Why You Can't Focus Anymore

Personal Execution #5: Your Brain Isn't Broken. Your Environment Is.

This is a Wise & Wealthy Academy post. Every week, I publish a new training that focuses on a single idea from one of four areas: Clear thinking, personal execution, career antifragility, and investing psychology.

Every year, it feels like it’s getting harder to focus.

That’s a strange thing to admit for someone who writes about productivity for a living. But it’s true.

Ten years ago I could sit down and write for three hours straight without much effort.

These days I catch myself reaching for my phone within twenty minutes. Checking the news. Checking the markets. Checking nothing in particular.

When was the last time you did two hours of uninterrupted work?

If you have to think hard about that question, this post is for you.

Because here’s what I’ve realized: Our brains didn’t break. The world got louder.

I talk more about this in the video below.

The World Got More Demanding

Think back to the 2010s.

Sure, we had problems. But most of us weren’t glued to world news. The economy was growing, technology felt like an opportunity instead of a threat, and politics was something you thought about once every four years.

Since 2020, that’s over. A pandemic. Wars. Elections that never seem to end. AI coming for everybody’s jobs. Housing you can’t afford. Groceries that cost double.

And you can’t escape any of it. It’s at the dinner table. It’s at work. It’s in every app on your phone. Everyone is talking about the same heavy topics, everywhere, all the time.

Research from Gloria Mark at UC Irvine shows the average knowledge worker now gets interrupted roughly every six minutes, and needs about 23 minutes to recover deep focus after each interruption.

Run that math. Most people never reach deep focus at all.

You Can’t Run Away From It

Here’s the fantasy most of us have entertained: find a cabin in the woods, set up a desk, disconnect from the world, and finally do great work.

It doesn’t work. Any business needs customers. Customers live in the world. I feel this as a writer too.

I’d love to be disconnected, but my readers aren’t disconnected. We all have jobs, families, people who depend on us. We’re in the world whether we like it or not.

So the question isn’t how to escape the noise. The question is how to live inside it without letting it drain you.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, the scientist who brought mindfulness into modern medicine, called this “the full catastrophe” of life.

His point is life has always been overwhelming. Every generation had its version. Ours is just faster and louder. In his book Full Catastrophe Living, he uses a metaphor I keep coming back to:

“We all accept that no one controls the weather. Good sailors learn to read it carefully and respect its power. They will avoid storms if possible, but when caught in one, they know when to take down the sails, batten down the hatches, drop anchor, and ride things out, controlling what is controllable and letting go of the rest.”

So what does this mean for you today? It means waiting for a calmer world before doing your best work is a losing bet. The weather won’t improve. Your job is to become a better sailor.

The Stoics said the same thing two thousand years earlier. You don’t control what happens outside your mind. You control how much of it you let in.

Forget the Productivity Tips

Here’s where I disagree with most advice on focus.