It's getting harder to focus every day

"Beyond the sources of biologically based ADHD, there are a lot of people who act as if they have ADHD but on close inspection turn out not to have the diagnosable condition. These are the people who have ADHD-like symptoms caused by the conditions of modern life. Their “ADHD” is a response to the massive increase in stimuli that now bombard our brains and our world....

"Modern life has trained our brains to go faster and faster, to do more and more, to receive and transmit 24/7, and to require constant stimulation—be it from movies, TV, conversation, even news, as well as the minute-to-minute living of our lives. Most of us can go no more than a few seconds without looking for a screen."

It is likely to me that different people have different breaking points, and so one person may recognize the introduction of the smartphone or debut of TikTok as the point where they lost the ability to focus, and another may date it to the rise of LLMs.

Hallowell, E. M., & Ratey, J. J. (2021). ADHD 2.0: New science and essential strategies for thriving with distraction—from childhood through adulthood.

Something I do when I struggle to focus is to add different stripped down user accounts to my computer.

I wanted to dabble in rust so I added a user called ~rs that literally only has access to two application hotkeys (via niri). super+enter opens a terminal, F1 opens the offline rust documentation. Yeah I can just log out and scroll HN, but there's a enough friction to that, that it doesn't really happen very often.

Within a year, my hyper-focus abilities I remember having as a teen starting flowing back. In the last 5 years I have done the best work of my career, including creating the first fully deterministic Linux distribution, building a community around it, helping start 3 companies, learned endless new skills.

I am not reachable or able to reach the internet every second of every day, and in the modern world that sounds scary. Yet I have a family, an active social life, frequently travel, meet new people every week, co-running two companies while actively developing new tech with daily progress, etc.

All of those things were -accelerated- by me being intentionally offline whenever I am not at a desk.

I gave up on facebook in 2010 and twitter in 2020ish. I never developed the habit for other social media. I turn off slack and email for the first 45 minutes of each hour. If the server is on fire, call me. That's why I have a phone. Oh, and I have an old-school non-smart phone for phone calls and it often lives in a different room from where I work. I run a TOTP authenticator on a tablet that's not configured to receive any messages.

HN and an occasional YouTube video are my only online distractions. In my advanced age I've lost the desire to tell everyone how wrong they are, which seems to be the national sport of online comments sections. (Though, HN, you're much better than most places.) I've been getting into GMRS lately and it's hard to turn off the radio during work days, but I have been able to do it. Maybe I should write a similar article saying "the net doesn't distract me, but dang if I can't go 10 minutes without thinking about people I know via GMRS."

The author of this piece makes an observation about bullshit vs. attention that is probably worth looking into. My last several jobs have included less bullshit, but a lot more documentation. Which is to say, the docs I write seem to have actual applicability to a real business problem and it's solution. There's little busy work that only serves to prove that a remote VP has more people working for him.

I think what I'm trying to say is a) it is possible to strengthen your attention gland. I'm happy to see the author at least trying. And... b) maybe there's a correlation between perceived bullshit and ability to focus. This needs more research.

It's difficult for me to separate whether this is a result of other changes in my life over time or simply a reflex of ageing in general, though I do think it's a wider societal shift. In the same way that older people find it difficult to watch newer movies (and vice-versa), there is a certain pace associated with culture as well. We have, on average, shifted from books to TikTok in the span of a generation.

I don't know if anyone has a solution that's not straight up quitting the internet cold turkey. My attempt so far has been meditating 50 minutes a day following "The Mind Illuminated" by Culadasa as a progress guide for increasing my mindfulness.

The most recent lesson I've learned is that allowing mind wandering and daydreaming can be a good thing. As a kid I read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, and took away a misconstrued toolkit for dealing with an active mind. The whole book was about emphasizing the importance of being present in the moment, and I tried to carry that out by trying to silence my internal monologue and being frustrated whenever I found my mind thinking about something random and not processing direct conscious experience. That felt horrible and was completely counterproductive to being able to live normally, and now I'm trying to re-establish a relationship with my mind where I can welcome random thoughts while still being able to get things done.

