Every time the conversation about smartphones comes up, it always goes the same way. We talk about how bad they are. We quietly hope that someday, someone, a government, a regulation, something, will step in and save us from ourselves. And at the same time, since nobody has done that yet, we keep using them, because everyone does, and you can’t really live without one.

But this doesn’t have a real solution. It just keeps us stuck, frustrated, and complacent at the same time. Frustrated because we feel like something is wrong, complacent because we’ve accepted there’s nothing we can do about it.

I think it’s time we step out of this loop entirely. Because, as long as we stay in it, we miss that we actually have far more control than we think.

The Assumptions We Never Question About Phones and Distraction

Let’s start with something that might be uncomfortable: the assumptions. When it comes to smartphones and their effect on our social life, our attention, and our ability to stay present, we carry an incredibly high number of assumptions, and most of them work like reflexes. When we think about distractions, the first thing that comes to mind is the smartphone. When we think about screen time, we immediately picture hours of doomscrolling through TikTok, people doing stupid dances, and AI-generated nonsense. When we think about social media, we think about people becoming dumber and more depressed. When we think about scrolling, we assume it’s something bad that we should stop immediately. And when we think about reaching for our phone, we assume it’s because we’re bored.

That’s a lot of assumptions. And none of them is always true. But when we enter judgment-and-complaining mode, the easiest thing to do is generalise. So let’s slow down.

Screen Time Is Not a Metric, Unless You Decide It Is

First, let’s acknowledge something obvious that we tend to forget: with a smartphone, you can do incredible things. You can take notes for your next masterpiece. You can record sounds and share them with people who haven’t been where you’ve been. You can take photos and keep beautiful moments alive. You can talk with the people you love. You can read things that just a few years ago were impossible to access. Of course, with all of this come side effects. But the side effects are not the whole story.

Screen time, for instance, is not a meaningful metric unless we assume it’s bad in itself. But six hours of screen time could mean I was writing on my phone instead of a notebook. Or that I was reading for four hours. Or planning my next vacation. All of these are completely different activities, and “screen time” tells us nothing about any of them unless we look at each one individually. And even two hours on Instagram can mean market research and scouting material for my next newsletter, not mindless consumption.

Why Scrolling Is Not Always Doomscrolling

The same goes for scrolling. Scrolling is not automatically doomscrolling, and no, we don’t automatically get dumb. Especially today, where many of us work primarily with our brains fully engaged, having moments where we let ourselves be carried by something we don’t have to actively concentrate on is actually good. Your brain, in the background, is making sense of all the information you’ve been working with. This is not a conscious process. You have to give your brain space to do it. And often, ten minutes of light scrolling can have a surprisingly positive effect on your cognitive performance. Of course, with some adjustments, we can improve our scrolling habits. But the blanket assumption that it’s always bad deserves a second look.

Digital Life Is Real Life. Why Phone Use Is Not Just Boredom

And then there’s the idea that we reach for our phones out of boredom. It might sound a bit redundant to say this, but after at least fifteen years of living with smartphones, we still struggle to accept something fundamental: our digital life, even if it happens on a screen, is part of our actual life. Much of the information we need is on our phones. What happens virtually happens for real in our lives and contributes to our real needs, our need for significance, for safety, for connection, for contribution. Digital FOMO is real FOMO. And because of that, having access to our phones is not a nice-to-have. It’s how we stay connected to a significant part of our reality.

We Were Never Taught How to Use Our Phones, and It Shows

Nobody ever taught us how to deal with these tools. But instead of thinking about how to optimise our relationship with them and actually get better at using them, we prefer to swing between two extremes: living in denial and hoping for a phone-free world, while, in the meantime, doing our worst with them because everyone else does, and no one is telling us otherwise.

I don’t believe we are monkeys in the command room. I don’t believe that narrative. And if it’s true that children need more guidance because they’re still learning and forming their minds, we are adults. We can guide them, and we can guide ourselves. Accepting the narrative that we’re helpless makes us less responsible and less aware that we have more control over this than we think. It becomes a convenient excuse: yes, everyone is like this, what can you do?

I trust that we have far more wisdom than we give ourselves credit for. Because when thinking becomes complaining, it trains us to believe we have no power and no intelligence. And that’s simply not true.

What Smartphones Replaced. A Story About Connection

Let me tell you a story. When my grandfather was nine years old, he was put in charge of bringing a flock of sheep from his town to Rome. Almost 200 kilometres, crossing a mountain from one side to the other. Three days alone. He used to tell this story as the most terrifying experience of his life (and he fought in the Second World War). Why was it the scariest? Because for more than three days, he had no contact with anyone. No way to reach a single person.

Years later, his family moved to Australia. For fifteen years, they received just a handful of letters per year, each taking more than a month to arrive. Eventually, they decided to move back. The delay was impossible to stand, especially when it came to the people they loved most.

We don’t spend nearly enough time thinking about how many extraordinary things smartphones have made possible. We’re too busy being certain about our assumptions.

Removing Phones Won’t Make Us Better People

And the biggest assumption of all is the wrong one: that if we removed phones from our lives, we’d magically become better people, more social, more connected, more caring. We wouldn’t. If we don’t address what the phone is filling, and we just remove the phone, something else will fill that space.

I have a question for you. When you are truly in love with something or someone, do you think about what else is out there, what you didn’t choose? You don’t. The world outside doesn’t exist. Not because you decided to ignore it. It simply doesn’t exist.

It’s not that we’re bored. It’s not that we’re addicted. It’s that we don’t know what’s important to us. We don’t know what we’re in love with. We’ve never found something so important that it makes the phone's side effects irrelevant.

Presence Is a Practice, With or Without a Phone

We need to fall in love. We need to connect. But this doesn’t happen automatically by removing phones. It happens when we connect with ourselves, when we listen to what we truly desire, when we make space for receiving. And none of that happens automatically when you take a phone away.

We need to start practising care with everything we have, every day. It’s a practice. A practice of focus. We need to learn to set priorities with what’s around us. You can have a phone in your hand, but if the person in front of you feels listened to, seen, and heard, that phone doesn’t take up any space in their experience of you. It’s when they don’t feel considered that they start looking for reasons why.

Simon Sinek talked about the power of a smartphone placed on a table and how it affects people’s perception. That’s not entirely true. It’s only true when combined with a distant, distracted, or not fully present attitude. If someone is truly present with you, that phone disappears. And I’ll tell you more: it’s contagious. If you talk with someone who never looks at their phone, you won’t feel comfortable looking at yours. If everyone does, you feel it’s fair game. Either way, it’s contagious.

Don’t Wait for Permission. Decide What Matters Now

Don’t hope for a world without digital. Don’t hope that a five-day detox will solve everything. Start with what you have. Start controlling the opportunities in front of you. Be an example. Move from “phones need to be hidden” to “this person deserves to be heard, with my mind, my heart, my full attention.”

Many people don’t have a phone in sight and still don’t listen. Still don’t make space for the other person. Phones are just a convenient crutch for our lack of connection when we don’t want to feel it.

Am I saying phones are good instead of bad? Is this a defence of phones? No. I’m saying the question itself is wrong.

Don’t wait for a law or a regulation to tell you what to do. Decide what matters to you. Decide what you want to care about because no one can do it for you. And if the thing you care about manifests as a phone call or an Instagram message, give it your time. Screw the screen time.

Don't wait for someone else to allow you to take care of what you care about, whether it's in front of you or on a phone.

Start now.

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And if you don’t know how, check the Sustainable Focus framework. It’s powerful and effective precisely because it doesn’t work against a generic idea of distraction. It works with you, helping you decide what matters most and prioritise it. Not just for productivity. For your relationships. For your presence. For building a meaningful and beautiful life.

Walk into any bookstore or scroll through any must-read list by any leader or influencer, and you’ll find an overwhelming sea of books promising to unlock your potential, rewire your brain, fix your habits, or reveal the secret to a meaningful life. Each one sounds compelling. Each one feels like it might finally be the answer.

This genre is often referred to as “smart thinking” books. The promise is right there in the label: read this, and you’ll think better, decide better, live better. But, unfortunately, becoming a smarter thinker doesn’t happen automatically just by reading such a book. It requires a certain approach that we are rarely told about. That’s what this issue is about.

There are so many pop-psychology, self-help, and personal growth books, and enough of them seem to contradict each other, that we end up stuck in the same cycle: pick a book, get excited, think that we have to change our habits, then see another one that says something completely different or promise something faster or better, and change everything again. We’re just getting more confused and overwhelmed, certainly not smarter.

So before we talk about what to do, it helps to understand why these books are the way they are. And once you see it, you’ll approach them in a completely different light.

Why personal growth books are built the way they are

Every book in this genre shares a few things in common, and none of them are accidents.

First, they each have one central idea. Just one. Everything else, the anecdotes, the science, the examples, exists to support that single point. That’s a deliberate choice. It makes the book readable, memorable, and emotionally satisfying. It’s not necessarily wrong. Simplification can be a gift. But it also means you’re getting one perspective, one lens, not a complete picture. Deliberately.

Second, they lean on studies and research. A landmark experiment, a surprising statistic, a neuroscientist’s finding, these give the narrative weight and make you feel like what you’re reading is scientifically grounded. But the research is always chosen to support the central argument, not open other possibilities. The studies that don’t fit simply don’t make it into the book.

Third, they generalise. Broadly. The finding doesn’t just apply to some people in some situations. It applies to you, to life, to the universe, to everything. This universality is part of what makes the book feel so powerful. But it’s also where you need to pause.

None of these things makes a book dishonest. But you’re always reading a story, a well-crafted, internally consistent story, and not a complete map of reality, if that were even possible. Keep that in mind, and everything changes.

3 tips for reading personal growth books more effectively

Tip 1: Who’s writing? Know who wrote it and where they’re standing

Before you even open the book, ask yourself: Who is this person, and what is their area of expertise? Authors of these books are often brilliant and deeply knowledgeable, but they are always speaking from a specific discipline, a specific professional background, a specific way of seeing the world. A neuroscientist, a psychologist, a philosopher, an entrepreneur, each one brings real insight, but each one is also looking at a vast and complex phenomenon through a single lens.

