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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Claude Code has made my computer as - or even more - addicting as social media.

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

  7 minutes for short, 21 for a long break.

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

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

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

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

When you are done, visit and parse your sidenotes.

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

Consider turning off the internet before you go to bed and not turning it on for at least 1 hour after you wake up. I think I got this idea from Craig Mod (who I believe does no internet until after lunch). I've been doing this for a few months. The initial hour is really good (very easy to e.g. read or work calmly on some software projects without distraction) but I also find it puts me in the right mindset for the rest of the day.