How To Stay Focused and Write Consistently in a Distracted World
Updated: 3 days ago
“Just write for 15 minutes a day.”
It’s what I tell some of my coaching clients, but truthfully, I hate this advice. Especially for writers who are also parenting. Because the reality is, when you finally get 15 minutes to yourself, you're more likely to crave a coffee, a sit down, and a scroll, rather than working on your novel.
Like many parents, my kids consume a huge part of my mental and emotional bandwidth. Add to that a recent move from Dubai to New York and I’ve been seeking those online dopamine hits for much longer than is healthy.
During Covid is another example. Then, we were living in Dubai. The kids were 6 and 4. I was homeschooling, trying to hold my business together, and stuck in a high-rise apartment with zero alone time.
I need a lot of alone time.
So I coped the way many did - by doomscrolling. But very little writing got done. My brain was at capacity.
Dr. Nerurkar, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School, calls it “popcorn brain”—a biological phenomenon caused by overstimulation online. When our brains are constantly ‘popping’, it becomes hard to engage with the real world, which moves at a much slower pace.
As life returned to normal, the need for distraction lessened. But even now, I can feel my attention span fading. I find myself:
Needing a book to grab me immediately or I will abandon it.
Getting restless during movies.
Unable to concentrate on writing for long periods of time.
That’s when I check my screen time, feel ashamed, delete the apps, hide my phone, set timers (which I always override), and then repeat the cycle. (Why is “Extend for 15 minutes” even an option?)
Of course, I know Silicon Valley is working very hard to keep me online. But at some point, I had to take back control.
And I’ve tried everything.
But the one thing that actually helped? Slowing down.
It sounds obvious. But it wasn’t until I became impatient waiting for the kettle to boil that I realized how fast I’d been living. How many productivity hacks I relied on. How addicted I’d become to short cuts.
So I made some changes - small ones at first - and slowly, my popcorn brain…well…stopped popping as much.
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