You can't focus long enough to finish anything
You start things and cannot finish them — the moment a task gets hard or dull, you drift to the screen, and the half-done projects pile up. Your focus gives out exactly when the work gets demanding, and you cannot seem to stay with anything long enough to see it through.
This is worth understanding, because it is not that you cannot focus. You have trained your mind to flee at the first friction — the moment a task grows dull or hard, your mind flinches to the screen, so over years you have learned to escape the very difficulty finishing requires, bolting exactly at the hard middle every worthwhile thing has. So stay through the friction a little longer each time — feel the pull when the work grows hard and do not answer it, remaining a few minutes more, since the friction is often a threshold just beyond which the work opens and flows, and the capacity strengthens each time you stay. And remove the escape so staying is the only path — put the device out of reach, close the other doors, leave no easy exit, for when there is nowhere to flee the mind settles into the work. What kinds of things do you keep starting and not finishing?
What changes unlock by starting
- You see the habit of fleeing at friction
- You stay through the hard middle a little longer
- You rebuild the capacity to finish
- You remove the escape so staying is the path