Reclaim Your Focus

We live in the most connected era in history, yet we can’t focus on one specific task for more than 30 seconds. The average person spends approximately 4 hours and 37 minutes on their phone every single day. Our attention spans have never been worse.

Notifications, endless scrolls, dopamine… our brains are K.O., fried, kaputt. ¿Entiendes?

But here’s the truth: attention is your most valuable resource. Where your attention goes, your energy follows. Reclaiming it is not just some guru productivity hack, it’s a demostration of self-respect. You owe it to yourself.

This article isn’t about destroying your phone with a hammer. It’s about regaining your focus with small, sustainable daily steps.

You’re probably struggling to keep reading, am I wrong? That’s how messed up our brains are.

Own Your Mornings

How you begin your day shapes how you show up
If the first thing you do in the morning is grab your phone and open social media, you’re already giving your full focus to algorithms before you’ve even realized you’re awake.

Try this:

• Keep your phone out of reach: use an old-school alarm clock, those big heavy metal “circles” with two bells that ring.

• Use a filter (my favourite): go on your phone settings, search for “colour filter”, set it to gray/red and turn it on. You won’t enjoy using your phone much anymore.

• No screens for the first 30 minutes: this is obvious, yet we can’t do it. Start small, with 10 minutes, and gradually increase the time between you waking up and grabbing your phone.

Build Focus Blocks

We can’t eliminate distractions, but we can protect our focus. We can outsmart the dopamine-destroyer companies with a few simple strategies.

Ideas to implement:

• Schedule a time “block” for deep work (60-90 mins): during this time, shut down your phone, don’t listen to music, put on noise canceling headphones if you have the possibility. It has to be you, your mind and the task you have to do, nothing else.

• Use digital aids to reduce your temptation: using digital stuff to reduce your digital stuff usage… isn’t that comical? Anyway, brower extensions, site blockers, Do Not Disturb mode, those are all your friends. Play around with them.

• Replicate what works: if an X setup worked to get you to have full focus on one task, simply replicate it. It could be a certain time of the day, a certain pencil (lol), if that helps you get in the “zone”, use it. Replicate what works.

Curate Your “Diet”

What we consume online daily shapes our emotional and mental state. Most people are overwhelmed not because they’re doing too much, but because they’re consuming too much, without a goal.

Here’s how to regain control:

• Declutter your socials: unfollow and unsubscribe from everyone you don’t know in real life. Let’s be real, out of the 1000 profiles you follow, you’re probably interested in 20 of them, so why are you following the other 980? I like the idea of following exclusively my friends and family on social media. Anything else is out of the window.

• Set screen limits: again, another obvious thing, do it and respect the maximum amount of time you choose to dedicate to your phone. Don’t cheat.

• Select your inputs: every time you catch yourself scrolling or doing anything on your phone, ask yourself “Does this help me in any way? Did I unlock my phone for this?” If the answer is yes, then you can continue, but if the answer is no, then turn if off.

Conclusion: Progress Over Perfection

Digital detox isn’t about perfection, it’s about creating motion, small daily tasks stack for a bigger purpose, you regaining your focus.

Start small.
One screen-free morning.
One focused deep work session.
One curated social media feed.

These daily decisions stack.
You don’t need more apps, you need more attention.
And you’re one detox away from getting it back.