When I’m vibe coding, the biggest threat isn’t bugs or complexity. It’s unplanned context switching.
Phone scrolling rarely starts with a conscious decision. Without any conscious decision, my hand reaches for my phone. So I stopped treating this as a focus problem and started treating it as something I needed to fix in my workflow.
The Rule
I added one rule to my workflow:
If I want to break flow, I must be willing to schedule it.
If I want to scroll my phone, I create a calendar event.
Give it a name.
Place it in time.
It doesn’t matter which calendar you use — Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, or anything else.
The tool isn’t the point. The step is.
What This Changes
The moment I try to schedule “scrolling”, a decision surface appears. Before the event even exists, I’m forced to evaluate:
Is this worth interrupting flow?
How long do I actually want this?
Do I need it now, or later?
Sometimes I still schedule it. Often I don’t. Either way, the interruption doesn’t happen that much anymore.
Why This Works (Specific > Suppression)
This is essentially the “S” in SMART — Specific, applied to micro-decisions. Vague urges pass silently. Specific actions require justification. Scheduling isn’t commitment. It’s a decision gate.
By naming an action and placing it in time, the evaluation process becomes external and unavoidable.
Making It Repeatable
The same interruptions show up again and again. So I turned them into predefined actions that I can drop into the calendar quickly. I personally use my own tool, BreakToGoal, because it makes reusing these decisions easier — but the idea itself is completely tool-agnostic. Any system that forces you to:
define an action clearly
place it into real time
and treat scheduling as meaningful will work.
Final Note
Flow breaks because choices never surface. Sometimes, the simplest fix is:
- Make the action specific.
- Try to schedule it.
Top comments (1)
For people who do deep or vibe coding, do you scroll your phone?