Open tabs: the focus disease of the AI era

In early September I watched myself for two weeks. During the day I was running 5-6 jobs at once with AI, firing orders at agents. They were all working, and I kept opening new ones. It feels like a godlike power.

But while everything moved forward at the same time, I wasn’t inside any of it. I call this the open tab problem.

The scrolling age already ate the focus of our daily lives. Now it’s work’s turn. There’s one difference: on social media someone else broke our attention. At work we break it with our own hands. And we think we’re being productive.

Firing orders speeds up the work in front of me. Deciding what is worth doing, though, takes depth. And depth doesn’t come out of a split mind. The real issue isn’t speed, it’s direction. Speed goes the wrong way just as fast.

I have nothing against AI, I use it every day. But while we became conductors, I think we forgot how to read music.

The experiment: single focus

I set myself three rules. Before work starts, the day’s topics go into a notebook. No new work gets squeezed in, and I don’t get up until the job is done. When a job is done, every tab and window gets closed.

On the first day I finished only 3 of 6 goals. Still, it was my best working day in months, because two things came out:

• The work I was avoiding became visible. Normally I’d say “I ran out of time” and move on. The work actually fit in the day. I just didn’t want to do it.
• I got bored. I hadn’t truly been bored in months. The moment I got bored, solutions started coming.

One more observation: my brain doesn’t get tired switching between related tasks. What wears it out is jumping back and forth, with no gap, between unrelated topics.

End of the first week

My average went up to 4 jobs. One evening I sat down at 17:27 and got up at 18:40: the most tired hour of the day, one sitting, one job. A week earlier I couldn’t do that.

The real change wasn’t the number. My connection to the work I produce came back. When I stay on one topic, the work stops being “output” and becomes a result I made. I had forgotten the pleasure of finishing.

Speed on its own is a trap. AI gives everyone the same speed. The difference is no longer in getting the work out, it’s in deciding which work is the right work. The new era doesn’t need someone who rides horses faster, it needs the one who comes up with the idea of a car.

The second discovery, getting bored, led me to the next experiment: boredom therapy.