That doesn’t make their perspective less valuable. It makes it partial, which is something completely different. Get used to asking: which field is this person coming from? What does their training lead them to notice? What might it lead them to overlook?

Knowing the answer won’t diminish the book. It will help you place it correctly, as one informed perspective among many, not as the whole picture.

Tip 2: What are the basic assumptions? Always read the introduction, don’t skip it

Every book in this genre is built on a foundation of things the author takes for granted. These are the assumptions, the beliefs, conditions, and premises that have to be true for the whole argument to make sense.

You usually find these assumptions in the introduction or preface, which is exactly why so many people skip them. Don’t. Read it slowly and ask yourself: what is this author taking as given? What does their world have to look like for this to work?

Becoming aware of the assumptions is the first and most important act of critical reading. Everything else builds from there.

Tip 3: What is the scope? Look for the limits

A good, honest author will acknowledge the boundaries of their argument somewhere in the book. These moments are gold. If you read the whole book, not just the highlights or the summary, you’re much more likely to find them. Often it’s explicit: “I’m not going to talk about X, because it falls outside the scope of this work.”

Either way, get used to asking yourself: where does this framework break down? Who does this not apply to? What’s the exception?

Tip 4 (Bonus): What can you do with it? If you want to act on it, give it real time

If something resonates and you want to try it, commit to a defined period, at least four weeks, before you judge it or move on. Real change is slow and often invisible until it suddenly isn’t. Switching frameworks every few weeks means you never actually test anything; you just collect ideas.

Give one idea a fair trial. Then, if it didn’t work, move on with real information. If it did, keep going.

Getting smarter for real

Getting smarter starts with getting used to asking four simple questions about any book, any framework, any piece of advice, even any argument someone puts in front of you: What is this actually saying? What’s the scope? What are the limits? Where does this apply?

Be suspicious of anything that offers you a single explanation for the life, the universe, and everything. Human beings are too varied, too contradictory, too surprising for any one framework to contain. But if read carefully, the combination of all these books starts to reveal something real. No single one has the answer, but together, read with the right attention, they carry genuine wisdom. The key is to hold them lightly, as pieces of a much larger puzzle, not as the final word.

And there’s one last thing worth keeping in mind, perhaps the most important of all. Non-fiction is always, in some way, fiction. Every author has a point to make, a story to tell, a reader to convince first to buy the book, and then to believe the theory. The fact that a book cites studies and uses the language of science doesn’t change that. If anything, it makes it more seductive, because we lower our guard when something feels objective. We stop reading critically. We just believe.

Don’t just believe. Stay curious. Stay a little sceptical. Use these books as lenses, not conclusions.

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This is also, at its heart, what Sustainable Focus is about. We don’t believe in single answers. We believe in breadth, in drawing from psychology, social science, philosophy, economics, and everything in between, because complexity deserves to be taken seriously, not flattened. Life is not a problem to be understood and solved with one insight. It’s a landscape to be explored with many.

Our approach is transdisciplinary, and our frameworks are personalised by design.

Because complexity is the answer.

There’s a recent Atlantic article, “The Film Students Who Can No Longer Sit Through Film”, about film students that I found genuinely interesting to use as an example of something I hear very often about the attention crisis — something that, in my view, doesn’t help us understand or address today’s focus problems. The article argues that the attention crisis has hit film students, too. And the culprit is the familiar one: social media, short videos, endless scrolling, and multitasking. The “media diet” has done its damage even here.

What makes it particularly striking to the authors and the teachers interviewed is the specific population involved. People who chose to study film. People who are supposed to love this. As one teacher says, “I used to think, if homework is watching a movie, that is the best homework ever.” But instead, even there, even among them, the problem is apparently happening. If you can’t hold the attention of someone who wants to work in the movie industry while showing them a movie, then something must have gone very seriously wrong.

It seems to be a compelling framing.

The article raises many things worth rethinking (I could spend several issues on it). But I want to focus on one aspect in particular, because I think it points to something more fundamental than the usual conversation about screens and habits tends to reach.

The Attention Crisis Narrative

The assumption underneath almost everything in the piece — and in the whole conversation about how attention is changing — is that there was a time when people naturally sat with long-form content, gave it their full attention, and that this was the norm. That we had something, and we lost it, and the goal is to get it back.

But did we ever really have it?

A Very Short History of Movie’s Length

Think about what cinema actually looked like at the beginning. The first films were a few minutes long. Charlie Chaplin’s early shorts were fast, physical, and packed with action. The feature film, the two-hour narrative we now treat as the standard unit of cinematic attention, is a relatively recent invention, and for most of its history it was also a rare one, something you traveled to see, planned around, experienced in a specific place at a specific time, with no alternative competing for your attention in that moment. The focus wasn’t just internal. It was built into the situation.

[Here you can have a look at an interactive dashboard of Global audience trends & worldwide film production from 1900 to 2024, that I created with the help of Claude]

But when we talk about the past, we rarely think about what the real past looked like, its trends and changes, and instead we tend to think about what we know from direct or indirect experience.

I was watching a film recently in which a young woman speaks with the ghost of someone who lived in the 1920s. At some point, she mentions they should do a podcast together. The ghost looks puzzled and asks what a podcast is. She explains: people talking, no visuals. The ghost says — so it’s radio. The girl says no, no, it’s without music. And the ghost says: So it’s radio.

The majority of us don’t know that radio drama was the original format, and that the music came later, relatively recently. What feels ancient and established is often just slightly older than we are. We compare today’s behavior to a reference point that is much narrower than we think, and then we build entire theories of decline on top of that comparison.

Attention Span and the Bias of Memory

When we picture the ideal — the way attention used to be, the standard we’re trying to return to — we are almost never thinking about the real past. We are thinking about our past. The decade we grew up in, the media we were surrounded by, the rhythm of life that felt normal because it was ours. That’s not history. That’s autobiography. We are basically saying, “It’s different from what I remember.” And using it as a benchmark is a bias we rarely acknowledge, even though it shapes almost everything that follows — what we call healthy attention, what we call disorder, what we decide needs fixing, and what we decide is fine.

When Conditions Change, Attention Changes

This matters a great deal when we talk about attention, because most conversations about restoring long-form focus assume there is something to restore. A baseline. A previous state of affairs where sitting through three hours of Ben-Hur without distraction was natural and widespread. But that baseline may simply never have existed the way we imagine it. It was always a specific combination of conditions — scarcity of content, social context, no alternatives — that made sustained attention the only available response. When those conditions changed, the behavior changed. That’s not a loss. That’s adaptation.

So when we talk about re-training attention, about getting back to something longer and deeper, it’s worth asking: back to what, exactly? To a norm that was really just a set of circumstances? To a format that is itself younger than our grandparents, and defined as normal by people who happened to grow up with it, at a particular moment in history, under conditions that no longer exist?

The Attention Span “Solution” That Makes Things Worse

One of the problems when we think about focus is that we believe we already know the cause, so we stop asking questions. And this leads to measures that are actually making things worse. The industry has decided that attention spans are shrinking, so films and series are now engineered, as Netflix declared recently, to compensate with more repetition, more recaps, plots explained rather than shown, nothing left to be missed by the distracted watcher. The effect is exactly the opposite of what’s intended.

Content that assumes you’re half-watching is content that deserves to be half-watched.

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Understanding more deeply how our attention is changing — and finding better, more effective ways to manage information overload and keep what’s relevant and meaningful for us — is Sustainable Focus’s only mission. Check my website to understand how I can help you master your focus on what matters, and, if you haven’t so far, subscribe to this newsletter for free.

There’s a so-called philosophical thought experiment that stayed with me from when I started studying sound perception: if a tree falls in the Amazon forest and no one hears it, did it really fall?

I started asking the same about AI: if AI creates a book for you, is that book yours?

In both cases, the answer is yes and no.

Of course, the “things” exist. The book is there. The tree fell.

But what’s in your reality? In your life? In your experience?

Nothing.

Because our reality is created by our experiences.

My grandpa used to say you can’t know the value of something if you haven’t put sacrifice into making it. But this isn’t just an old-fashioned work ethic concept. It’s more. It’s about how we perceive reality.

Our reality is given by what we pay attention to, what we spend time on, and what we invest resources in.

When AI writes 60 pages from an idea, 4 plans, 3 business models, they’re there, but at some point we stop following and say: “Yes, give me a summary already. That will do.”

With AI, we may create distant results.

The problem is: without spending time and attention, we don’t create memories, images, and scenarios. We don’t remake those images, those scenarios, attach emotions, which is exactly what helps us later access, recall, relive, communicate, handle objections, and tell our story in an engaging way.

We also lose contact with our why, that thing that allows us to stay consistent, keep fighting for our ideas, and keep going when it would be easier to quit.

The Ikea Effect—But For Existence

There’s an effect in behavioral science called the Ikea Effect: the value we give something depends on the time we spend making it. If we built it, we think it has far more value than the market gives to it.

But this isn’t just about value. It’s about the actual existence of something in our experience.

If we don’t do something with attention and concentration, it’s like it wasn’t done, doesn’t exist, because the way we create a relationship with anything is through the time and resources we spend on it. That gives us the emotional value and the ability to recall it and feel it as part of our reality.

This doesn’t mean you have to spend ages on something—we often overindulge. But there’s a minimum time, attention, and effort we have to spend to make something part of our reality, from a perception perspective.

If AI reads, it learns—not you.

If AI writes, AI knows—not you.

Until it enters your experiential sphere, that knowledge, that decision, that content, that research doesn’t exist. Those words aren’t yours.

So the paradox is: all the time you’re saving by not doing something makes those things stop existing.

Attention Creates Being

When we pay deep attention to something, we don’t just process information. We create traces in ourselves, neural pathways, embodied knowledge, and lived understanding.

This is how we become who we are. This is how knowledge becomes wisdom.

When someone, or something, does the work for us, those traces never form. It’s as if we never lived the experience at all.

And with AI, we’re facing this on a scale we’ve never encountered before.

