the.com/concentration
the rare superpower that lets you ignore everything in order to finish anything
means The act of focusing all your mental effort on a single task, or the degree to which something is packed densely into one place.
from From the Latin 'con-' (together) plus 'centrum' (center) — literally a drawing of things toward a common middle point. The word arrived in English in the 17th century by way of French 'concentrer,' first in the chemist's sense of boiling a solution down until its substance crowds together. Only later did the mind borrow the image: gathering scattered thoughts to a single center, the way you'd reduce a sauce.
- attention span
- Average focus before distraction is now under 47 seconds
- flow state
- Deep focus can suppress your sense of time entirely
- willpower drain
- Sustained focus burns glucose like physical exertion
- single channel
- The brain cannot truly multitask, only rapidly switch
- camptown solution
- Caffeine works by blocking sleepiness, not adding alertness
auschwitz-birkenau — nazi concentration camp in poland where ~1.1 million people were murdered, 1940-1945
treblinka — nazi extermination camp in poland where ~900,000 jews were killed, 1942-1943
gulag labor camps — soviet forced labor camps in siberia where millions died under stalin, 1930s-1950s