I cut my AI coding spend and doomscrolling by treating both like one budget

I kept treating my two biggest problems as separate:

• "Why is my AI bill so high?"
• "Why am I still not shipping enough?"

Turns out they were the same bug.

On days when my attention was scattered, my AI costs were always higher. I'd context-switch, lose track, rerun prompts, and burn tokens on sloppy retries.

What changed

I started tracking one combined budget every session:

1. Token spend for the session
2. Context switches caused by feed distractions

If either number spiked, I stopped and reset.

My 4-rule nightly workflow

1. 3-line brief before every heavy run
   
   Forces clarity and cuts reruns.

2. 90-minute no-feed block
   
   Keep messaging/search tools, block algorithmic feeds.

3. Hard session spend cap
   
   If I cross it, I switch to offline planning.

4. 10-minute shutdown log
   
   Note what burned cost and what actually shipped.

The tools I built for this

I built two tiny Mac apps to make this frictionless:

• TokenBar — real-time token/cost visibility in the menu bar (tokenbar.site, $5)
• Monk Mode — feed-level distraction blocking on Mac (mac.monk-mode.lifestyle, $15)

Not magic. Just removing blind spots.

Biggest takeaway

Most solo devs don't have a model pricing problem.
They have a workflow leak problem:

• unclear briefs
• too many retries
• too much feed-driven context switching

Fix that and both focus + spend improve at the same time.

If you're building with AI every day, track those two numbers for a week. You'll see the pattern fast.