The Hidden Cost of Outsourcing Thought

Yes, AI can speed things up. It can generate content, draft strategies, and refine language. And sometimes, that’s exactly what we need.

But when AI does the foundational work for you, it’s not yours.

Consider this for solopreneurs and entrepreneurs specifically:

Your Business. Your Message. Your Values.

If AI writes your mission statement, defines your values, and articulates your “why”, it might sound good. It might even be accurate.

But it’s not yours.

And when the hard times come, when clients disappear, when motivation fades, when doubt creeps in, you won’t have the deep traces to return to.

You won’t remember the struggle of finding the right words for what matters to you. You won’t feel the friction of wrestling with “why does this work exist?” You won’t have fought for clarity about who you serve and why it matters.

Those struggles create the foundation you stand on when everything else shakes.

Foundation-Building Is Not Meant to Be Efficient

AI promises efficiency. And efficiency is seductive.

But when you’re defining your business, your message, your core values—you need to struggle. You need to spend time. You need to fight with it.

Because later, when you’re selling to someone who needs what you offer, explaining why your approach is different, making a hard decision about your business direction, trying to stay consistent when motivation is gone, you’ll return to those traces.

You’ll remember why you chose this path. You’ll feel the weight of the decisions you actually made. You’ll reconnect to the struggle that forged your clarity.

If AI did that work? You have nothing to return to. Just a nice exercise in prompt engineering.

We talk about efficiency vs. inefficiency, but we can’t understand that there is more. It’s that we can stop making things exist. They’re not given. They depend on our attention.

What Are You Saving Time For?

So, at least for foundational things, the foundation of your business, your why, your vision, don’t get suggestions and just choose. See it yourself.

Find the words inside yourself, because those will be the words you need when things get difficult or when it’s time to inspire.

Plus: what are you saving all this time for, if you don’t want to spend it on what you love?

Just for the sake of saving time?

Attention Is the Currency of Self

Every time you pay deep, sustained attention to something, you’re investing in yourself. You’re creating traces, memories, patterns, understanding, that become who you are.

When AI pays attention on your behalf, it learns. You don’t.

When AI does the cognitive work, it becomes more capable. You don’t.

This is the hidden deeper cost.

The Real Question

The question isn’t “Can AI do this for me?”

The question is: “Do I want to become the person who built this, or just the person who owns the output?”

Because one creates depth, resilience, and authentic authority.

The other creates a nice AI exercise.

This is why attention matters more than ever.

Not because AI is bad. But because paying attention is how we become who we are.

And if we outsource that, we outsource our own becoming.

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P.S. Your ability to focus in an information-overload world is the bottleneck to success in both life and business—and the key to multiplying your ROI in AI. Learn how to master your focus, become distraction-proof, and leverage all the value of the digital world without detox or retreat in the Sustainable Focus Bootcamp starting late February—subscribe to this newsletter to be first to get all the details.

There’s this famous assumption in productivity: the value of your current time.

You’ve probably heard it before. Maybe you’ve even calculated it yourself.

It goes like this: I work X hours a week and earn Y $. Y divided by X gives me my hourly rate—meaning how much money I make per hour.

They say, this should be your decision compass when it comes to deciding where to allocate your most precious resource: time. Based on this theory, you shouldn’t spend your time on any tasks that you could hire someone to do for a lower rate. Everything you get done for less is money saved.

Example: You hire someone to clean your house for $22 per hour. If your rate is $55, you save money and time, which you can dedicate to your business.

Makes sense, right?

Wrong.

Let me tell you an unbelievable story.

Even though I’m a consultant and researcher who works with executives and entrepreneurs, every day—four days per week—I deliver the post.

Yes, on my bike, no matter the weather. And I live in the Netherlands. That’s enough to know.

Now you may think: what an idiotic choice.

Of course, I made this decision without considering the extrinsic value of my hours.

Here’s why:

I need to stay outside. I love staying outside—not just for a half-hour run or workout. I love staying outside a lot.

I love being among people. Just meeting people, giving them a smile.

I love listening to music and singing along.

I love biking and walking.

I need an activity that keeps my mind totally absorbed—so much that I cannot do anything else but think about numbers and match them with postcodes. I’ve never had a walk where I could really disconnect.

I need something I can finish. Your post is delivered, you bring your bags back to the depot, and your day is done.

And I don’t want to be old before I start doing these things. I want them to be part of my day already now.

That’s why I chose this side job.

The invisible ROI

Of course, I get paid less than what I get from my main job.

But:

I get home incredibly happy from singing, being outside, and smiling at people who smile back (without thinking I’m crazy). It gives me the feeling that I deliver happiness, not just the post.

I feel energized from the outside—even when it’s icy, and there’s -10°C perceived temperature.

I do something with my hands instead of with my brain.

I feel my brain reset and ready to grind. This reset I’ve never had before, not even with meditation.

I start the day with a huge accomplishment that drives my day as an anchor feeling.

It gives structure and rhythm to my day.

Having something to do and less time for my business avoids Parkinson’s Law. When I work, I do more things. I’m more focused and productive. The constraint creates urgency and clarity.

I feel active.

I feel integrated in my neighborhood.

I practice my horrible Dutch.

I feel so happy.

The real calculation

Now, all these reasons are the added value that you cannot see when comparing hourly money. But it significantly increases the value of the remaining hours.

It’s like being on steroids for the rest of the day.

And last but not least, I’m actually tired when I go to bed, and I get the best sleep ever, full of beautiful dreams.

So, is it logical reasoning in terms of extrinsic value? Of course, no.

But that’s just the smallest part of the story.

What this means for you

What you should do instead of thinking in terms of hourly rates is: you should find the analog of what delivering the post is for me.

For two reasons:

1. You cannot dedicate all your time to your business.

Set aside sleeping time—let’s say you have 24 - 8 (if you’re behaving and not overdoing it) = 16 hours.

You cannot work 16 hours just because there’s someone taking care of what is “less expensive than your hourly rate.”

And the increment per unit of work done gets smaller and smaller. The 16th hour isn’t worth the same as the 4th hour—not even close.

2. The value of your time is not just given by the money it can produce.

It’s evaluated by:

• The fun you get

• The fulfillment

• The connection with other people, with your loved ones

• And also something rarely mentioned: what it means to your system functioning (mind reset, body activity, energy level, focus level)

But also—and this is even less obvious—you need different activities to let your mind work properly.

You want to switch activities. You want to diversify, not just the activity, but also the purpose. We are not talking about hobbies here.

If everything is business-related, you’ll get burned out immediately, and you’ll start hating your business.

But there’s also no space left in your mind for new ideas, creativity, or a different perspective. You’ll get stuck.

The invisible investment

I removed three hours per day to do something totally unrelated and paid way worse.

And maybe you have kids, and even 15 hours per week can be a long shot. But the point is: you can get even higher ROI from something counterintuitive.

But I gained way more.

So next time you want to decide where to spend your time, first of all, keep in mind:

-The value of that activity for you, in your life, because maybe it’s a “lower value” compared to the hour, but it multiplies the energy and drive of the other hours, and why not even that hourly rate? Which is exactly what happens.

-The invisible investment you make by engaging in “lesser value” hourly rate activities.

-What it means for your system (mind-body-environment connection).

So, what’s your version of “delivering the post”?

What activity could you do that doesn’t “make sense” on paper—but could make everything else incredibly better?

Think about it. Try it! It would be a new life.

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I stopped biting my nails in half a second. A 20-year habit in half a second.

Not through willpower. Not through discipline. Not by putting bitter polish on my nails or sitting on my hands.

I stopped biting my nails the moment I understood my focus strategy.

When most people hear “strategy,” their minds jump to big things. Corporate strategy sessions in boardrooms. Military war strategies. Five-year business plans.

When I tell people I’m a strategist, they assume I work with businesses on high-level planning, or I optimize workloads and calendars for better productivity.

But what I actually mean by 'strategy' is something else.

Here, I’ll call them micro-strategies to distinguish them from what we usually associate with this word.

A micro-strategy is what you do every single time you start doing something. The sequential steps you follow—so fast you don’t even realize what you’re doing.

For example: choosing a pizza on a menu. You probably scan, eliminate what you don’t like, compare finalists, picture yourself eating each one, and decide. Three seconds. You’re not aware of the steps. You just choose. Or you have a totally different strategy. Anyway, you chose.

You automate these steps so you can actually function. Otherwise, you’d be paralyzed, consciously figuring out each next step.

That’s why working with micro-strategies is powerful. See them, change them, get different results. Immediately.

When I decided I wanted to stop biting my nails, I started working on it. I started thinking about the moment immediately preceding my nail-biting. I started slowing down all the steps I’d do, and there it was.

My dad, or better, the image of him, in front of the TV, so absorbed in the football match that he would bite his nails almost to the skin. I was used to asking him things, but he was so focused he wouldn’t even hear me.

I made an unconscious connection: deeply absorbed equals biting nails. Biting nails equals being deeply focused.

So I built a strategy without even realizing it. Every time I needed to focus, I would flash this split-second image of my dad—completely absorbed, nails in mouth—and I would unconsciously match it.

Biting my nails became my hypothesis test: “Am I focused? Am I biting my nails? Then yes.”

It happened so fast I didn’t even know it was happening. That’s how micro-strategies work. They’re lightning-quick, invisible mental associations.

How I Changed It in Half a Second

When I realized this peculiar twist in my strategy, I was studying hypnosis, so I accessed it through hypnosis. But you don’t need hypnosis to get there—you can unpack your own micro-strategies through guided reflection (like the exercises in my Focus Gym Workbook).

Once I saw this strategy, I could change it.

I removed that unnecessary step. The hypothesis test didn’t need to involve biting my nails at all. I could be focused without it.

Half a second.

20-year habit gone.

Not because I forced myself to stop.

Because I removed the unnecessary step from the strategy.

Why Micro-Strategies Matter for Focus

This isn’t just a story about nail-biting.

It’s about understanding that every time you focus successfully, you have a strategy. And every time you get distracted, you also have a strategy—just a different one.

Most people don’t realize this.

They think:

• “I’m just bad at focusing.”

• “I have attention problems.”

