Learning When Everything Wants Your Attention

A few years ago I noticed something uncomfortable. I read a lot of articles, watched a lot of talks, listened to a lot of podcasts. Ask me a week later what I’d learnt and I had very little to show for it. Information went in one ear and out of the other in minutes.

If anything, the problem is bigger now. There’s more content, more notifications, and an AI that will summarise anything in seconds — which makes it even easier to feel informed without understanding. Here’s what has actually worked for me.

1. Learn less

The most effective way to learn more is to aim to learn less. I used to want to do everything at once: several side projects, several new languages, several new skills. By the end of the day I’d forgotten what I’d “learnt”, and the projects hadn’t moved because I’d spent the energy planning around all of them.

Pick a small number of things that matter to your goals right now. Park the rest somewhere visible so you’re not afraid of losing them. The same rule runs my training — see You Can’t Serve Two Masters.

2. Watch out for fake productivity

Fake productivity is choosing easy, low-value tasks that feel like work. I’d sit down for a focused session, notice my desk was messy and tidy it, remember an errand, then watch a video about productivity. At the end of the day I’d be tired and have nothing to show for it.

The cure isn’t willpower; it’s clarity. Know the one thing the session is for before you start.

3. One thing at a time

Your brain is bad at task switching. Every time you leave something, it takes a while to rebuild the context when you come back. Learning sequentially beats learning in parallel, and learning with the TV on barely counts.

Design the environment so focus is the default: phone in another room, notifications off, distracting apps blocked during focus blocks. Ninety-minute blocks work well for me — long enough to get deep, short enough to sustain.

4. Write it in your own words

Understanding feels complete the moment you read something. It isn’t. The quickest test is to write about it straight away, in your own words, as if explaining it to someone else.

Typing notes word for word teaches nothing; I can do that without thinking at all. Summarising a page in three sentences that make sense to you is slower and far more valuable. This is the heart of how I take notes — How I Take Notes: Capture, Distil, Resurface.

A 2026 caveat: an AI summary is not your summary. It’s useful for deciding what to read, but the understanding comes from doing the paraphrasing yourself.

5. Build something with it

Knowledge you’ve only read about stays coupled to the article you read it in. Apply it — a small project, a spike at work, a toy example — and it becomes yours. That’s why good courses are full of assignments.

6. Share it

Explaining something to others is the final test of understanding. It forces you to gather several sources, add your own experience and fill the gaps you didn’t know you had. This site is partly that: writing in public so I learn things properly.

7. Come back to it

Reading once isn’t enough. Revisit what you learnt after a few days, then a few weeks, then a few months. Spaced review turns “I read about that once” into “I know that”. My notes now resurface themselves on a schedule, so this happens without relying on memory.

A note on stimulation

When I first wrote this I recommended a “dopamine detox”. I’d phrase it more gently now: if everything else in your day is high-stimulation, slow, effortful learning will always lose. Make the environment quieter and the long-term rewarding activities get a fair chance.

Takeaways

• Learn fewer things, deliberately; park the rest.
• Know what a session is for before you start it.
• Write, build, share, revisit — reading is just the first step.
• Shape your environment so focus is the easy option.

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Originally written in 2021 → How to learn when everything DEMANDS your attention