Obviously I’ve had a lot of theories as to what is causing some of my difficulties, ranging from pretty likely to absurd. In many cases, I was quite hopeful that I had found my true explanation. Once I’ve figured it out, I plan to go through all of my posts and assemble a master list of everything I’ve theorized and tested.
It’s been a little while since I’ve had any confidence in any of my ideas, but I finally feel, once again, like I’m on to something.
I’m reading the book Stolen Focus by Johann Hari and almost everything in it so far has resonated really strongly with me.
While thinking through my own life, I’ve realized that I’ve gotten myself into an unsustainable habit of constant task switching coupled with little to no downtime where I have no active tasks.
I’ll walk through both of those now.
I first approached this topic from where I feel I’m doing the most harm: during work.
Early on, I came to realize that work is where things seem to go wrong. I might have a day that’s starting well, but by the time I’m done with work, I’ve got just as much brain fog and lethargy as ever. Often, it sets in almost immediately. I do not believe this to be a case of just getting naturally worn out.
So I put a lot more thought into how I’m doing things.
I’ve realized that I am constantly task switching. When I’m going through emails, understandably this is going to happen. Most don’t take long, so it’s just one after the other.
But this part is understandable.
What isn’t is the fact that I basically leave my Gmail window open all day, and I also leave my Whatsapp window open all day.
The moment I have any downtime (which is constantly because the internet in 2026 is almost unusably slow across the board), I check for new emails, I look at my Whatsapp messages, I respond.
I’ve trained myself that I need to be doing something at all moments, and having to wait for anything feels unbearable without replacing the first task with another.
As a result, everything is way more difficult, but I also feel like I’m sort of just fracturing my mind throughout the entire day. It’s never able to really focus on anything.
Even when I’m “done” with emails, the moment I sit down to do any other harder task, I still have Gmail and Whatsapp open and I’m constantly glancing between them. I’m absolutely frying my ability to focus properly on one thing.
I think this, by itself, could explain a huge part of why I’m feeling the way I am.
It’s also very consistent with my history of feeling better during and immediately after trips; particularly trips in which I’m moving around a lot and don’t have time to be working all day or using my phone.
Generally, the good feeling quickly fades as I go back to my old routine.
So I think the constant task switching is probably the number one problem.
As a sub-point of that, I also think that the tasks I’ve been spending time on lately have also been pretty detrimental. It has been almost entirely putting out fires with things breaking as a result of email deliverability or bot attacks on e-commerce sites.
I’ve already resolved to put some extra things in place for most sites to proactively prevent these, and hopefully that will help. But by nature, these types of things are frustrating. They tend to be largely systemic problems in fragile systems I have very little control over. They are also very difficult to articulate to clients. If things go well, they don’t even know. If they go poorly, they blame me even if it isn’t my fault.
So I’ll do what I can there, but it’s not the main problem.
Now I want to talk about the second main issue, is that I feel I don’t spend nearly enough time doing nothing.
I think this concept is starting to rise in the mainstream consciousness, but it’s also addressed in depth in the book.
Basically, I’ve tried to fill every moment of my time with something. And if I feel I don’t have the energy to actually do anything, typically I’ll just consume content. TV shows, YouTube, etc.
Just like most people, I’ve become uncomfortable just doing nothing. But that’s exactly what I need to be doing much of the time.
I haven’t been giving myself appropriate time to just switch to the Default Mode Network and let my brain do its thing.
It has important work to do while I’m awake but not switched on to a task, and I’ve been depriving it of that. I need more time walking without music, being in nature, sitting and looking outside, cooking or eating without anything on, and just resting.
I feel like if you don’t get this, it makes you anxious and fractured which then makes it even harder to get this. It’s harder to let go and just relax.
It’s a vicious cycle.
And as a third and final category, I feel that I’m not getting enough flow either. I think largely as a consequence of these first two problems, in fact. But also just because I’m not often sitting down and working on an important problem or task.
I think it’s probably a fairly necessary state to be in on a regular basis, and I’ve gotten it very little.
Okay, so I’ve determined that these things are probably having a very negative impact on my life and well-being. What now?
I need to make a plan. I need to set up some guidelines to follow to avoid falling into the same traps.
To that end, here is what I propose.
- Whatsapp and Gmail are closed unless I’m actively planning to use them.
I can’t just have them sitting idly open at the times when I’m not messaging. Otherwise I see those little notification icons and it distracts me constantly.
I’ve noticed that this will happen even if I don’t plan to respond right away: my brain constantly goes back to them and is trying to focus on them even if I won’t let it. That’s very clearly terrible.
- Pick designated times to deal with these.
For Whatsapp, I think I should generally have it closed and not use it at all other than maybe once in the morning, once after lunch, and then whenever after work.
For Gmail, I’ll have to figure out the best rhythm, but I’m thinking I’ll go through email once in the morning like usual (though I may investigate doing something else first), perhaps once before workout/lunch, finally once after lunch.
The rest of the time, it should be closed and not even visible.
- Make time for flow activities.
I need to do my best to incorporate flow activities into every day. It could be writing, focusing on one hard work problem, or some other task. I’ll have to figure out over time how to best do this, but I know that what I’m doing now is insufficient.
When doing these activities, I need to be totally disconnected from everything else. No distractions. Ideally, have my phone elsewhere.
- Sleep with my phone in a different room.
I need to start charging it elsewhere. I don’t want it to be close enough to feel like a distraction when trying to sleep.
I’m considering getting another device (or just using my old phone) just for studying and translations. Something without any messaging of any kind, or email. It will just be for language learning, basically. I’ll need to look into that.
- More downtime, shooting for at least 1-2 hours per day.
This is time spent with no task. It could be walking around the neighborhood, possibly kayaking or hiking, sitting down relaxing, cooking, eating, showering, etc.
I just need some time when I’m not doing anything productive.
- More time spent doing just one thing, like cooking, lifting, editing, etc.
I tend to stack lots of activities, like cooking with a language lesson, weight training and editing photos in the downtime (still not sure if I should keep doing this one or not), and more.
I think I need to spend more time with just one thing.
- Reduce as many notifications as possible on my phone and elsewhere.
It seems like the vast majority are a huge waste of time and attention. I need to aggressively opt-out, disable, etc. Only notifications which are vitally important should come through.
- I need to spend more time with my phone elsewhere.
Particularly when not working, I should spend more time with my phone elsewhere. It doesn’t need to be on my all the time.
I want to break the thought process that my phone is an extension of myself or that it’s always there for distraction. I want that to not be true.
I’ll probably revise this list over time and perhaps add to it, but this seems like a great start and these things should help a ton.
It’s hard for me to believe at the moment that these issues aren’t the primary cause of the problems I’ve identified. I’m actually pretty confident I’ll see some pretty significant improvement with these in place.
I’m actually hoping strongly that this is the main problem, because unlike many other causes, I can actually do something about most of these.
I’m going to try to keep all of this up and then report back on results. I’m very curious to see how these changes impact me and on what timeline. It’s possible some improvement will come almost immediately, and others may take some time.