• “I’m easily distracte.d”

• “It’s my brai.n”

But what they actually have are unconscious micro-strategies that consistently lead to distraction instead of focus.

The good news?

Once you understand your strategies, you can change them.

And when you change a micro-strategy—one of those split-second mental processes—you can shift even deeply rooted behaviors almost instantly.

These strategies apply to everything. Deciding whether to scroll, start a conversation, or avoid an email. Every behavior has one.

They’re usually associated with something you saw or experienced, and you store it like a “how to” kind of info. My dad watching football. Someone making decisions confidently. You’ve practiced them thousands of times without realizing. After all, we are imitation-beings. We tend to do what we see and how we see it done.

Here’s an example of a procrastination micro-strategy: Think about starting a difficult task. The brain flashes an image of struggling. Feel discomfort in the body. Look for something easier. Feel relief.

Total time? Half a second. Result? Consistent procrastination.

But once you see that strategy clearly, you can change step two. Replace the image of struggling with competence or curiosity. Same timeframe. New result? Starting the task.

This is what I do. I help people slow down their unconscious processes, see their micro-strategies clearly, and build new ones that actually serve them.

The question is: do you know what they are? Do you have any control over them?

Most advice assumes focus is about willpower and discipline. Or it assumes your brain just works a certain way—that you’re wired for distraction, need dopamine hits, are a victim of your neurochemistry.

But focus isn’t about forcing yourself to concentrate or fighting your brain’s wiring. Focus, as well, is about running the right micro-strategy—like everything else.

When you nail-bite your way through 20 years because that’s your unconscious focus strategy, “just try harder not to do it” won’t help. You need to change the strategy.

This is about more than focus at your desk. It’s about not scrolling when you said you wouldn’t. Mastering your phone instead of letting it master you. Living things on your terms—starting the project, having the difficult conversation, being present with people you love.

All of it comes down to micro-strategies.

Ready to see what’s really happening in those split seconds?

The Focus Gym Workbook: 4 weeks to master focus. You’ll practice the universal strategy for returning from distraction immediately, then discover through daily reflection what makes your focus strategy uniquely yours. The full framework, at your own pace.

Working with me directly can happen in as little as 5 minutes. Sometimes, one guided question reveals the strategy you’ve been running unconsciously. That’s what happens in 1-to-1 sessions.

The difference? Time and depth. The workbook gives you 4 weeks to build your complete Golden Strategy. A session with me can shift one specific micro-strategy in the moment.

Both work. It depends on what you need right now.

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Start with the Focus Gym Workbook, digital or paperback version.

Or let’s work together

— Concetta

When my uncle was 48, doctors told him his heart was failing. Badly. They gave him 3 to 6 months to live. Maybe a year if he was lucky.

That was almost 40 years ago. Today, my uncle is 88.

Yes, really. The doctors say he essentially regrew part of his heart, creating a natural bypass around the occluded part. His body did something that seemed impossible.

I’ve always been fascinated by his story—an incredible story of struggle, war, losing loved ones, working hard, being endlessly dedicated and curious. He’ll always tell you about his work with a team that invented a pretty innovative chip that’s everywhere today. He can create anything out of nothing.

I always ask him: “How did you do it? How do you keep doing it?” Of course, I want to figure out his strategy.

His answer never changes: “Never stop doing. Wake up every day and do something. Relentlessly. Never stop.”

He’s not supposed to exert himself. Yet every single day, he goes to his vegetable garden and moves massive amounts of weight. Every day. For forty years.

What he says he has is an iron-clad system—daily action, no excuses, no overthinking. That’s what he talks about. That’s what he thinks his secret is.

But the more I ask him, the more I listen carefully to him, the more he makes you understand he also has a ferocious goal. Survive. Get to 90. Then 91. Then 95. No matter what. He has to stay here as long as possible. Giving up is not an option.

The goal is so embedded in him, so obvious to his reality, that he doesn’t even register it as part of his strategy. It’s like breathing. Of course, he wants to survive—that’s not noticeable to him. The relevant part is the doing.

If you only listened to his answer, you’d think he’s purely a “systems guy.” Just show up. Just do something. Habits over goals.

But that’s not the full picture. He needs both. He notices just one.

In the productivity world there’s this debate: Systems versus goals. Habits versus visualization. Process versus outcomes.

James Clear, for example, tells you to forget goals and focus on systems. Manifestation gurus tell you to visualize your goals daily and watch them materialize. SMART goal advocates say you need clear targets. Habit experts say habits are everything.

Everyone’s picked a side. Everyone’s sure their side is right.

But here’s the problem:

This dichotomy doesn’t exist in reality. It only exists in how productivity experts talk about success.

Successful people never do just one or the other. They do both. Always. With the same intensity and depth.

It’s just that they only report the part they have to do intentionally—the part that requires conscious effort for them. They don’t mention what feels embedded or obvious, what’s already a given for them, what everyone should do, what’s an inseparable part of their view of the world.

But just because they don’t mention it doesn’t mean they’re not doing it.

Think about the manifestation people. The ones who swear by visualization and goal-setting. You know what they actually do every single day? They have a radical system. Daily visualization sessions. Affirmation reviews. Goal journaling. It’s as rigid and habitual as any “atomic habit” practitioner.

But they don’t frame it that way. They talk about the goal, the vision, the manifestation—because that’s what feels important to them. The daily repetition is just obvious. Of course, you do it daily. That’s not the secret.

Even Zen monks—the ultimate “be present, let go of goals” practitioners—have this.

They have rituals. Repetitions. Incredibly strict systems. But they also have a powerful purpose, a deep goal driving every action. They just don’t talk about it; it’s part of their identity.

When productivity experts create theories, they build them around one lens. They specialize. They pick an angle. They build a brand around one approach.

That’s fine.

But then people who follow them try to apply just that one piece. And it doesn’t work.

This is why productivity tips often don’t work.

Habits alone don’t stick. Goals alone get forgotten.

The goal provides the direction and the fuel.

The system provides the vehicle and the map.

That’s what happens with every person who achieves something remarkable.

They have a goal that pulls them forward—something meaningful enough to get them out of bed when everything hurts.

And they have a system that moves them forward—something concrete enough to do even when they don’t feel like it.

Most people just don’t talk about the part that feels obvious to them.

So here’s my practical suggestion.

Every time you read a book about productivity, every time you listen to successful people telling you their way, their recipe for success, listen to what they say, but also to what they take for granted or fail to say explicitly because they’re not even aware of it—maybe because it’s already part of their identity, personal, social or religious values, their culture, you name it.

(And usually this information, especially in books, is not found in abstracts or summaries. It’s usually a small detail in their stories. That’s why I never suggest reading abstracts ;)

For them, it may be a given, obvious—but for you, it could be your personal strategy’s missing piece.

Listen carefully.

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And if you want a complete strategy that leverages the power of the combination of systems and goals, get your copy of My Focus Gym Workshop (digital or paperback version) and work with a complete strategy that doesn’t leave any room for anything but productive, sustainable focus.

I recorded a short video message for you as we close out this year. I wanted to share something personal I discovered.

2025 was the year I went solo—turning 15 years of research into a service for people and companies.

I thought going solo meant more independence. More freedom.

What I actually discovered? It means becoming more dependent, more aware of your need for everyone else, and more able to connect.

The scariest part of working alone isn’t money or selling. It’s putting your ego aside. Learning to listen. Becoming able to receive feedback without your ego kicking in.

Being solo, you discover that everything you do is for others. To serve them.

So this is my promise to you for the coming year: to always be grateful to contribute. To serve you.

Thank you for being here—reading, commenting, giving feedback, showing interest. It matters more than you know.

Have a beautiful year full of trust, connection, and the happiness that comes from serving every person you meet.

We’re all in this together.

With love and gratitude,

Concetta

Founder of Focus Gym and Creator of the Sustainable Focus Framework

.

You know that family member you’re already dreading at the holiday table? The one whose entire conversation you could script right now, word for word?

I’m from Italy—I can tell you very well.

What if I told you that most of those “annoying” conversations could actually become deeper—if you just do three simple things?

Let me show you how.

I need to start with a disclaimer: some conversations are so annoying that it’s nearly impossible to turn them into deep connections. But I’d argue that 99%—if not more—of conversations can become deeper if we do three things.

Hey, I know what you’re thinking: “Mine is that 1%, believe me.”

But I say: “Yours can be part of that 99% too, believe me. Try what I’m about to explain.”

One of the biggest elements of good focus and presence is preparation. People often don’t get ready—but in this case, it’s the opposite. We over-prepare—in the worst way possible. We picture an inevitable annoying exchange, exactly as it’s always been.

I want to give you three steps to overcome this over-preparation and turn every discussion into a deeper connection. Maybe it won’t be super deep, but it’ll definitely be deeper than you expect.

Step 1: Picture the person as an ongoing puzzle.

When we find ourselves in an annoying situation, it’s mainly because we already know it’ll be like this. We know the person, what they’ll say, what they’ll trigger.

So here’s the shift: instead of imagining that person as a painting you know by heart, detail by detail, replace that image with a puzzle you’re building from scratch—no matter how well you know them.

When you move to a puzzle mindset, you’ll realize there are far more pieces you don’t have than pieces you do. And the way to find those missing pieces? Ask questions.

Not rhetorical questions. Not provocative questions. Questions that come from genuine curiosity to complete that puzzle.

(Spoiler: that puzzle will never be done, and that’s the beauty of relationships.)

Step 2: Understand the goal of that person in the conversation.

The goal of a conversation can be different for everyone, and it can shift throughout the exchange.

Your presence depends on your listening ability, which isn’t just about saying “I understand” or repeating their last words. That’s a gimmick.

Your real ability lies in understanding why people are saying what they’re saying.

Do they need help? Do they just want to share something that happened to them? Are they bragging? (Yes, don’t judge—we all do it.)

The more you understand, the more value you get from the conversation (and give).

And remember: you’re not ChatGPT. You don’t need to always have an answer.

Most of the time, the best way to show people you’re listening—aside from asking questions—is simply letting them talk without adding anything.

