Your best ideas are hiding just past the moment you want to check your phone.

Occasionally, I feel like I live in a state of perpetual interruption. Bouncing between tasks like a goldfish convinced that the next thing I do is the most important. But real depth is only achieved when I resist this fragmentation and hold my attention steady for extended stretches.

It's like the sauna. Sit in that bad boy for 20 mins and you'll be dumping sweat. It's uncomfortable, your instincts tell you to leave, but staying past that point yields the biggest benefits The 15th to 20th minute feel like the sweat is coming from deep inside. But intermittently do 20 minutes and you won't have close to the same rise in core temperature or deep sweat.

Our first minutes with any task barely penetrate its surface. We're still half-elsewhere, our mental temperature hasn't risen. It's only after we let that initial resistance pass that genuine insight begins to emerge.

It's hard to protect attention. There is a financial incentive for companies to capture it. Once they capture it, they have you read bite sized posts that make you context switch from post to post on the infinite scroll of slop. It's like using a sauna for 7 seconds at a time, never yielding benefits of critical thinking.

So work hard to protect it. Go for walks, leave your phone at home, and work on one thing at a time.

Your best ideas are hiding just past the moment you want to check your phone.

Occasionally, I feel like I live in a state of perpetual interruption. Bouncing between tasks like a goldfish convinced that the next thing I do is the most important. But real depth is only achieved when I resist this fragmentation and hold my attention steady for extended stretches.

It's like the sauna. Sit in that bad boy for 20 mins and you'll be dumping sweat. It's uncomfortable, your instincts tell you to leave, but staying past that point yields the biggest benefits The 15th to 20th minute feel like the sweat is coming from deep inside. But intermittently do 20 minutes and you won't have close to the same rise in core temperature or deep sweat.

Our first minutes with any task barely penetrate its surface. We're still half-elsewhere, our mental temperature hasn't risen. It's only after we let that initial resistance pass that genuine insight begins to emerge.

It's hard to protect attention. There is a financial incentive for companies to capture it. Once they capture it, they have you read bite sized posts that make you context switch from post to post on the infinite scroll of slop. It's like using a sauna for 7 seconds at a time, never yielding benefits of critical thinking.

So work hard to protect it. Go for walks, leave your phone at home, and work on one thing at a time.