Buy an Amazfit 6 watch, has alarms, clock, health stats, memos, weather, maps, and GPS workout.

Turn off nearly all phone notifications. Do not allow any phone to AmaZfit notifications. Don't have your phone physically attached to you.

You need your phone with you? Backpack. Never in pockets.

All sudden it is incredibly easy to focus.

We all understand this for physical exercise, I think we need to understand the same principles apply to skills.

- blocking social media everyday til 2pm(i like working from 5-1 everyday), i use freedom app for that

- having a "distraction" tablet with 2fa on the social media I use, so I can only use distracting things there and not on my computer and iphone.

- when work requires just thinking, I bring my remarkable tablet to a coffeeshop or coworking and work just off of it.

- for avoiding staying behind on social media trends, etc, i built Analog Reader to read newsletters, best tweets from specific people and articles i save for later. It becomes a printed newspaper I can bring anywhere. I have a hacker news edition that runs everyday that showed this article for today and thats why im here lol.

We should be careful where we spend our limited attention on.

Until the real problem is identified...which IMO is that programming itself is just harder to concentrate on in 2026 than it was in 1989. There are way too many possibilities of how to do things, and way too much difference between a good choice (say getting Claude to do it) and a bad one (say, writing a linked-list traverser yourself). Humans work well with the few variables involved in creating things like that linked-list traverser. But they require tons more energy if everything is on the table. Right library? Right platform? Right coding agent? Right way to keep myself from getting distracted?

In contrast, doing almost anything else seems like a relief for your brain.

My focus is as strong as ever, maybe stronger, but as time goes on I notice that it is harder and harder for me to gracefully respond to interruptions.

It's pretty damaging to my relationships. Everyone expects you to drop everything and give people attention and empathy and be the perfect active listener. But I need a cooldown or a change of scenery to leave a task behind.

- Learn about basic neuropsychology, to at least have a working understand of the triad Default-Mode-Network, Salience-Network, Executive-Network.

- Watch your ambient CO2, also at night.

- Sleep so that you always wake up with no alarm.

https://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

Many individual contributors (ICs) are getting introduced to multi-tasking for the first time. When I was an IC, I was really good at getting into flow state and getting solid work done. When I first started managing, I found it really to adjust to constantly multi-tasking.

After several years of managing, I found the opposite - I became really bad at getting into flow state, my brain had been rewired to constantly context switch every 30 seconds.

Now with AI, we're seeing many managers get back into coding again: "Hey! This fits exactly into my mental model! Delegate 5 agents at once and then keep juggling between their responses!". We're also seeing many ICs feel the opposite - much stress from needing to multi-task and constantly context switch.

I don't know if everyone's brain can be rewired for multi-tasking, but I can tell you that for me it took a couple years to adjust. Everyone is on manager schedule now.

The withdrawal-symptoms of going cold-turkey are intense but you get over them eventually and then once you've powered through a few weeks, and you try and go back and look at any type of "content" you see how much trash it all is. Even the "good ones" or things you tell yourself is "educational". Another important note is to have some replacements in place so that when you start seeing that new void of so much time on your hands, you don't feel empty/hollow but as a reminder to yourself that you had so many cool things to do.

Aristotle was on to something when he adopted a peripatetic approach to thinking.

Why? I never used any kind of mobile phone or tablet and I use LLM's to automate away the things I don't want to do.

I use a laptop(VOIP for texts and calls), desktop PC, a b6 physical notebook and a sony voice recorder-

B6 notebook(graph) https://www.amazon.com/STALOGY-Editors-notebook-Black-S4104/...

B6 cover with pocket https://www.amazon.com/Raymay-Fujii-CN162B-Notebook-Multi-Co...

Sony voice recorder https://www.amazon.com/Sony-ICDPX370-Digital-Recorder-Built/...

*these pens are zen for drawing and writing https://www.amazon.com/uni-ball-Vision-Needle-Rollerball-Poi...

