My struggle to focus is something I’ve been thinking about a lot throughout 2025 and into 2026 as well. It’s something that’s become a major concern for me as I realize that my ability to write and create art is directly tied to my ability to sit down and actually focus on the task at hand. But throughout my unemployment of 2025, I genuinely thought I would be able to really make significant progress on my 4th book and create more art. I started thinking about it again after watching a video by Jared Henderson called “Why we can’t focus” and it’s a fantastic video to watch. It made me realize some things that might have affect my own mind in ways I hadn’t considered.
As I think we are all painfully aware, social media and internet content is so widespread it’s almost unavoidable. Hell as a creative, you have to participate in social media to share the art and writings and anything that we create. In Henderson’s video, he pointed out how the platforms are all designed to keep you on the platforms and that requires us to be completely engaged. The quick fix of dopamine hits we get from new videos and fun memes keep pulling our attention and thus our focus away from what matters in life. It’s somewhat terrifying to think about how much of our lives are being stolen by social media companies this way.
One of the things that really struck me while watching his video was that I realized just how difficult it had become to read a book. I used to be such an avid reader that helped to fuel my creativity and get me to actually write. Its actually quite terrible when I think about it as my main goal for this blog is to write reviews for the books I read and offer insights that can help my fellow authors. It’s something that I really want to get back to not to just facilitate the main purpose of this blog but also to help me to be able to focus on writing once more.
Back in December, I had done a month of no YouTube just to see what that would do for me in terms of productivity. I found it really did actually help me to make way more progress on my goals. Unironically the boredom of not having constant stimulation made me actually focus on writing and drawing. It wasn’t perfectly productive, I would also spend time playing video games and watching shows and movies as well. But in a strange way, I found these more meaningful than scrolling Twitter and watching YouTube. It feels like more meaningful content than the vast majority of things that I see in Twitter and YouTube.
I think it’s impossible to be 100% productive all the time, we’re just not built that way as a species. But I do think it’s important to take breaks and do things that are still helpful in some way. What I mean by that is different for everyone and it really depends on what helps you in the end. For me, browsing art has always been something that’s helped me feel inspired to create more art and experiencing more stories has really helped spark creativity that helps me to write better stories. It’s difficult to tailer what I would call my “relaxing media” to be something that doesn’t affect how my brain works.
I can’t stress how helpful Jared Henderson’s video was to help reflect on the issues with focus in this day and age. I highly recommend giving it a watch.
As always, I hope this helps!
– Raphael
Raph's Cozy Musings 