Productivity · Apr 18, 2026 · 12 min
The quality of a focus block is mostly decided by the break before it. That is why a ten minute scroll leaves you less restored than a five minute walk, why the popular work to break ratios deserve more suspicion than they get, and how to find the break length your own work actually needs.
Productivity · Apr 18, 2026 · 4 min
You block Twitter, Reddit, YouTube. You feel productive for an hour. Then you find yourself reading Wikipedia articles, reorganizing your desktop, or staring at your email inbox. Blocking apps is step one. Here's step two.
Productivity · Apr 18, 2026 · 12 min
A to-do list records what you intend to do. It records nothing about when you will do it or what state you need to be in, which are the two things that actually decide whether it happens. Here is the mechanism behind the failure, and the workflow that replaces it without pretending lists are useless.
Productivity · Apr 18, 2026 · 11 min
You close Slack and open your editor, but part of your attention is still back in that thread. That is attention residue, a named effect from Sophie Leroy's research, and it explains why a two minute interruption costs far more than two minutes.
Productivity · Apr 18, 2026 · 4 min
You're working from home, Slack is pinging, your browser has 47 tabs open, and you've rewritten the same paragraph three times. Remote work promised freedom. Instead it gave us infinite distraction. Here's how three blocking apps stack up.
Productivity · Apr 18, 2026 · 11 min
Most deep work advice quietly assumes a job where nobody urgently needs you. Founders do not have that job. Here is how I protect building time without pretending the reactive half of the work is optional, and what it costs when I get the balance wrong.
Productivity · Apr 18, 2026 · 12 min
A second browser carries its own tabs, history and logins, so it cannot autocomplete you into a distraction or show you the thing you abandoned on Tuesday. It costs nothing, it works without any blocking software, and it has one honest limit worth knowing before you try it.
Productivity · Apr 18, 2026 · 4 min
You block distractions, start a focus session, and then realize you need to open Notion. Or Figma. Or that one Google Doc. So you unlock everything, open the app, and lose 10 minutes to tab-switching. Quick Actions fix this.
Productivity · Apr 18, 2026 · 5 min
You don't need more motivation. You need a system that runs whether you feel like it or not. Here's how to build a morning routine that protects your best hours, automatically.
Productivity · Apr 18, 2026 · 4 min
I spent three years on a first draft that could have taken eight months. Not because I lacked discipline, but because I kept optimizing the wrong thing. Here's the workflow that finally moved the needle.
Productivity · Apr 18, 2026 · 12 min
Most people install a blocker, add Reddit and Twitter, and conclude a week later that blockers do not work. The configuration was the problem. Here is how to build a profile from the task backwards, including what to do about the tools that are both essential and distracting, and the mistake that kills most setups.
Productivity · Apr 18, 2026 · 12 min
The colors are not marketing. They describe exactly how a sound's energy is spread across the frequency range, which is why one hisses and one rumbles. Here is what each one is, what the research honestly supports, and how to pick the right one for the work in front of you.
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