Fighting back against attention fragmentation

An update on logging 1,000 hours of deep work in 365 days

At the beginning of this year, I set out to complete a challenge: 1,000 hours of deep work in under 365 days.

This was borne out of noticing how more and more distractions were elbowing their way into my days. Resisting the siren song of an incoming text message or the Instagram icon, completing a quick to-do, or acting on some stray thought that pops into my mind takes effort, and at the end of last year, I found myself less and less likely to exercise that effort. I bounced from task to task, stimuli to stimuli, and it didn’t feel good. I’d end my work days feeling drained, dissatisfied, and disappointed—feeling like I hadn’t done my best work.

This is a problem, because as a writer, most of what I do for my job, my main hobby, and now this newsletter requires me to think deeply and write eloquently, to make friends with the blank page and let my mind wander long enough to stumble upon something worth sharing. The idea that I was losing my ability to do that, even if incrementally, was scary.