I spent years believing that focus meant exclusion: pick one thing, master it completely, then move to the next. But that approach has a hidden cost.
When you channel all your energy into one area, everything else atrophies. You develop strength in isolation while losing functional capability across domains. Like someone who only exercises their biceps while ignoring their legs, you end up less capable overall despite having one impressive strength.
Focus isn't about exclusion; it's about presence.
How Single-Minded Focus Limits You
Developers spend extended periods mastering one technology while losing touch with foundational knowledge. They build increasingly complex features in their specialty but struggle when broader context matters. The depth in one area doesn't compensate for the decay everywhere else.
The problem isn't the depth itself. It's the assumption that depth in isolation produces capability. What you know in one domain becomes harder to apply when you've lost touch with related concepts. Single-minded focus doesn't just ignore other skills; it makes you less effective at using the skills you've supposedly mastered.
Why Intervals Work Better Than Single-Minded Focus
Regular activation prevents skill decay. Your brain doesn't maintain knowledge you never use. Touching important concepts regularly keeps them accessible while letting them sit untouched for extended periods means starting over when you finally need them.
Cross-domain connections accelerate learning. Understanding in one area becomes clearer when you understand related concepts, and each domain reinforces the others.
Cognitive flexibility matters more than deep expertise in any single area. Real problems demand synthesis across multiple domains, and pure focus on any single piece makes you ineffective at the whole.
Anxiety reduction is underrated. When you know critical skills are decaying, every moment spent on other work feels like falling behind. Regular intervals create confidence that nothing important is being neglected.
Intervals of Development in Practice
Instead of deep-work obsession, practice intervals of development. Visit important skill areas regularly with variable depth based on what you discover.
You might spend several days building a feature, then spend time reviewing a related concept because the work revealed gaps in your understanding. You notice complexity you don't fully grasp, so you study that concept. Then you apply that knowledge and return to the original work.
You didn't abandon your primary work for a deep-dive. You responded to what the work revealed and gave that concept the attention it deserved in that moment. Later, you might spend time on another area because team discussions reveal your mental model is unclear. You don't spend months on theory; you spend enough time to understand concepts relevant to the current problem.
The intervals vary naturally. Sometimes you spend ten minutes refreshing a concept while other times you spend three hours working through examples. Sometimes you spend a full day because discovery reveals gaps that matter. The depth follows the work's needs, not a predetermined study plan.
Rethinking What Focus Means
Focus is full commitment to whatever deserves attention in each moment, guided by the work's natural rhythms rather than arbitrary deadlines or obsessive completion.
This is challenging for developers who treat every task as urgent and world-ending. I've been that person. Every bug feels like a production crisis, every feature feels like it must ship immediately, and every learning gap feels like career-ending incompetence.
The shift requires changing how you evaluate what matters. Not everything that screams for attention deserves it, not everything that feels urgent is important, and some work reveals dependencies that matter more than the original task.
When you're implementing a feature and realize you don't understand a key concept, stop and learn that concept. The feature will wait. When you discover gaps in understanding while working, spend time filling those gaps.
This feels inefficient and looks like distraction, but it's the opposite. It's recognizing what needs your attention right now versus what's just loud. Deep work on the wrong thing is expensive distraction.
Making This Practical
Track your skill areas and when you last engaged with them. Not obsessively, but enough to notice when important domains are being ignored. When something you care about hasn't been touched in a month, find a reason to visit it. Read an article, review code that uses it, or work through a small example.
Let the work guide interval depth. If you discover a gap that blocks progress, fill it. If you notice confusion about a concept, clarify it. If you realize an assumption was wrong, correct it. Don't force study plans that ignore what your actual work is revealing.
Build deliberately across domains rather than accidentally within one. If you've spent extended time in one area, intentionally choose work in other areas. Balance different types of work rather than optimizing for depth in a single domain.
This doesn't mean abandoning expertise. Expertise in isolation is less valuable than competence across connected domains.
Focus isn't about saying no to everything except one thing. It's about being fully present with whatever deserves your attention right now, knowing that what deserves attention will shift as you discover what matters.
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