It's getting harder to focus every day

Hallowell and Ratey, who write about ADHD, suggested a new entity for the current world: VAST, the variable attention stimulus trait. It is like ADHD but it is culturally induced and not presumed to be due to an innate deficiency in executive function.

"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.

OP is definitely not alone in this. It feels like I'm constantly trying to avoid "attention capture" when trying to do a task that involves browsing the internet - even going on LinkedIn or StackExchange for a specific purpose can get sidetracked by my eyes wandering to the sidebar or being drawn by updates in the feed. It's scary to realize how little in control I am of my own stream of thought.

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.

I gave up my smartphone 6 years ago because I concluded the conveniences it offered came at cost of too much of my attention, freedom, and privacy. My ability to focus was just gone, and this magic device was not making me happy or productive anymore.

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 think it's just information overload. There's so much information everywhere now clamoring at you for attention. Our brains aren't made for processing this much information. Going on a media diet helps. Going completely offline helps even more.

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.

Living in Seattle saved me. In the winter months I started waking up and sitting in front of a SAD light for half an hour. I almost immediately got bored so I started reading long-form books (with the occasional short story) in front of the light for an hour each morning.

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.

I've tried multiple things to regain focus, the only ones that worked:

- 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.

A lot of people here are focusing on ADHD, but I think the author is commenting on a different phenomenon, because they were able to concentrate before and now it's just much harder. I feel it and many people I talk to feel it as well.

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 regained my focus after many years and it had nothing to do with distractions for me, distractions were only a way of fighting stress that constantly appeared. The stress was the underlying issue. I worked on that in therapy (breaking away from my parents) and I can now work on what I want for hours at a time. It's because now I feel I can become my own person and do what I want while not being chained to the past anymore.

It seems that so many minor parts of the day don't work as expected and my attention is destroyed by a thousand annoyances. My watch only unlocks my computer 1/3 of the time. My car only recognizes my phone 1/2 of the time. 3/4 of the time I go to press/click on a song I want to hear, the data in the UI updates between the time I start to move to the song and I press/click and I end up hearing something I don't want. Annoying feature that I've disabled n times was re-enabled, and I have to disabled it again. Fighting autocorrect on my phone. I was signed out a service unexpectedly and have to re-authenticate. Programs X, Y, and Z are unresponsive. My VM says my network connection is unstable. My new car beeps because it thinks I'm distracted and then I get more annoyed and distracted.

It's really not that hard but people are addicted and don't want to admit it.

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.

It seems to me that lots of people consider the ability to focus as some kind of innate ability which we are all born with, it's not. It's a learned skill which requires practice. Stop practising and it atrophies.

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

You’re doing the engineering thing and focusing on the trees instead of the forest. It sounds to me like you have other things going on in your life that you aren’t acknowledging. Often stress and anxiety are primary sources of attention deficit. As we get older more and more stress is piled on us and it becomes even more important to manage it in a healthy way. I encourage you to reflect on your mental health because it might have some clues.

LLM: Attention is all you need. Human: Attention is all we have.

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

Yes, I feel like my brain is fried by dopamine dispensers, it's very bad and I have no clue how to get control back. At least I have some healthy routines in my days but it really does feel like being addicted to a hard drug.

Strangely I think it's why I like roadtrips so much. Sitting doing absolutely nothing for even 15 minutes is difficult for me, but I can drive for hours doing nothing but watching the world go by, even without music or podcasts on, and it's fine. And that feels good.

I have almost the exact opposite problem.

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.

For me, AI is a classic tale of maker schedule vs manager schedule, just at massive scale:

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.

> Sometimes I live stream what I’m doing just because with a camera I cannot escape from hard challenges by grabbing my phone.

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.

Literally turn off your internet, within 30 seconds you will understand why you cannot focus and that you developed a severe psychological addiction

Advice that works: - Watch the Robert Sapolsky human behavior lectures.

- 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.

Unsolicited endorsement, but I bought a “Brick” device recently, and I can’t recommend it enough for cutting back on social media. Infinite scroll really destroys your ability to concentrate.

It's getting easier to focus every day for me-

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-

In terms of solutions on an individual-level: after a lot of trial and error I feel like what works for me is an absolutist cold-turkey-approach. I've pretty much banned all consumptive screen-time except some things like Hacker News, LinkedIn, YouTube (only existing subscriptions, no recommendations or shorts etc). Things I know I won't spend more than 15-20 minutes on and are not highly stimulating and made to high-jack your brain. Initially, I used to allow myself some leeway as in screen-time i.e. should be less than X duration, but it never worked.

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.

It will continue to be a mystery only solvable by the dwindling number of people clever enough to combat the problem with strategies like the many offered here.

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.

Here's something that worked for me: put your phone in your pocket and go on a design walk. While walking, design the next step in whatever you're working on. Design walks work great with more than one person, too.

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

You're not alone. You will find some answers "Stolen Focus" by Johann Hari

My wireless router runs OpenWRT, one day after a particularly embarrassing YouTube binge, I turned on the adblock plugin on my router and configured it to block YouTube as an ad.

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

I don't know that this starts with LLMs, though LLMs are certainly--at least for some people--a way to take their ADHD tendencies further.

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.

I've found that the only way I can reliably create focus of late is to put music on. It's as though the music prevents my mind from wandering and/or wondering because it is already being consumed

The author doesn’t mention it, so it seems appropriate to suggest asking a doctor for attention deficit disorder screening. The cultural forces in play encouraging us to flit and switch constantly are a perfect distraction from the possibility one’s own brain is complicit.