I know, it’s difficult. But think about it: we already know everything about ourselves. We’ll get far more value by listening to others.

Step 3: Ask people what makes them happy and let them explain.

If things get really difficult and you see the conversation stalling or heading toward a dead end, ask the person about something that makes them happy. It can be something about the year that is about to end, the week, or about that day. You chose.

This shifts them into a state of joy.

Plus, they’ll appreciate that you care about something they care about.

Think about when someone does this for you. Paying attention to what someone cares about is one of the biggest forms of showing your presence.

They’ll start talking. Remember to keep the focus on them.

Step 4 [BONUS]: Don’t forget to rest.

Social interactions are always more demanding than other tasks because emotion-control is involved.

Take some time for yourself afterward and journal about “new things I discovered about that person.”

(I have a journal for the people I’ve met in my life.)

This practice pulls you away from the automatic tendency to judge or ruminate.

Of course, it’s always a matter of practice. The more you practice, the more fun and rewarding this becomes.

It takes time and energy, so start small—short conversations with a few people.

As I said, not every annoying discussion becomes a deep connection. But it’s always worth trying.

As Tony Robbins says: “Everyone we meet, we meet for a reason and a purpose, and it serves us.”

Don’t let these opportunities pass by just because you decided it’s going to be annoying. We can gain precious knowledge and incredible value from everyone we meet.

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Prefer video? Watch the full breakdown here

This is what everyone asks me, every time.

Have you ever talked with someone so absorbed in their phone that they can’t even listen?

Have you ever had to change your route because someone’s so absorbed in their screen you’re scared they’ll bump into you?

Did you ever see people sit on a couch scrolling their phone forever?

Have you ever watched an entire series in one go?

Remember that meme with the girl so absorbed in her phone she fell into a fountain?

I’d say we’re getting more and more able to focus. More and more able to control ourselves, stay still, totally absorbed in something.

But then...

You have people who can’t read anymore. Who can’t listen to others anymore. Who can’t just listen to something without checking something else.

So what’s really going on?

THE 8-SECOND ATTENTION SPAN

What we keep hearing about our attention is that, apparently, our attention span—the time we can spend on a piece of content before switching to a new one—has become 8 seconds.

First of all, this stat comes from an observational study.

They watched people’s behavior without knowing about their actual level of engagement, interest, or the relevance of the content. Just shadowing people—observing their behavior and measuring the time spent on a task before moving to the next one.

This has multiple problems.

We know that the time we spend on something doesn’t tell us how much we’re actually focused on it. We could just be staring at the screen. It tells us nothing about real attention.

So we have a time span, and we arbitrarily call it “attention.”

We also say the time has been reduced over the last 10 years. But consider this: since the content is online, maybe the switching time would have been the same if internet loading speeds were as fast back then as they are today, or the multitasking processors’ capacity.

This study, although interesting, doesn’t tell us anything about our real attention.

Just how some people behave when sitting at a desk.

WHAT IS REALLY HAPPENING

Considering the power of unbreakable focus we have, I think our attention span is always very long, as long as what we’re doing is worth our attention.

Paying attention is a very demanding activity. Not only in terms of cognitive resources to stay mentally on task, but also to stay physically still and maintain self-control.

Moreover, there’s something rarely mentioned: attention is a risky activity.

When we’re focused on something, we can potentially lose relevant information for our safety and for our connection with the group we’re in. The system—body, mind, brain—knows that we’re always losing something when focused.

Given this level of preciousness, we don’t want to give our attention to just anything.

At least it has to be worthy. It’s like love in a relationship.

When we pay attention, we do an unconscious evaluation of gains and losses.

THE REAL SHIFT

What’s happening nowadays is that we spend more time scanning, filtering out, searching for what deserves our attention.

So mainly, those 8 seconds are the time we spend figuring out if something is attention-worthy.

It’s an adjustment that shows how our intelligence can always find a way—especially in a world where we’re surrounded by potentially important information.

It doesn’t change the capacity. It changes the aim and purpose of the action.

This is something more and more people report when I interview them.

THE REAL PROBLEM

The real problem is getting stuck in seeking mode and losing the ability to get focused when we need or want to.

The real problem is keeping safe this beautiful feature of being human—and putting it together with improving our efficiency, directed toward fulfillment.

So, are we getting less focused?

No. We’re doing another activity.

Easy access to things implies an easy way out as well. Availability and many other elements determine these results.

CLOSING

When we realize how we work and how beautifully engineered we are, then we can leverage it.

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Ready to learn how?

My Focus Gym Workbook walks you through the complete framework: https://bit.ly/4oSsytH

Join my 15-minute Reset & Refocus every Wednesday at 1 pm CET on LinkedIn and YouTube.

If you prefer watching the video version of this article, you can find it here.

Are you struggling to convert interest into sales? People engage with your content, they click your links, they might even sign up for your list, but then they don’t buy. And when those sales don’t come, you start questioning everything. Is my product not good enough? Is their attention span too short? Am I targeting the wrong people?

You may be underestimating one thing.

Have you noticed how many dead links you’ve clicked recently?

Books advertised that aren’t published yet. “Coming soon” pages that never launch. 404 errors. Courses “in development” for years. Products that were “launching soon” and still haven’t materialized.

We’re drowning in abandoned promises.

From tool to strategy.

The shift toward testing made sense at the time.

We came from a world that was slow, tied to production dynamics that couldn’t keep up with modern times anymore. The lean startup movement gave us permission to move faster—build, measure, learn. Validate before you invest. It was smart, honest, and necessary.

But somewhere along the way, something changed. Testing went from being a tool to being the entire strategy. Now we’re not building anymore—we’re endlessly validating, perpetually “coming soon,” collecting emails for things we’re not sure we’ll ever create.

What Attention Actually Needs

It’s not the attention span duration’s fault.

What we often miss is that attention thrives when people can sense a future together.

Think about when you start a relationship. You don’t commit because you know, beyond all doubt, that it will work perfectly. You commit because you sense potential, continuity, something worth investing in, and you sense commitment on the other side.

It’s the same with your business.

People pay attention to things they believe will continue. When they see something they like—your content, your product, your work—they lean in because they sense there’s a trajectory there. A real future.

But the moment they perceive it’s “just a test”—even if you never say those words—their attention shifts. Because you can’t build trust with something that might disappear tomorrow. And don’t think: “Yes, but they’ll forget soon.” Actually, it’s the opposite. Because everything goes so fast, we crave anchors—certainty and reliability.

Commit.

Sometimes people don’t buy or take the next step—not because the product isn’t good enough or because there’s no market need.

They don’t buy because they sensed a lack of commitment, so they held back. They didn’t share it, didn’t invest their full attention, didn’t tell their friends.

You show commitment by giving something real, not just placeholders.

Not landing pages generated from a 1-minute conversation with ChatGPT. Not “coming soon” promises. Not another waitlist for something you haven’t committed to building.

Real value. Real work. Real commitment.

Only when people see you’ve invested something real—your time, your expertise, your effort—before asking them to invest theirs, they trust you.

You’re still the entrepreneur.

If you keep testing, you’re not an entrepreneur—you’re just a risk manager. Being an entrepreneur means you risk something. You cannot totally de-risk everything you do. Being an entrepreneur means something specific: you’re a guide. You show first that you believe in what you do. You’re the captain.

And captains don’t abandon ship before everyone else is safe—they leave last, not first.

When you ask people to board your ship (sign up, pay attention, trust you) and then keep looking for the lifeboats, they notice. They feel it. And they stop investing in the journey.

Your job isn’t to eliminate all risk before you act. It’s to commit to the journey and guide people somewhere worth going, even when you don’t have perfect certainty about the route.

Testing is fine. But commitment still has to lead.

A Better Alternative: Co-Creation.

There’s a different way forward, and I saw it beautifully articulated at the Future of Communities Summit by Circle, when Ali Abdaal talked about creating his products—it’s co-creation.

Co-creation is testing, but it’s testing while leading with commitment. It’s building before asking. It’s committing first, then inviting people to shape the journey with you.

But here’s what matters: co-creation happens after you’ve built trust, after taking risks, not before.

Ali can co-create with his community because he spent years showing up, giving value, and proving his commitment. He gave first. He built. He delivered. He established that he’s staying with the ship.

Then he invited people to come aboard and co-create with him.

That’s the sequence. Give first. Commit first. Build trust. Then test together.

Not the other way around.

What This Means for You.

If you want sustained attention—if you want people to actually invest in what you’re building—you need to show them that a future together is possible.

Launch the thing, even when it’s imperfect. Show up consistently, even when results aren’t immediate. Honor your promises. If you said you’d deliver, deliver.

Give something real, not placeholders. Build before you ask. Create something people can actually use, experience, and trust.

Stop collecting emails for things you’re not sure you’ll build.

Your audience needs to sense that you’re building something real, something with a future, something worth their attention. They need to feel they are being led and that they can trust you.

And maybe you, as an entrepreneur, will grow too. Because the moment people sense real commitment—the moment they feel you’re the captain staying with the ship—they stay. They share your work. They tell their friends. They invest their full attention.

Not because everything is perfect. Because they can sense a future together.

Give your attention first.

Testing is important. Validation matters. Learning from your audience is essential.

But in all that testing, don’t forget: commitment still has to be there.

If you just de-risk in pursuit of perfect validation, you’re not building a business. You’re running market research that no one takes seriously.

Be the captain. Lead with commitment. Build before you ask. Give something real. Create a sense of the future.

That’s when attention blossoms, and people stay.

Their attention requires your attention first.

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— Concetta

P.S. Your clients’ attention follows your attention. In a fast-paced world like this, building commitment or sticking with your decisions even when you don’t see immediate results can be tough. That’s one of the reasons I’ve created the Sustainable Focus framework and embedded it in My Focus Gym Workbook—your tool for gaining consistency, nurturing commitment, and showing up every day at your best. Buy your copy here. ✨

Is it just me, or do you also feel like people are screaming and shouting at you every time you open your mailbox or scroll through social media?

It’s exhausting. Everyone has deployed their best attention-stealing strategy. And it’s understandable—they have to sell. But what about you? How can you deal with it, keep your sanity intact, and still get the most out of it?

