how to fix your attention span

and maybe even fall in love with thinking again

hello.

we live in a world that profits off your distraction. every notification, every scroll, every algorithmic flicker is designed to keep you suspended in a state of half-attention. you’re engaged just enough to stay, but never long enough to drop into anything real. and when your focus starts to splinter, the world tells you it’s your fault. that you're lazy, undisciplined, and addicted to your phone, but that’s not the whole story.

people often ask how I manage to write, film, study, work, and still show up online. the truth is, I don’t always do it well. but if there’s one thing that’s helped me protect any sense of clarity or creative focus, it’s this: i’ve learned to guard my attention like it’s sacred.

i create more than i consume. especially when it comes to social media. i’ll post something, and then i’ll leave. post and ghost. not because i think i’m above it, but because i know how quickly i unravel when i stay. i don’t linger in comment sections or scroll for feedback. i don’t check metrics obsessively. i’ve trained myself to ghost. not to be mysterious, but to stay intact. and most importantly, to be extremely selective with the very few creators i do allow myself to indulge in and engage with.

i know what it feels like to be stretched thin by a hundred tiny inputs that feel urgent but mean nothing. to spend an hour in someone else’s life, someone else’s thoughts, and leave feeling vaguely worse without knowing why. it’s not just distraction, it’s disorientation. and over time, it chips away at your ability to think clearly, to move with intention, to hear yourself.

your fractured attention isn't a moral failure. it’s a biological response to overstimulation. it’s the exhaustion of filtering noise from signal, of being constantly reachable, constantly updated, constantly performing. it's the silent weight of stress, multitasking, algorithmic manipulation, and the pressure to always be optimizing something: your body, your productivity, your brand.

your attention isn’t broken, it’s buried. underneath the noise, it’s still there, still alive, still yours. you just have to learn how to return to it.

this isn’t about deleting everything and moving to a cabin in the woods (though not a bad idea). it’s about learning how to be with yourself again and how to sit inside your own mind without needing to escape. to teach yourself how to think, really think without rushing to flatten the thought into content. or how to make peace with silence, slowness, and the strange spaciousness of undivided presence.

1. reclaim your inputs

your attention isn’t just shaped by what you focus on, it’s sculpted by what you let in. the quality of your thoughts, your curiosity, your focus—they’re all downstream from your inputs. and most of us are consuming junk, all day long. it’s fast, loud, shallow things that feel like information but leave no trace. things that stimulate but don’t satisfy.

if you want to fix your attention span, start here. not with a productivity hack, but with a shift in your media diet.

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the rest of this essay is for paid subscribers. i’m sharing the rest of my thoughts and practice advice on this important topic in hopes that they can offer you what they’ve offered me.

thank you for being here, for supporting my work, and for believing in the value of slow, thoughtful thinking in a world that demands urgency.