Supercharging My Focus (with Help from AI)

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One day after school, when I was about 12 years old, my mom took me to a doctor’s office that I had never been to before. The doctor didn’t do the usual stuff like shine a light in my eyes or tap my knee with a little hammer to see if I would kick. Instead, he asked me to sit down at a desk and take a test on paper.

The test had pictures of shapes that I had to rotate in my mind. There were logic puzzles. It had stories with questions. The doctor asked how I was feeling and whether I had any trouble in school. (How did they know?) Then I had to sit down at a computer and play a boring game for what seemed like an eternity.

When all the tests were done, the doctor brought my mom in from the waiting room and told her that I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). I was a smart kid, he assured her, but I just had a hard time staying focused. And then he wrote something on a notepad and handed it to her, saying we could pick it up at the pharmacy on the way home.

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Everyone struggles with focus. We have the things we think we should do, and then we have the things we actually want to do. The gap between them is painful.

Over the years I have often struggled to bridge this gap. I have tried a lot of things: medication, meditation, counseling, journaling, tutoring, drinking water, sleeping more, lifting weights, eating ice cream—the list could go on for a long time.

But of everything I’ve tried, one practice has consistently worked for me: writing. When I feel demotivated or have an impulse to do something outside my area of focus, I open up a blank page and write until I find clarity.

Until recently, this was a solitary exercise. My head would often go blank and I would get stuck. I easily lost momentum. But then I started writing in Lex—the AI-powered writing tool I’m building—and the process got way better. I don’t think it’s entirely a coincidence that the past five months have been some of the most focused and productive of my entire life.

Not to sound all braggy, but I’m pretty proud of what I’ve done during this time: I’ve written a Divinations essay every week (including one of my most popular pieces ever), shipped a lot of great improvements to Lex (which broke a record last week for daily active users), and lifted heavier weights than ever in the gym—all while taking care of my 10-month-old daughter with my wife. It feels like I’ve unlocked a new gear inside me that I never knew existed.

What happened? Part of it is just that circumstances are demanding a lot from me right now. But I also wonder how I would have coped with this pressure if I didn’t have my new AI-assisted journaling practice. In fact, I wonder where I would be if I’d started doing this earlier in life.

This is the guide to staying focused that I wish I had when I was younger. It is based on my personal experience—not to be mistaken for medical or scientific guidance. Some of it is about AI, but mostly it is based on principles that are very old and not technical at all. Take it with a grain of salt, use what works, and don’t feel bad about discarding anything that isn’t a fit for your unique brain.

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“Focus” is the practice of concentrating our energy within a small space, so we can have a greater impact within that space. But focus is much easier said than done. Why? 

For me, there are two main failure modes:

1. DISTRACTION: Impulses to do things that are not within the area I have chosen—or been assigned—to focus on.
2. DISINTEREST: Sometimes there is just nothing attractive about my area of focus. It’s not that I have an urge to do something else, it’s just that I’ve lost interest. Sometimes this is temporary burnout, but other times it’s a sign of something deeper.

Based on these two failure modes, it would seem that the central challenge of increasing focus is:

1. To avoid temptations
2. To do the things we’re supposed to, even when we don’t want to