Because it’s true: you can get very good deals during this time of year. But are they really “good” deals?

The Hidden Cost of “Deals”

A deal is a deal if what you pay is less than what you gain.

But what we pay isn’t always visible.

When Herbert Simon gave that famous speech—known by many for the adage “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention”—he also pointed to many other fascinating ideas. One particularly interesting concept is the hidden cost of information consumption.

What Simon actually says is that “in an information-rich world, most of the cost of information is the cost incurred by the recipient. It’s not enough to know how much it costs to produce and transmit information; we must also know how much it costs—in terms of scarce attention—to receive it.”

Have you ever considered how much a magazine actually costs you when you factor in the time and energy required to read it? I mean, we realise it after the purchase when we leave them half-read or untouched, but not when we are buying them.

The same applies here: have you ever considered how much a product or service truly costs you, given all the information you have to process, all the noise you have to filter out, and all the comparisons you need to make? If you consider that Black Friday is the only day of the year that lasts almost a month, it can become pretty exhausting.

Attention, energy, and exhaustion are also currencies you’re paying for your “deal.”

Again, I’m not saying there aren’t real deals out there—but your calculation of what you gain should take this into account.

So, since many deals genuinely are good, how can we conserve our attention so we can maximize the benefits?

Where We Lose Attention and Energy

The main points of the process where we pay with attention and energy are:

1. Finding what we want – Scrolling through endless promotions, comparing products across multiple sites

2. Evaluating every piece of information – Processing countless emails, ads, and “limited time” offers

3. Ignoring what we don’t need – Filtering out the noise, resisting temptations, saying no repeatedly

4. Making (and remaking) too many decisions – Should I buy this? Is this the best price? What if it goes lower tomorrow?

Each of these drains your cognitive resources. The exhaustion you feel isn’t just from the volume—it’s from the constant mental work required at every step.

But here are three tips to get the best out of Black Friday

The good news? You have more control than you think. Here’s how to take it back.

1. You Have Control Over What Gets to You

The first line of defense is stopping the noise before it reaches you.

a. Create a dedicated folder for Black Friday emails and set a time for it

Set up a filter or use AI tools to automatically route all promotional emails into a specific folder. Check it once or twice a day on your schedule, rather than being ambushed every time you open your inbox.

b. Unsubscribe ruthlessly

If a brand’s emails don’t serve you, unsubscribe. Don’t wait until after Black Friday. Your attention is worth more than a potential discount on something you don’t need.

c. Mute, don’t just scroll past

On social media, actively mute accounts that are overwhelming you with sales content during this period. You can always unmute them later, but protecting your feed during high-noise periods is an act of self-care.

2. You Have Control Over Your Search

Don’t be reactive. Be intentional about how and when you look for deals.

a. Make your decisions first

This is the golden rule, especially for important purchases. Before Black Friday even begins, decide what you actually need or want to buy. Don’t let the noise decide for you.

b. Don’t let brands come to you—you go to them

Save screenshots to a “Want to Buy” album, or keep a running note of products you’re interested in. Then, when Black Friday arrives, you’ve almost had all the filtering done.

c. Schedule specific “deal hunting” time blocks

Rather than staying in reactive mode all day, set aside two or three specific 30-minute blocks to actively look for deals. Outside those windows, close the tabs and move on with your life.

3. A missed deal is never missed forever!

FOMO (fear of missing out) is one of the most powerful weapons in a marketer’s arsenal. But remember: probably the same deal will get to you even outside Black Friday time in different shapes and appearances.

Black Friday doesn’t have to be exhausting. With a little preparation and a lot of intentionality, you can navigate the noise, protect your attention, and come out the other side with both even better good deals and your sanity intact.

Your attention is your most valuable currency. Spend it wisely.

Enjoy your Black Friday.

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When we talk about silence, we actually mean the absence of specific annoying sounds. Think about it. Relaxing on the couch with “what a silence,” we mean the lack of children screaming, or the drilling finally over, or the neighbor’s dog stopped barking. Even when we talk about the silence of nature, we actually mean the absence of traffic noise, the lack of engine sounds, of human-produced noise—but never absolute silence.

Why? Because we don’t want absolute silence

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Even if you removed all the noises around you, there would still be your heartbeat and other physiological sounds, always audible, especially when everything else diminishes. Absolute silence would mean being dead.

And our brains know this. “Almost absolute silence” signals something bad. Have you ever noticed that in thriller or horror movies, when they want to create tension or fear, they remove all the noise and music? In that moment, your brain knows that even if you don’t know what, you know for sure something is about to happen.

Silence isn’t natural, especially in places where noise is expected. A totally silent city? That’s a post-apocalyptic scenario. That silence tells us: something doesn’t add up.

But what about when we’re with people? Why does silence worry us so much?

Before we jump to social or psychological explanations, we need to understand something more fundamental happening at a neurological level. This process occurs before conscious thought even kicks in.

From a neuroscience perspective, the part of the brain that regulates our autonomic state—the system that supports feelings of safety—also controls the muscles of our face and head. These are the same muscles we use for eating, for social communication, and for signaling that we can be trusted and are safe to approach.

Through the non-semantic elements of language—tone, rhythm, pitch—we’re able to co-regulate with each other socially. It’s like an invisible synchronization system. And our hearing is beautifully designed to fine-tune itself to capture exactly these frequencies, maximizing this co-regulation process. Our facial expressions even adjust which frequencies we’re tuning into.

As Stephen Porges explains in his Polyvagal Theory, sociality acts as a neuromodulator—meaning our social interactions literally regulate our nervous system and vice versa, helping our body maintain balance and stability. And this happens before words even matter, at a very reflexive and spontaneous acoustic level. Your nervous system is reading vocal cues and responding to them faster than you can consciously process what’s being said.

This isn’t just about feeling good emotionally; it functionally supports the basic processes that keep us alive and well. Social connection is a neurophysiological foundation for emotional and physical health.

So when someone goes silent, we lose our radar at a survival level.

We can’t gauge their mood, predict their next move, or know if we’re safe. Before we even consciously think about it, our nervous system is scanning for those vocal cues that tell us everything is okay.

This is why we fill awkward silences with small talk, with nonsense, with anything. We’d rather sound silly than lose that vital stream of information our nervous system needs to feel safe.

This is important in every type of relationship. My parents always fight about the same thing: my dad doesn’t speak. My mom finds it unnerving, and she always says, “I speak, at least.” Based on what I’m explaining here, I finally understand what she means. She doesn’t have clues. Her nervous system is reaching out for those vocal signals that tell her where he stands, what he’s feeling, whether they’re okay—and she’s getting nothing back. The silence isn’t just frustrating; it’s physiologically distressing.

It’s like that movie trope where someone gets kidnapped and the police say, “keep him talking so we can trace the call”—the content doesn’t matter. What matters is the signal itself.

Silence forces us to do something almost unsafe: trust without evidence. Have faith without proof.

And maybe that’s why one of the most beautiful expressions of love is simply sitting together, comfortable in the quiet.

It’s trust in its purest form.

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The other day, I was reading Steven Bartlett’s post and thought about a pattern I’ve been noticing everywhere.

People are investing more and more in in-person experiences. Companies are pouring resources into physical communities—events, gatherings, face-to-face meetings—all surging back.

I don’t think this is just a rebound from an almost total digitalization. Even if it were, that would demonstrate a genuine resistance to total digital immersion, which is very important, but that would be a topic for another article.

Here, I want to consider it from a different perspective: the result of a simple question.

What cannot AI replace (at least in the short to medium term)?

What Remains Irreplaceable

We’re living through a remarkable moment with artificial intelligence. When you run through the list of what AI can do, you easily realize that AI can write, analyze, create, strategize, communicate, and solve problems. It can handle tasks we thought were uniquely human just months ago. The list of what remains uniquely human shrinks almost daily.

But there’s one thing AI fundamentally cannot do: it cannot have a physical body. It cannot be present, in person, in a room. It cannot attend.

Your physical presence—your actual body occupying actual space—remains, so far, the only truly irreplaceable thing.

The Presence Economy

We may be entering what I call the “Presence Economy”—or perhaps more accurately, an attention-squared economy, an augmented attention economy, if you will. Whatever we name it, the pattern seems clear: businesses won’t just want people’s attention anymore. They’ll want their bodies in person.

No matter how virtual our lives become, no matter how sophisticated our digital tools, we still live in and through our bodies. We still exist in physical space. We still experience the world through embodied presence.

The body becomes the boundary—the final constraint on what can be automated, replaced, or digitized. In a world of infinite digital abundance, physical presence stays inevitably scarce, no matter how many avatars of yourself you can create.

What a fascinating time to live in.

The Contradiction We’re Living

But if the future is more in-person and more connected, what do you actually need to stay present with others?

The ability to connect. To be with people. To handle the natural messiness of human interaction. To focus while remaining open to what’s happening around you.

Everything we’re told about productivity is training us to do the opposite.

We’re becoming increasingly “intolerant” to people, to distractions, to anything that interrupts our flow. We’ve trained ourselves to need silence, to flinch at interruptions, to feel our focus “broken” by a colleague’s question. We’ve become fragile—unable to concentrate unless conditions are perfect. We’re getting more and more sensitive to everything we’re told we should avoid.

Close the door. Eliminate distractions. Remove interruptions. Isolate yourself to focus. Block out the world. Create the perfect environment. Wear noise-canceling headphones. Turn off notifications. Work alone.

The advice is everywhere: make yourself more dependent on perfect conditions, making you less able to handle the reality of being around other humans.

If presence—physical, embodied, in-person connection—becomes our most valuable asset, this approach is preparing us for the wrong future.

What We Actually Need

We need a different system. One that improves our productivity AND our ability to be human. That makes us better at focus without making us fragile. That strengthens our capacity to connect, not just our capacity to isolate.

In a Presence Economy, people who thrive are the ones who can be productive in the midst of real life, not just in perfectly curated environments—those who can bring their attention to what matters while still being present with the people around them.

