Programmer from Birmingham, AL, currently employed as a full stack web developer for EBSCO (working primarily with Magento), and learning Rust in my free time.
Something that really helps me when I can't focus is listening to repetitive music. For example, I really like the Animal Crossing soundtrack, and there are videos on YouTube where the songs are looped for anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour. Most days I'll put those on and it helps. Songs that I know well and have listened to many times also qualify, because they become a kind of energizing background noise, but most of the time I try to avoid anything with lyrics. I also include caffeine, which works similarly to prescription drugs (i.e. stimulants such as Vyvanse) or pressure because it stimulates the areas of the brain in which people with ADD are deficient; with ADD, a lack of stimulation is the primary issue when it comes to executive dysfunction. However, because caffeine is so abundant and available in many first world countries, many people develop a tolerance early on in life, causing it to lose effectiveness unless one decides to take a tolerance break or up their dosage. Lately L-theanine has become popular because it potentiates the focus enhancing effects of caffeine, and reduces the negative side effects like anxiety. I've gotten a good bit of benefit from taking these supplements with my caffeinated drinks and definitely recommend it.
When it comes to memorizing and retaining information, I like to make flash cards for terms and ideas that are new to me, and core concepts relating to the tool, language, etc. that I'm learning. This causes me to take a break from what I'm reading to repeat the information back to myself through writing. Then I can quiz myself throughout the week by shuffling the cards into a random order, drawing them sequentially and saying the definitions out loud to myself. For example in my Rust stack I have a card titled "Ownership." When I draw this card I'd say something like: "Each variable has an owner. The owner is the scope that the variable belongs to. Variables are transferred into a new scope or copied depending on how they're passed to a function," etc., and then compare what I remembered of it to the notes on the back. If it's something I got wrong, or I missed an important aspect, I'll prioritize practicing on that thing.
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Something that really helps me when I can't focus is listening to repetitive music. For example, I really like the Animal Crossing soundtrack, and there are videos on YouTube where the songs are looped for anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour. Most days I'll put those on and it helps. Songs that I know well and have listened to many times also qualify, because they become a kind of energizing background noise, but most of the time I try to avoid anything with lyrics. I also include caffeine, which works similarly to prescription drugs (i.e. stimulants such as Vyvanse) or pressure because it stimulates the areas of the brain in which people with ADD are deficient; with ADD, a lack of stimulation is the primary issue when it comes to executive dysfunction. However, because caffeine is so abundant and available in many first world countries, many people develop a tolerance early on in life, causing it to lose effectiveness unless one decides to take a tolerance break or up their dosage. Lately L-theanine has become popular because it potentiates the focus enhancing effects of caffeine, and reduces the negative side effects like anxiety. I've gotten a good bit of benefit from taking these supplements with my caffeinated drinks and definitely recommend it.
When it comes to memorizing and retaining information, I like to make flash cards for terms and ideas that are new to me, and core concepts relating to the tool, language, etc. that I'm learning. This causes me to take a break from what I'm reading to repeat the information back to myself through writing. Then I can quiz myself throughout the week by shuffling the cards into a random order, drawing them sequentially and saying the definitions out loud to myself. For example in my Rust stack I have a card titled "Ownership." When I draw this card I'd say something like: "Each variable has an owner. The owner is the scope that the variable belongs to. Variables are transferred into a new scope or copied depending on how they're passed to a function," etc., and then compare what I remembered of it to the notes on the back. If it's something I got wrong, or I missed an important aspect, I'll prioritize practicing on that thing.