Why digital habits quietly drain attention and energy — and how to reclaim focus
NPR—Writer and technologist Cory Doctorow argues that reclaiming focus from smartphones and social platforms takes more than switching off notifications — it requires recognizing how attention-economy business models are engineered to exploit habitual, non-conscious behavior. NPR's companion coverage catalogs the everyday habits most responsible for the drain, from compulsive checking to algorithmic feeds, framing them as energy costs as much as time costs. Both pieces converge on the idea that willpower-based fixes, like app timers or grayscale screens, treat a symptom rather than the underlying design incentive. The throughline is a call for structural rather than personal remedies, since individual discipline consistently loses to systems built to defeat it.