This is also the reason I’m building Focus Gym as an exclusively in-person experience—not just because I love in-person gatherings, but because if we’re entering a Presence Economy, we need to practice being focused and present together. We need to develop focus skills that work in the real world, with real people, in real environments. Not focusing on that only works when we’re alone behind closed doors with noise-canceling headphones and five productivity apps running.

What if the most valuable skill isn’t learning to focus without people, but learning to focus with them?

This shift asks something different from us. Not just better focus, but a different kind of focus entirely

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When I was a teenager, I always had this question on my mind: how can I be sure to be committed to a guy, given the number of available guys around? How can I be sure “he’s the one”?

This is just an example of the number of times I’ve questioned my commitment.

To commit is hard. None of us is very good at staying committed, and this is true at every level: from marriages to jobs, friendships, notebooks, shoes, pieces of content, and tasks. We often start with strong motivation, but then somehow we manage to rethink everything.

So, is it because we have less motivation? Because we have less determination? Often, we find emotional reasons—such as fear of failure, a lack of trust in ourselves and others, or impatience to see results. And probably all of this is true. But I always love to see things from different angles and perspectives and not throw the baby out with the bathwater, because if we do something, there’s often a good reason.

Before jumping into emotions, we need to understand how we deal with the world and with information.

Here is what to take into account:

1. We are constantly changing, even if we don’t notice it: our cells are continually regenerating, and our understanding of the world and ourselves is always evolving thanks to new pieces of information we acquire.

2. Every second (millisecond, nanosecond,…) we get new pieces of information.

3. Every piece of information is recombined and repackaged with what we already know, constantly giving us new perspectives.

4. Getting new perspectives makes us think that our latest version—the updated version—knows better (and if you don’t believe me, look at your old pictures and tell me you don’t go: “Oh my gosh, look how ridiculous I was”).

5. From this new perspective, we believe we should update every version of the story, refine our tools, and reassess our decisions, as they often feel outdated.

Here is the paradox: the more we grow and “improve,” the less able we are to act.

In fact, this continuous info update is evolutionarily a huge advantage, because being updated means having more edge in defending ourselves and staying safe, and also thriving. But with the amount of info we have today, this continuous update happens faster and faster, and instead of being an advantage, it becomes paralysis.

So it seems that we are doomed to paralysis or an eternally unsatisfactory life, where we could have always done something better.

So what can help us focus on a task and stick with our decisions consistently? One thing we can do is to separate the decision-making moment from the doing moment, and set a defined period of time where we don’t make new decisions. It’s like the well-known advice: first write, then edit.

Separate the processes.

Having a definite time for doing—without deciding or reviewing—helps us not to fear the idea of acting without the latest updates. This ensures that our more “ancient” system feels safe and finds a way to deal with the modern stream of info.

Here is how you can do it:

1. Decide what to do.

2. Decide for how long (and don’t leave or change your mind sooner).

3. Note every new idea that comes to you on a “not yet” note, so you’re sure not to lose it.

The truth is that this need for constant change and updates is often less relevant than we think it is. Sometimes I read things I wrote five years ago, and I’m surprised by how much I already knew and how accurate some decisions already were—even though I feel that my present self always knows better than my past self.

So, especially for focus and medium-term decision-making, this is extremely powerful.

For marriages and long-term relationships, I’ll get back to you soon ;) (not kidding, I will).

We often treat behavior like it has a clean explanation: "You're messy because you're disorganized."

"You're tidy because you're focused."

But the truth is rarely that simple.

Take the classic example: the messy desk.

Some research tells us that clutter reduces focus. Some articles argue it signals disorganization. Others romanticize it as the hallmark of a genius.

So… which is it?

Well, maybe it's none of those things.

Or, more precisely, maybe it's all of them, depending on the context.

I've been noticing—and I explore in my latest video—that we often act on a tangled mix of ideas: partial scientific studies, internalized expectations, cultural messaging, and even personal insecurities.

Over time, these form unquestioned "rules" we start living by.

And when we break those rules (say, by working on a cluttered desk), we don't just notice it—we judge ourselves for it.

We turn a neutral behavior into a moral failing.

And that judgment? That's what really derails focus.

So, instead of asking, "What does my desk say about me?"

Try asking, "What does it say about where I am in my process?"

Because sometimes a messy desk isn't a problem—it's a reflection of creative exploration.

Sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do to improve your focus is not to clean your desk but to clean up the beliefs underneath it.

Discover more in this week's video.

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Until next time,

Best,

Concetta Cucchiarelli, Founder at Sutainable Focus.

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[Before you start reading, know that if you prefer, you can also listen or watch the same content here.]

Have you ever considered burnout a wake-up call to rethink your paradigm of productivity? No, I'm not talking about reorganizing priorities. I'm talking about the concept of productivity itself.

Wait, are you telling me that productivity can have different meanings?

Of course, yes.

What is productivity?

This week, while preparing for a talk about "reframing productivity at work," I asked ChatGPT to generate an image of a "super productive woman" and another of a "non-productive woman."

The results?

The first? Polished. Dressed to impress. Sitting at a pristine, modern desk. No distractions. Just a fancy cappuccino and a laptop in a picture-perfect workspace.

The second? Messy. Sloppy clothes, clutter everywhere, paper crumpled up, two phones in sight—eyes darting between screens.

Predictable, right?

That's what I thought, too.

But then, when I showed these images to the audience and asked if they resonated with their personal image of productivity, a woman from Chicago told me: "Actually, I'd say exactly the opposite."

She explained that, in the U.S., a "productive person" is often seen as someone exhausted or overworked because that's the sign you've been working hard. It's like a badge of honor.

This conversation made me think even more seriously about something crucial we keep underestimating when we talk about productivity.

What do we mean when we talk about productivity?

There are so many talks, articles, and strategies about productivity, yet they seem to be often contradictory. One day, "This is the ultimate tip to improve your productivity," the other day, "Stop doing this (talking about the same thing they were promoting the day before). It's killing your productivity."

But what do they mean? Are they crazy?

Of course, no.

But even they are often unaware of switching paradigms, sometimes referring to a certain idea of productivity and others to a different idea of productivity.

The Need for Definitions

Herbert Simon, in a 1971 talk, said something that has profoundly shaped the way I see the world:

"If men do not pour new wine into old bottles, they do something almost as bad: they invest old words with new meanings. […] The difficulty does not stem from jargon but from a complete disparity of meanings hidden behind a superficially common language." Herbert Simon

Types of Productivity

It's not just a problem related to time and different eras; it's also different across disciplines. Here are some other ways productivity is defined, just to name a few:

• Economic Productivity: Efficiency of production in terms of output per unit of input, commonly measured in labor or total factor productivity.

• Cognitive Productivity: The ability to efficiently process, understand, and apply knowledge.

• Creative Productivity: The rate and quality of creative output, such as artistic or scientific work.

• Emotional Productivity: The ability to regulate emotions in a way that enhances personal and professional well-being.

• Technological Productivity: The effectiveness of using tools and automation to enhance efficiency.

• Ecological Productivity: The rate at which ecosystems generate biomass and sustain life.

• Personal Productivity: How well an individual manages time, energy, and resources to achieve personal goals.

The Problem with Conflicting Definitions

All these definitions of productivity coexist in our collective understanding, often blending without us realizing it.

If you want to improve your productivity, start by discovering your understanding of productivity.

So the first thing you want to do before accepting the latest productivity hack is to have the answer to the following question clear:

What Does Productivity Mean to You?

Is it:

• Getting more things done?

• Feeling fulfilled?

• Knowing you've focused on the most critical tasks?

• Using your resources at your best?

• Protecting your well-being?

Which of the definitions above does it belong to?

Which idea of productivity this piece of content is talking about?

Second. Every time you read something about productivity, try to understand first which productivity they are talking about. This will change the way you see all these tips and tricks and help you get the most out of them.

If you think that productivity principles, after all, are the same, you get it wrong. Dealing with your body and mind has different constraints than dealing with an organization or a team.

Mixing them is what leads to misunderstanding and to the point where you rethink the whole thing, like when you burn out.

And you may think it's just a change of priorities, like "Before, I gave more importance to work; now, health comes first," but it's actually a shift in the meaning you give to productivity.

I leave you to figure out your definition of productivity.

If you want to tell me in the comments, I'd love to hear.

Otherwise, it's the same as long as you have the answer.

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And remember: Stay grounded. Stay connected. Stay sustainably focused.

—Concetta

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Sounds great in theory, right? But is it?

Why Multichannel Multitasking Is a Myth

When you think about a lemon, you don't just think about its color or shape. You probably immediately scrunch up your face. You can actually taste it, smell it, and even imagine the sound it makes when it's cut or its rough skin.

You may also automatically recall many connected details, like the time you tried to eat a slice of lemon or a particular summer when you had the best lemonade, the glass, the people who were with you, how hot it was, everything your life related to the idea of a lemon.

This happens because our senses always work together when making sense of reality.

We don't experience the world through isolated senses. Instead, our brain combines inputs from sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell to create a rich and connected experience. This ability to perceive through combinations of senses allows us to form richer concepts.

A big misunderstanding is that we assume one sense is predominantly at work for certain activities. For example, we think reading is just about using our eyes. However, this is an illusion. Behind the scenes, all our senses contribute significantly to the experience. When we read, our brain may need to "hear" the words, picture the images and the meaning, and create an internal narrative that involves more than just sight.

This natural multisensory integration makes our understanding deeper, richer, and more connected.

By multitasking across sensory channels, we reduce the richness of our experiences and limit our brain's ability to form meaningful connections.

The Costs of Multichannel Multitasking

The idea of multichannel multitasking might sound appealing, but it comes with significant hidden costs—costs specific to how we process and experience the world.

1. A Fragmented Experience: When we isolate our attention to just one sensory channel, we experience a different version of reality. For example, in Max Zampini's "sonic chip" experiment, participants perceived stale chips as fresh simply because they made them "hear" the sound of fresh chips while chewing them. Focusing on one channel can prevent us from seeing the whole picture, creating totally different or misleading experiences. The truth is that we hear by seeing, we see by hearing, we taste by smelling, we taste by seeing…You keep going with all the combinations.