I take notes/draw constantly as I take the b6 case with me everywhere- I keep the voice recorder in the pocket of the case when I need to dictate an idea, an article, record a song idea or a comedy bit, dictate a blog entry etc-

But all the actual "work" which these days is really just ideas is done on physical paper and a pen or with my speaking voice- no tapping, swiping etc- no notifications or any of that nonsense- so I work outside mostly- in various places- on planes- standing in line- all the places everyone is tapping/swiping onto a screen around me-

It's 10x easier to focus when you are outside and/or in public with a pen and pad in hand and no screens/tech to destroy your attention-

It’s turned out to be the best thing I’ve done for myself in a long, long time.

Most important — do NOT check any of those the rest of the day.

Getting diagnosed with ADHD and taking meds did the trick for me.

Not sure how relevant this is, since inability to focus was always an issue for me.

1. I notice the movement of my attention. I used to default to something like: sit down at my computer to look something up. But before I do that, just check the email. Then I am down some sort of rabbit hole. I did this sort of thing with no awareness or conscious choice. The change is that I notice what I'm doing. Then I can rein it back. I make a choice. (I think scrolling videos gets us into a habit of not choosing what to pay attention to.)

2. Be aware of my curiosity. Try to stay in touch with it. If I get into the space of curiosity I have a lot more juice for sustained attention. Something that helps with this is long form reading, especially fiction (!). I find myself replenished for all my work. The next thing I will try is some group support: silent reading groups where you read together.

3. I have an app on my devices that limits my access to twitter and reddit etc to small windows in the day.

4. Turn off ALL notifications except text messages.

Also, I do a lot of things offline. Read physical books, run after work, and tend to stay out of the internet mob altogether. Oh, having no Instagram or Twitter helps a lot.

The faster you realize that we have a limited time on this planet the more ruthless you become with your time. My time is expensive and my employer buys it at a premium. So I am extremely judicious about what I am reading, watching and who I am interacting with.

Building the muscle takes time but it's not that hard afterwards.

Some things to try:

- noise cancelling headphones with white noise background (Iceland White or Naturespace apps provide really good quality natural recordings)

- clean desk

- clear split between work and non-work environments

I’m off anything with an algorithmic feed. My brain can’t handle these. I turn off shorts and YouTube auto play using iOS safari extensions. I block the linked in feed. I read a handful of blogs via rss. The most regular feed I check is HN a few times a day. I’m reading books again for the first time in a decade or so.

It feels good and certainly not worse than before.

That’s shifted now after a few weeks. I’m no longer filling those moments.

The wins are subtle but nice:

- when I watch a movie, I don’t feel the need to start scrolling

- I’m reading at night again. This is far more relaxing and gets me to bed at 9 - 10

- less doom / gloom

- consumption is more intentional. I consider what I am interested in then find, rather than be sucked down the algorithmic vortex of what’s proven to engage me

2. How you start your day after sleep creates framing of the brain and you can start iterating on frames and how you drive them depending on your needs. Maybe set a schedule of things to at need done the night before (a continuity thread) maybe boxing the activities to different types at different times. It’s all sciencing the self but the brain is definitely conditioning to things and you have to mind it.

3. ADHD meds from what i’ve read are caffeine on steroids (blocking adenosine receptors, but not really adding to executive function). From personal observation ADHD also feels like a mode one can be put into by wrong brain framing (at least for people not diagnosed).

This is a great life hack, I highly recommend it if you need accountability or motivation.

You don't even need an audience, and if your work is the kind that somehow benefits from one, all the better.

based on my estimate it might be 60%. that's 60% of white collar gdp gone.

I have noticed, the more teams use slack/teams - the teams are usually bigger more than necessary. there's more meetings & less work gets done. more 'quick chats' vs teams who are email first (async) - no immediate response required.

One of the things that happens to me, is I get "in the zone," usually, when coding. Sometimes, an hour can pass, and I barely notice.

But I am also aware that this is not the way most people are.

I created this for me https://rainbreak.franzai.com/ to force myself into a break. Into breaking out of the agent loop.

  7 minutes for short, 21 for a long break.

It's freaking amazing, I know everything going on. I can look at it every half hour and be caught up in three minutes. I double click about one in ten messages to reply and it takes me right to the source app to reply.

When you are done, visit and parse your sidenotes.

Of course, the are the usual No Notifications, timers, etc.

