How I Relearned Focus in the Age of Distraction

Every developer I know struggles with it — the ever-present pull of distractions. You open your editor and, before you know it, you're deep in a rabbit hole of unread emails, Slack messages, or that one forum thread you definitely didn’t need to check. I used to think this was just part of the modern workflow. But over time, I realized I wasn’t just losing minutes — I was losing depth.

A few months ago, I started noticing something strange. My work was getting done, but the joy of building — of truly immersing myself in a problem — was fading. So I made a decision: I would relearn focus, like a skill I had somehow let rust.

One of the first changes I made was deceptively simple: I stopped keeping all my tools open at once. No more browser tabs lingering behind my IDE. No Slack until lunch. I started using pen and paper again — not for notes I needed to keep, but to slow my thoughts down enough to actually see them. It felt clunky at first. But soon, my brain began to settle into deeper concentration.

There was also the question of attention management. Not time management — we all have the same hours. But how we direct our energy within those hours. I began blocking out just two deep work sessions per day, each about 90 minutes. That’s it. No guilt about the rest. And the results? I got more meaningful work done in those windows than I used to in entire days.

Of course, it’s a journey. I still get distracted. But now, I notice it. I catch myself mid-scroll and choose to return. That, to me, is the real win.

When I speak to younger developers or founders (and as someone who's worn both hats), I tell them this: speed is a trap if it comes at the expense of clarity. Productivity is not how fast you ship — it's how clearly you think. And clarity needs space.

I’m sharing this not because I’ve mastered it, but because I’m still learning. Focus, like code, is something we continuously refactor. And writing this now, I'm reminding myself too.

Thanks for reading —
Alexey Bashkirov