Priorities
In late 2025 attention spans of most adults are gutted. Most social interactions invariably involve one party pulling their phone and looking at something else.
That's fine you have 24 hours in a day, right? Wrong.
You have at most 6 focused hours in a day. Rest of them gone — for chores, notifications, calls, favor, meetings. A nice way to say distractions.
~6 hours to do intense work and another 4 hours max, at reduced intellectual capacity, for other chores. Understanding this gives you a good idea of what can be done in a day.
What you choose to do with your focus time is very important. Stacking those hours over a week, then months, will play a critical role in the success of your pursuits.
I've realized I like to work in bursts. I'll scroll feeds like a pleb for hours, then warm up to an idea. Work on the idea till I'm bored. Then zone out. There are months when I'm locked in non-stop, and then there are months when I simply don't have the interest to do anything.
I also really like Warren Buffets' anecdote where he asks his assistant to come up with 20 things Berkshire should focus on for the year. The assistant consults top people in the org, and draws up a list with considerable effort. Buffet goes about ordering these 20 things top to bottom. Then he dramatically cuts off the bottom 15 and proclaims that the org only has resources to focus on the top 5.
This shocks people around, but eventually they warm up to the idea and commit to the top 5. You as a person are also facing the same problem. You have limited time and energy, and waaaay too many distractions. Choosing what to prioritize is an important skill.
You have to first make a list of things that matter to you, then cut things out until you feel serious FOMO. Then add back ~10-15%. This will feel scary for a very long time. If you are able to overcome the fear, you'll hone your muscle for prioritization.
A caveat here is to be responsive to feedback. Sometimes the wrong things get prioritized, and you get burnt. That's okay. You can learn from it and try again.
To that effect I'm pooling my focus hours of this year on:
- Short form observations
- Long form articles, made up of a series of short form observations 😉
- Taking care of my health by cooking food & getting some form of exercise
- Selling/ Recycling material goods that's long over due
This I hope will get me to the foundation required for my moonshot bets
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Till next time, Ganesha