Another thing I'm testing is having VPN OFF with its kill-switch ON.

Meditate, go on walks, wake up earlier, always have breakfast, and for the love of all that is good, get enough sleep.

You talk to a stranger for a few seconds, say what you're working on, and after 50 minutes you say goodbye. They stay on the video throughout the session, but muted.

It helps me focus because I always think "it's only 50 minutes".

Also, I recently deleted Instagram and it made a huge impact.

It's been obvious to me even since I was a computer-addled kid, in the 90s, that the way computer interfaces and multi-modal notifications affect the nervous system, the capacity for sustained attention and patient reading, and so on is pernicious. The impact has both cognitive and moral valences that reinforce each other, because the instincts reinforced by computer use turn into technocratic, anti-humanistic worldviews, and even cosmologies.

I imagine it's easy to read something Ludditic into this critique, but I mean it quite a bit more matter-of-factly, and from the vantage point of a tech professional who is as passionate about coding and computers as anyone else on HN. Still, it's sobering to consider the ways in which being so computer-bound since age 9 or 10 has altered the development of my habits of mind, my nervous system and my cognition, and speculate about might have been gained and lost.

My “stack” is self-control for blocking social and Gmail access.

And now I built QuiteCode to focus on deep coding and learning on a more mindful way.

https://gethopp.github.io/quite-code/

Even the fellas in Iran are struggling with staying focused..

https://igerman.cc/blog/dopamine-fracking/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48440792

On HN eventually there isn't much interesting stuff on the front page, on X it pulls you in with great effectiveness

It's an early stage, fully functional but I'm looking for beta users. If you're interested in helping out or simply trying the app, please complete the form on https://coghance.com !

I've been trying to introduce more friction into my life to make doing harder things the right thing. 1. I have a rooted Orchid F1 flip phone with Telegram and Firefox focus. Telegram lets me TTS to an openclaw instance if I need to get something "out" but long interactions are awful with the small screen and latency. Firefox focus is also terrible in all the right ways. If I'm out and HAVE to search for something this is enough of a break glass solution but for the most part it's just calls and texts. 2. I carry an xteink x3 for books. I'm trying to read more so this being the only thing available has me reaching for it more than I'd normally do.

I don't have a good solution for things at work yet. Maybe I'll start blocking all websites or doing strict pomodoros.

Worst is with LLMs and coding agents, I give it a task to work on then go browsing the web, the LLM finishes in 2 minutes but I come back after 10…

At the end of the day, my mind feels super tired even though its the LLM that did the heavy lifting. I also barely remember what I was browsing 15 minutes ago. At this point I can honestly say - Im in trouble.

I’ve deleted TikTok and now get blocks of focused work done and I haven’t been this effective or happy in years.

I genuinely believe the next generation will be defined by people who can and who cannot focus their attention and get stuff done.

[1] https://open.spotify.com/show/2YCIVADHhUbpTtuCIvV7dG?si=lOiV...

You just described ADHD.

Work, family, life, world around you, all scream „me now, my problem, do this, do that, watch this, listen to that”.

Its exhausting. Humans are not built to be constantly in overdrive. I just want to sit and have peace of mind.

Issue is the moment you hit the breaks - „you lose” sign pops up and well.. you fade away. Maybe its a good thing?

It doesn't wreck my day or make me feel anxious or anything, no doom scrolling involved, but it sure can turn into a huge time sink very fast.

I've learned to realize how many times it's boredom or stress triggering the distraction.

I see also other people struggle as much or worse than I do.

TL;DR get kids.

If it's a physics textbook, sure, that balance makes sense. If it's Atomic Habits (no offense to that book) then 10 pages is just not equivalent.

I firmly believe that we've gotten so used to always-at-hand phones/apps that we can no longer handle spending a few minutes doing "nothing". I see this in my teenager.

The OP may or may not struggle with ADHD, but this is something that IMO isn't ADHD but rather a new pervasive trait across our modern society. Everything must be instant now. Emails and now chats must be replied to instantly. Service/delivery must be as instant as possible. No more waiting, no more "doing nothing". We're all operating at high speed, even during our "down time". And for no good reason -- we're just inflicting this on ourselves.

