation.

Haha yea. Thanks!

Maybe it's placebo, but imo it worked pretty strongly! For about 30 minutes, I got a decent increase in work done

I tried it. I almost fell asleep (not a joke). I still felt drowsee during the next task (writing this comment).

I stopped after a few seconds because I thought will staring at a black circle just give me eye strain (again)?

Nice. The pulse is a bit too fast for syncing breathing I think. Also, exhales should be slower than inhales.

I am not sure if I was focusing or I waited for something else to happen, for example a zombie to pop up screaming.

I think the instructions need to be further clarified. We should match the expansion of the dot with our inhales?

Started it, then almost immediately got a text from daycare and clicked away. I guess I'll try again later.

I kept thinking “all hail hypnotoad” and waiting for a jumpscare. I did feel remarkably calmer towards the end.

Tried it and love it. Super simple. Does what it says on the tin and nothing else. Thanks for making it!