atteion restoration - One Week In

yuval bloch

October 24, 2025

I’m wrapping up my first week of intentionally improving my focus based on my original focus recovery plan. The results are already remarkable, and frankly, stronger than I anticipated.

I’ll start by presenting the initial results—how challenging it was to follow the plan, how well I focused on my work, and the impact on other elements of my life. Then I’ll interpret those results and decide on the necessary adjustments for next week.

1. Initial Results: A Week of Gains

Some elements of the plan were surprisingly easy to follow. I almost never felt the urge to check social media outside dedicated time blocks, and I found myself waking up before my alarm most mornings.

Splitting my work time into different focus periods was more challenging, and I need to see how that works with different types of tasks.

The overall impact was much stronger than I anticipated. In just one week, I gained significant advances at work:

I read several technical papers.
I learned and implemented a new algorithm.
I wrote a few sections of my paper and found new directions for future research.

Crucially, these professional gains did not come at the expense of my personal life. I still had time to practice yoga every morning, go climbing, attend a dance lesson, and spend time with friends. Almost every day, my self-rated focus was higher than my average, and on one day, it was truly exceptional. I also feel healthier in my body, and generally happier.

This exceptional level of impact requires a deeper look, as it goes beyond simple distraction removal.

2. Analysis & Key Insights

Looking at the results, I clearly underestimated the damage that constant distraction was doing to my life. However, this plan involved more than just removing distractions.

The Power of Intentionality

The first —and one of the most important —steps in any personal change is making a decision. Neuroplasticity teaches us that our minds change in the direction we put our attention [1]. By building the plan, choosing to follow it daily, and tracking my focus level, I put my attention on attention itself. This intentionality—the daily act of measuring and committing—seems to have accelerated the improvement of my focus skills.

Movement and Attention Restoration

My plan included taking short walks multiple times a day. The decision to start each day relatively early also gave me time for yoga. Both physical exercise itself and being outdoors in natural areas (e.g., public parks) have a known positive impact on focus[2].

Restricting social media use to certain times of day is a vital part of the plan and has a double effect. First, it prevents true distraction during work. Second, using social media during breaks is not an effective way to restore attention.

Attention Restoration Theory (ART) suggests we have two modes of attention:

Directed: This is the focus we use for deep work; it gets easily exhausted.
Involuntary: This is attention captured naturally by sights and sounds, or when the mind wanders; it can go on indefinitely.

To restore our Directed Attention, we need to shut it down and engage Involuntary Attention. While social media feels like it captures our attention easily, the constant novelty and decision-making actually use our directed attention. Research shows that the best way to restore attention is to walk in a natural environment [2], but even staring at a wall is better than scrolling through social media.

The Professional Distractor: AI’s “Lazy Mode”

The most surprising insight came from the tools I need for work. Even tools like grammar and spell checkers proved to be major distractors. I found that the immediate visual feedback (the red lines) totally distracted me while writing. When I finished writing first and only then addressed grammar and spelling, I was much more focused.

More significantly, I observed a similar, but magnified, effect with AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini. While these tools are highly useful, I found that consulting them mid-session destroyed my flow.

My conclusion is that consulting with AI tools, for me, activates a sort of “lazy mode” in the brain. Switching back to “deep focus” from this state is cognitively difficult and requires a substantial time block to recover. I became far more productive when I limited their use to the end of a long, deep-work session or before a major break.

This is a complex challenge. I can’t stop using these tools in a competitive world, but using them unwisely is more damaging than useful. Balance is everything.

It is also worth noting that the relationship between AI and focus is often not reported in the literature because it is so new, and if this impact is not just for me but a common phenomenon, it is vital to research it.

3. Next Week’s Adjustments

Since the plan worked so well, I intend to keep it for next week with a few minor adjustments:

Yoga as a Constant: The morning yoga session will become a constant, non-negotiable part of the daily plan.
Simplified AI Blocks: Instead of the complex method of odd/even hours for AI use, I will simplify: I will only consult AI for a half-hour period, specifically positioned after an hour of deep work and before a scheduled break.
Location Change: I will work 2–3 days a week from my garden to maximize exposure to nature.

Writing about my level of focus every day and summarizing it weekly was useful, so I will keep doing that. I will also continue publishing my weekly summaries because this problem is relevant to many other people.

tools

I use the app Freedom; it’s a good app for this purpose.
I read the book Deep Work a few months ago, and I learn a lot from it

Resources

[1] Isbell, Elif, et al. “Neuroplasticity of Selective Attention: Research Foundations and Preliminary Evidence for a Gene by Intervention Interaction.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 114, no. 35, Aug. 2017, pp. 9247–9254.

[2] Berman, Marc G., et al. “The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting with Nature.” Psychological Science, vol. 19, no. 12, SAGE Publications, Dec. 2008, pp. 1207–1212