“Like fingers pointing to the moon, other diverse disciplines from anthropology to education, behavioral economics to family counseling, similarly suggest that the skillful management of attention is the sine qua non of the good life and the key to improving virtually every aspect of your experience.” — Winifred Gallagher
Our attention is being stolen.
We’re slowly losing the ability to concentrate, not only because of TikTok, but
also because we constantly have access to easy consumption.
It’s digital fast food.
When I started to notice this on myself, I started with the naïve approach and deleted all time sink1 apps like YouTube or Instagram. This worked for a day or two until I either got bored or found another reason to re-install.
Then I moved to Apple Screen Time. This works for a bit, but that “15 minutes more” button starts to become muscle memory very quickly. Even apps like one sec got deleted because they’re annoying (that’s the idea, I know).
In January 2024 I went 7 days with only my Apple Watch, leaving my iPhone at my desk at all times. It was doable, but very impractical.
None of this worked
In early 2025 I sold my Apple Watch and bought a Casio DW-5600BB-1. This had a large impact as I would no longer get buzzed on my wrist for every notification2.
Then I deleted my Instagram account and the YouTube, Mastodon and Bluesky apps. Yes, a lot of my friends are on Instagram—but I mostly watched Reels anyway! I do miss Mastodon. I now use YouTube in Safari with shorts blocked. This creates enough friction for me to watch videos intentionally (most of the time). It also lets me use cool extensions like SponsorBlock and DeArrow.
And when Apple Intelligence (if you can call it that) got to Europe, I turned on the new Reduce Interruptions focus and never turned it off. This works great because it randomly lets things through, but blocks most of it.
I tried a dumb phone3, but this was way too much friction—I need a usable phone for renting a bike, getting my parcels, etc.
In March I bought a Bullet Journal and started tracking my tasks there instead of my phone. I also started journalling and tracking my habits and I love the analog lifestyle—even my running plan is analog!
The combination of all of this is working out pretty well so far: My phone is mostly boring. It doesn’t have any exciting apps. It doesn’t spark joy. Because of this, I’m spending my time a lot more intentional.
That being said, sometimes I spend a little too much time on YouTube (at least that’s longform content) and I should probably delete the Slack app to not check the work chat when I’m not at my desk.
We deserve more humane tech
I’m happy to see the first smartphone vendors start to add physical switches to their phones to disable connectivity or limit apps4 and maybe I’ll switch to one of them one day.
This is not a political post, but if it was, it would talk about the obscene power of big tech and the necessity to regulate and break up. It would appeal on you to rethink your investment into these services, services that are actively spying on you, services that exploit your mental health for the sake of raising shareholder value.
Now go, touch some grass5. 🌱
-
Knapp, J. & Zeratsky, J. (2018). Make Time: How to focus on what matters every day. ↩
-
Yes, you can turn all notifications off. I didn’t. ↩
-
Apparently there’s an app for that ↩
