You had four hours blocked for deep work. You're now three hours in with seventeen browser tabs open, forty-two Slack notifications cleared, and zero meaningful progress on the project that actually matters. You've been productive—responding, managing, coordinating—but you haven't been deep. The presentation still needs creating, the strategy remains unformed, the code stays unwritten. You've been swimming in the shallows whilst drowning in the deep end. Your attention isn't

You check your phone 96 times today. Not because you're expecting something important. Because your brain has been rewired to crave the micro-hit of novelty every six minutes. You know this. You hate this. You continue doing it anyway. This isn't weakness of character. It's the predictable outcome when Stone Age neural circuits meet Silicon Valley persuasion technology. Your attention mechanisms evolved to notice rustling bushes and track prey across savannas. Now they're bei