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

I gave up on facebook in 2010 and twitter in 2020ish. I never developed the habit for other social media. I turn off slack and email for the first 45 minutes of each hour. If the server is on fire, call me. That's why I have a phone. Oh, and I have an old-school non-smart phone for phone calls and it often lives in a different room from where I work. I run a TOTP authenticator on a tablet that's not configured to receive any messages.

HN and an occasional YouTube video are my only online distractions. In my advanced age I've lost the desire to tell everyone how wrong they are, which seems to be the national sport of online comments sections. (Though, HN, you're much better than most places.) I've been getting into GMRS lately and it's hard to turn off the radio during work days, but I have been able to do it. Maybe I should write a similar article saying "the net doesn't distract me, but dang if I can't go 10 minutes without thinking about people I know via GMRS."

The author of this piece makes an observation about bullshit vs. attention that is probably worth looking into. My last several jobs have included less bullshit, but a lot more documentation. Which is to say, the docs I write seem to have actual applicability to a real business problem and it's solution. There's little busy work that only serves to prove that a remote VP has more people working for him.

I think what I'm trying to say is a) it is possible to strengthen your attention gland. I'm happy to see the author at least trying. And... b) maybe there's a correlation between perceived bullshit and ability to focus. This needs more research.