2. Weaker Connections, Poorer Recall: Multichannel multitasking limits the connections our brain can form. Memory and recall are deeply tied to the number and richness of connections we create. When we use fewer senses or divide our attention across tasks, we form shallower and less robust knowledge—knowledge that fades quickly and is harder to recall later.

3. Reduced creativity. The richness of these concepts is the foundation of creativity. Creativity thrives on finding new connections—sometimes between things that seem highly improbable. Machines, for instance, connect what's likely or logical. But humans? We excel at linking seemingly unrelated ideas to solve problems and find innovative solutions. The more complex connections we form, the more we can think deeply, problem-solve, and generate innovative ideas and solutions.

4. Reinforcing Unhealthy Habits: Multichannel multitasking perpetuates the belief that we must fill every free space, in this case, the sense not directly involved in a task, with "productive" activity so that we can maximize our resources at all times. This habit teaches us to avoid stillness, making us impatient and less able to stay present or enjoy moments. It also reduces our ability to tolerate discomfort or the feeling of not being fully busy, leading to a constant chase for productivity at the expense of our well-being.

A Better Approach

To save time and improve productivity, practice focusing all your senses on one task instead. This approach:

• Strengthens connections in your brain.

• Enhances memory, recall, and learning.

• Boosts creativity.

• Helps you deeply enjoy what you're doing.

• Help you build persistence and patience.

Remember, just because you can multitask—and yes, it's a remarkable survival advantage—doesn't mean you should.

Don't turn an emergency behavior into your default mode.

Stay centered, stay connected, stay sustainably focused.

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Further readings:

• We keep hearing that we should avoid multitasking, and I'm the first person suggesting it relentlessly. But what is it that we should actually avoid? Discover it here.

• It's better not to do cognitively demanding things simultaneously. But what about things so mechanical we don't have to think about, like walking? Discover the answer here.

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Summer is festival time in the Netherlands (where I live). But regardless of where you live, there are always places so loud that you should protect your ears.

For sure, the best help available on the market so far is earplugs.

Do you know those tiny rubber objects you put in your ears, and they lower the level of environmental noise?

I've been trying many of them, in different shapes and colors, some very fashionable, others less. Still, the way they work is basically the same. They act as a physical barrier to sound entering your ears.

Earplugs are crucial when it comes to fighting and dealing with excessive noise. By now, we all know that noise is a silent killer, and if you don't know, please read this very accurate article from The New York Times.

It's not just a matter of ear protection, which in itself is already important since once you damage your ears, they don't recover. We are not really aware of how vital the ability to hear is in our lives because it's invisible, and we take it for granted, but I'll tell you more about this in the future. Now, back to our topic.

Noise doesn't just damage our ears but can massively harm our physical and mental health.

Rising heart rate and blood pressure are just a few of the endless physical effects caused by excessive noise, not to mention the cognitive ones.

This is one reason why you should always have a pair of earplugs with you.

So, should you use earplugs in very loud environments? Definitely yes.

However, many people ask me if earplugs are also good for staying focused and productive.

This is a more complicated question, and no, they aren't.

Let me tell you why.

Focus and attention are strictly related to our perceived safety. Having less information from the environment can affect our perception of safety and, consequently, our ability to focus on something different from the environment scanning.

You may say -yes, but I can hear the same. It's just less loud-.

That's not entirely true. Sure, you hear some external sounds less loud, but:

• Lowering the loudness level means cutting sound components (called frequencies). This affects your perception of the environment and the position in the space of the objects that produce sound, which is paramount for our ability to adapt our behaviors (for example, moving a step aside if a car is approaching).

• You start perceiving sounds you usually wouldn't listen to (and actually, you are not supposed to), like your internal sounds like breath and heartbeat, to name a few. These sounds overrule the natural sound priority that drives our perception (and helps us survive). For example, this means you will hear your breath louder than someone approaching you.

These two reasons also explain why wearing earplugs when not needed can increase anxiety.

Why? Think about it: Which moment would you naturally perceive your breath and heartbeat louder than the rest? When you are closed in a tiny space, hiding from something or someone, and needing to be quiet and control the sound you produce, not to be found. Next time you watch a thriller movie, notice how many times they remove other sounds and keep just the loud breath of the soon-to-be victim when they want to increase anxiety or tension. It works because this is how your brain works.

All these cases are unlikely events (since we don’t often play hide and seek anymore), and as such, they are treated by your brain, which will behave like you are not safe (and again lower your level of focus on what you desire), even if the threat is not real.

If you are one of those people who get sick wearing earplugs, now you understand that your reaction is normal.

But if you’ve been using them so far, you may object that you are used to them and you actually find them useful.

Sure, it can be true, but it can also be an illusion or a placebo effect, and it has the side effects just described that we want to avoid. After all, also junk food can relieve stress in the short term but deeply harms your health.

We want to find here what's best for you and that has no or lower side effects than the problem we are trying to solve.

There are also a couple more things to take into account.

Relying on earplugs to stay focused translates into a sort of addiction that creates the false belief that without them, you cannot concentrate and focus, and consequently, you'll behave accordingly.

There is also something very peculiar about ears. The sensitivity of the ears (what we can hear) depends on the general level of noise in the environment. If the environment is loud, they adjust to being less sensitive. If the environment is very quiet, they will be more sensitive and pick up more and more sounds until they can pick up almost unnoticeable sounds.

It's the fascinating system ears use to protect themselves.

This means that trying to remove noise by using earplugs is a losing game since our ears are designed to always find something to listen to, no matter how small, and prioritize sounds according to their importance.

But if this is true, how can we decide when to use them?

There is a heuristic that I use every time, and I call the "breath rule."

It’s very simple: if you put them on and you can listen to your breath, it means you don't need them because the environment is not too noisy.

If you cannot listen to your breath, keep it on because you are in a too-loud space.

Protecting our hearing is paramount, and earplugs are a massive aid.

Earplugs are not always a big help for staying focused, even for people with attention deficits, because they increase alertness, which in turn reduces the ability to focus intentionally on a task.

Yes, we should definitely work on making our environment less loud. This is another vital topic, but for now, let's always keep a pair of earplugs with us, but try to use them only when our hearing is at steak.

Try not to use them for reasons other than protecting your ears from significantly loud places.

Instead, I suggest finding quieter places and training your focus and attention from different perspectives rather than canceling something that, in fact, helps us be more focused. After all, focus is a skill that you can learn.

Unless you have severe problems with noise sensitivity, try not to use them to be more focused, and you'll feel less anxious and calmer.

If you've been using them so far, give yourself time to adjust.

Oh, and when you use them, remember to keep them super clean. You don't want to save your ears from noise and give them an infection.

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But we often forget this amid a continuous condemnation of distractions. On social media, in books, or on podcasts, distractions seem to be the biggest problem in our society. Being distractable is the new original sin.

This hyperfocus on distraction (yes, I meant it) makes us more and more sensitive to distractions, to the idea that being distracted is terrible and shouldn't happen in the first place. It creates unrealistic expectations that make our productivity the most challenging job.

We start having more and more unrealistic ideas of what focus and productivity are.

Set aside the fact that being open to distraction actually improves focus because it makes us feel safer (in fact, in one of my research studies, I understand that perceived safety is a key element of focus); this approach makes us build an increasing sense of frustration coming from getting distracted.

Our primary work becomes avoiding distractions instead of the task at hand.

And this worry has to be managed, adding additional effort to the primary one, which is to find focus and stay focused.

We get more and more distracted by the fear of getting distracted.

I've been living in Rome for 20 years. Rome is a very chaotic city.

It's really difficult to travel by public transportation there, so almost everyone has a car, making it one of the most trafficked cities in the world.

Every morning, heading to the office, I would find someone stuck on the street, arguing with other people because they scratched or crushed their cars, screaming and yelling and saying how much in a rush they were. And yet they were there arguing about the fact that they were in a rush. So, usually, they call a traffic agent to see who’s fault and who has to pay. This process takes hours every time.

I love understanding human behaviors, really, but I have always found it hilarious to see people saying they have no time, at the same time, spending so much time to let the world know it. Yes, sometimes it's because of insurance and making “easy” money. But believe me, most of the time, it's not even a noticeable scratch. It's more about: I'm going to work, I'm late, I have a lot to do. No one has the right to stop me.

Instead of ignoring it, they indulge in it, losing half of their day.

We do precisely the same with distractions.

We want to focus, but we blame ourselves for getting distracted and keep ruminating on that feeling of inadequacy and frustration generated by the idea that nothing should stop us.

Remember one thing: the goal is not to be indistractable but to find fulfillment in what we do.

You got distracted. So what?

You must separate your feelings from your goals.

Don't get stuck in your mind arguing with your frustration. Don't be like these people on Rome's street.

Keep your eyes on the prize, which is your task, and the beauty of doing something without the risk of getting locked in.

Keep your emotions at bay, especially if these emotions are not useful.

When you think, "I got distracted again," dismiss this thought and tell yourself out loud, "This is how I’m supposed to work," and keep going.

The point is not how many times you get distracted but what you've been able to achieve. If you get involved in unrealistic expectations, you'll end up being less and less productive just because of your judgment of being distractable, and thus, you will have a bigger feeling of not being productive as expected.

Sure, you can improve your workflow, sure, you can work on your motivation, sure, you can work on better and more personalized strategies, but just aiming at removing distractions, no, it's a losing game, luckily.

So here's what you can do:

Work,

get distracted,

tell yourself that it is perfectly fine,

go back to work,

get distracted,

tell yourself it's perfectly fine,

go back to work,

get distracted,

tell yourself it's perfectly fine.

You got it.

The more you practice, the sooner this will turn into:

Work,

get distracted,

back to work,

get distracted,

back to work...

Am I saying that all distractions are ok? No, something can be avoided, but the first and most crucial step is to stop feeling wrong about being distractable.

When you have a healthy dialogue with yourself, it's much easier to change your approach to productivity.

It's easier than you think. Don't overcomplicate your life with useless suggestions. Keep going.

And every time you read that distractions are evil, keep scrolling. ;)

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