One of the things I’ve been focusing on in 2025 is improving my focus. We’ve all heard the studies and discussions about how social media, smartphones, and the like is zapping our ability to focus. Even as the social media companies expand the number of characters allowed in a post, it’s still training use to think in 140 or 280 character snippets.
I have noticed my ability to focus waning for a while now and at the beginning of the year I decided this was something I did not want to happen. I’ve been making a point of reading books more. While it’s difficult to step away from the computer and still be an informed citizen, especially in The Age of Manufactured Chaos™, I purposely close the computer and other connected devices 20-30 minutes before I go to bed. This habit has been hard for me to maintain. As a geek I’m very drawn to buttons, blips, and lights, but there’s something nearly magical for me to actually read a book each night before heading to bed. Writing about this intention helps me reinforce my desire to get this accomplished.
This blog occasionally holds me accountable to my plans.
I’ve also been trying to write more, though over the past couple of days I haven’t been doing it as much as I like. I have a couple of blog entries that I never finished; they’re nothing earth-shattering and will be posted soon with a date stamp of the day I intended for the post to appear. But writing gets my creative juices flowing. It’s something that I need to be doing more and more.
The other thing I’m always battling is distraction, again, especially in the my technological life. This is one of my stumbling blocks to using Linux exclusively; the Linux ecosystem becomes too fiddly and I end up spending more time fiddling with things instead of doing what I wanted to do, namely writing, editing photos, or making videos. Conversely, if I focus specially on one ecosystem (like going all in on Apple), I get really bored. Finding the sweet spot of focus with distraction or boredom is a challenge for me, but I seem to have that right now.
Again, I write these things to remind me of where I need to be.
I’m hoping to jump off the trend lines of losing focus with my fellow human beings. I think it’s a good step of improving my mental health which in turn could lead to a more fulfilling existence on the back half of my life.