I really noticed this a few years ago to the point that I changed a few things and they have helped.

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.

It feels pretty obvious at this point that overstimulating ourselves with a multitude of different apps, social media, short form video, and so on, is hollowing out our capacity to focus. Cal Newport had a great opinion article in the NYT recently that spoke to this, and how reading might help us "train" our minds when so many media are adversely affecting our attention.'

Regarding the urge to “check what’s out there”, one simple rule I follow is: spend around an hour in the morning catching up with HN, a few reddits, a couple newsletters, and Bluesky. I completely avoid Twitter/X and LinkedIn, trusting that anything significant enough bubbles up to those other places.

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

I can attest to experiencing virtually everything the author describes here. I admire the ability to articulate these mundane-sounding challenges that greatly impact your quality of life.

> So how can I regain my ability to focus?

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.

Not relatable. "Internet is not real, and strangers' opinions don't mean anything" is an ethos that I have been religiously following for as long as I can remember.

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.

Something I really grew to hate over my time at various software firms were complex and flaky stacks with big test loops, and it's exactly this kind of reason why. Ideally, I have a problem, I want to put my head in the problem space and stay focused there until it's done. Every time a test suite takes five minutes to run, or I have to look up some obscure docs in my web browser, or I have to go somewhere else to rebuild a failing service, is an off-ramp to that flow state, and that's where I lose a whole hour to procrastination.

I’m guess “all you need is attention” is a good reflection of ourselves as well AI.

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.

This sounds a little bit like ADHD, but the common advice of getting medication isn't always applicable. Yes, it is definitely worth finding out if you have ADHD and diagnosing it, because if you do, it will help you understand yourself much better and might prevent problems further down the road like anxiety and depression. But medication isn't always the answer. ADHD might be entirely manageable for some people if their work is interesting enough.

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 recently deleted social media from my phone. With nothing left, I found myself compulsively checking HN anytime I had a free moment.

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

You're just getting older and realizing something about yourself. The only way to preserve your attention is to guard it like a jewel. It is a learned behavior once you enter the real world.

I had the same exact issue. Turns out I have depression. Currently I'm on meds, therapy and functioning on 80% my ability but it's still better than near 0

I’ve started evaluating what seem like brain “modes”. 1. Constant flow of information with disjointed context (social media, brain fracking, moving in a crowd) triggers hunter-gatherer instinct that is hard to stop. The dopamine seek in a way. Even if you stop your brain seeks it, so unless you really need this mode for work, it helps to postpone or time box these to the end of the day (kind of like some would do with drinking alcohol).

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).

focusing is indeed so hard, couldn't even finish reading this post

one day maybe in 30 years - research is gonna come out - on how much a hit on productivity Slack/teams was.

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.

This article is SO long.

I wonder how old the author is. Losing the ability to stay focused on tasks is a pretty common aging symptom. I have felt it now that I'm in my 40s

One of the best ways I have found not to get distracted while in a task, with other more interesting or something that you do not want to forget, is NOT to use your device to do it or even add to your TODO, or note it down but to use an actual notebook (may be a small memo note) to quickly write out and continue with your current task/more.

When you are done, visit and parse your sidenotes.

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

This week I've got all the feeds: slack, email, ticketing system, dev story board, prod system health, prod user activity, prod job queues -- all coming to one dashboard. They are distilled by a local LLM, when I get bursts it offloads to Google's low cost Flash lite so I only read the essential text, no threads, no scrolling and scanning to get to the content.

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.

In my case, I'm "on the spectrum," so focus isn't a problem. In fact, too much focus can be a problem.

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.

This article is SO long.

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

That's a really cool technique.

> 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.

You can make sure the friction is high by having your password be something difficult to remember, written down on a note, and keeping that note somewhere "out of reach".

Yep, i do the same thing. The trick is to increase the barrier to entry.

For the same reason, i don't install ANY apps on my smartphone and tablet, like social apps and news apps. If you have to grab your laptop to check them, it takes way more effort.

And, if you really need to access something "urgently", you can always use the web browser (which is annoying) where i always use Private Mode (no easy logging in.)

That's smart. It's also revealing.

It was a choice to make technology that absolutely hammers you with information. It was not the right choice.

I want to build and use stuff that promotes focus. I only have a vague inkling of what this means, but it's quieter, less instantaneous. And it's going to be an uphill battle because everyone else is doing the opposite.

When I travel to EU, I completely ignore my phone. I'm doing things, driving, seeing things, and hiking. When I wake up I feel rested. I feel happy.

When I am home, I am exhausted every single day. Sometimes I don't even do anything, still exhausted.

Idk, if it is information overload, monotony, depression, work, brain get fried by constantly having to manage everything.

I also have kid....and let me tell you....to get him anywhere on time is mission impossible. Doesn't want to brush teeth, doesn't listen AT ALL, doesn't care about losing privileges. I guess this stress doesn't exist when we travel because we can spend 2 hours getting out the door.

I really need to stop using the phone as much and try to figure out what is causing it.

> 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.

What an awesome tip!

Absolutely. There is no more boredom in today's world. Not a second. But boredom is important for the mind to rest.

> I think it's just information overload. There's so much information everywhere now clamoring at you for attention. Our brains aren't made for processing this much information. Going on a media diet helps. Going completely offline helps even more.

I wonder how much is real information, i.e. information that truly is related to your life, interests and within your sphere of influence; and how much is just noise that camouflages as information.

It's more than information overload. It's an overabundance of distractions specifically designed to steal your attention. I block dark pattern sites during working hours. It helps immensely.