With agentic coding your brain already does less. You're not writing the code, you're reviewing structure and making architecture calls, and even those you brainstorm with the agent. An MIT EEG study confirmed it: the more the AI does, the less your brain engages.
And what do we fill that downtime with? Reels and tiktok. Scrolling short-form videos in that gap is becoming the normal thing to do. We barely notice it, but it slowly hurts our performance and hides what we could do with that time.
Two things fixed this for me.
1. The weekends-only rule. No insta, no yt shorts on weekdays, apps uninstalled. Any long-form video is fine, entertainment, podcasts, whatever. Preferably content that doesn't ask much of your focus, because that spends your focus too.
Everything comes back on weekends. You can't quit shorts completely (I couldn't), it's a source of info and entertainment as well. So don't quit, schedule.
3rd month on this rule and my focus is the best it's been.
2. Parallel projects. Takes some adjusting at first, but run multiple projects at once. I do 4-5 sometimes. While one agent works you switch to the next project, so there's no dead time to get pulled into a feed. I'll share the tools that made parallel sessions work for me (orca, herdr) in another post. But you can add claude notifications to whatever setup you have today, wrote about that here.
We can take on more work than we think. Instead of scrolling between prompts, say yes to that additional opportunity and fill that time with real work.
Follow for more: DevNotes