Some days, I'll set a timer for two hours, and then just work offline for those two hours.

I have most of the documentation for tools I use available offline, I'm a bit math enjoyer so I have like 5GB of maths textbooks/papers to study, and programming offline, especially when you've got docs for everything you use, is not only still doable in the LLM age, but also quite enjoyable :)

Reading the article, basically all of the distractions the author mentions are internet-based (HN, LLMs), so perhaps adopting an offline work habit might help them too :)

- Don't use social media. It's all garbage and counterproductive for your attention. Once you stop using it, you start to forget it exists.

- Always carry a Kindle, and when you're bored, read instead of reaching for other apps or games.

- Try to read 15 minutes before work, 30 minutes during lunch, and 15 minutes after work. That's an hour of reading a day — enough to get through a lot of books and papers.

- If you use an elliptical, read while on it. It takes practice, but it can be done.

You will see the biggest gains by saying bye to social media.

Oh wait, I am one and I can't resist it since day 1 on this world.

Read.

Not the zennial definition of listen to a podcast – actual books.

Here's how to reboot your reading.

Do this during a break, when you have a couple weeks. Or schedule a couple hours in the evenings. But make the time be a "habit" block that you require yourself to do. (Something else has to give – consider letting your streaming queue get longer for a bit. And replace your HN bookmark with https://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/ … seriously!)

1. Start with trash, an "airport novel" type with giant print double spaced lines so the short story looks like a proper book. Pure story dopamine.

2. Then one with normal print and single spaced lines with enough substance to engage meta or systems thought as you read, maybe a Len Deighton or Eric Ambler if you're feeling able. Your brain relearns getting to think doesn't actually hurt.

3. Next shift into non-fiction. Something about Norway's heavy water sabotage against Nazi Germany, for instance; or preferably something field-adjacent to your field, with both narrative and knowledge. Re-priming your dopamine to hit from knowledge too.

4. Finally move into your own field, now knowledge you haven't been able to stick with to learn but wanted to. For this read something from a genuine practitioner, not the LinkedIn-fluencer TED talk transcripts in book form that top charts these days. Leveling up is its own reward.

Once you've made it through that, you should (a) be able to read again, (b) be able to focus on semantic processing, (c) regain your ideas to words to ideas mapping necessary for product/platform systems analysis or software engineering.

Importantly, prefer physical books or (“try this one cool trick!”) a full A4 or 8.5"x11" page e-paper tablet turned landscape, set up to read 2 pages side by side. When this is configured right (smallest margins, right font and line size) ending up same size as a paperback. The retention of two pages at a time, and the fewer page turns (fewer, larger, memory chunks) per book, is better for regaining focus and better for improving working memory. The smaller the font you can still read quickly and easily, the better, for the same reason.

Set your black mirror devices out of reach during the time block, don't have the TV on, ideally no music, or (“try this one cool trick too…”) while reading the first book on your list: play music in a language you don't understand but that sounds reasonably close to your own. For English speakers, germanic or romance languages are good. This makes your language centers busy wanting to comprehend the audio channel along with your visual channel, so your brain eats up the book without your mind wandering.

Using the method above, you can work to being able to sit with and absorb hardbound textbooks in just a series of 4 or 5 escalating challenges.

You'll find you regained intraday focus as well.

• • •

PS. Did you update that bookmark? Yesterday's HN Daily happens to be relevant as is so often the case: https://resobscura.substack.com/p/quality-non-fiction-books-...

I'm not convinced attention spans themselves have changed; I think it has more to do with the fact that people's brains aren't defaulting to daydreaming anymore when bored.

I think it's still an issue with people being addicted to phones because I'm sure the lack of daydreaming -- which studies have proven as beneficial and arguibly even a form of microsleep -- is likely causing a lot of the fatigue and inattention people feel; as in their brains are literally being deprived of a natural thing and so are exhausted because of it.

(as an aside: whew what a run-on sentence i have no intention of fixing)

My personal supposition with 0 proof is that the "gen-z stare" is the end-stage of this phenomenon where after being deprived of daydreaming for so long they are essentially "sleeping while standing up" as it were.