A Focused Life in a Distracted World

You're looking at something quite rare.

I'm Wim, a 33-year-old product designer who doesn't use social media, owns a Nokia phone, and doesn't wear a smartwatch.

This wasn’t always the case.

In 2019, I tried to build a business as an independent designer. I thought:

Okay, now I need to build a brand, be active on social media, study productivity hacks, and hustle.

So I jumped in.

But a few months later, I found myself stuck in patterns I didn’t sign up for.

Late nights on YouTube and Reddit. Posting and obsessively checking for feedback. Chasing trends and buying things I didn't really need.

I felt behind. My thinking was scattered. I was sleeping badly, and worse — I wasn’t even doing great work.

Eventually I realized:

The tools I use are draining my energy, fragmenting my attention, and hurting my professional life.

Over the past years, I've transformed my relationship with technology. What I discovered might surprise you.

Despite my minimal tech setup, I'm OK. I still have friends. I hear about the news. I discover new ideas. I collaborate. I laugh. And I never feel I'm missing out.

But there's more. My days are calmer. My work is much better. And I have time to think, create, and rest.

Today, I'm here to convince you to believe the same thing.

II'm not suggesting to throw away your smartphone — but in an age of tech abundance, you're likely struggling to find balance.

It's the modern struggle. It's hard. And it's not your fault.

The attention economy is engineered with one purpose: to steal as much of your time and attention as possible.

That's a big claim so I have to back it up. I'll do that by using three common beliefs people hold about modern technology and try to diffuse them.

The first belief goes as follows:

"These tools are just part of modern life."

"Youtube, WhatsApp, and LinkedIn are fundamental technologies of the 21st century. They are examples of great design, so to reject them would be an act of extreme anti-progress. It would be like riding on a horse to work."

I think that’s nonsense. These are not fundamental technologies. They are built on top of fundamental technologies — like the internet and the smartphone.

The apps themselves are better understood as a slot machine.

That’s not my metaphor — it comes from Tristan Harris, a former Google employee.

Since 2017, he is warning that your phone is designed like a slot machine. Every time you check, you’re pulling the lever: Did I get a message? A like? A notification?

These apps hijack your brain by exploiting two psychological mechanisms:

1. Variable Rewards

Psychologists discovered the power of variable rewards in the 1970s. Pigeons were trained to peck a button and receive food pellets. When the researchers started rewarding them at random intervals, the pigeons started pecking obsessively.

Unpredictable rewards trigger much stronger cravings than predictable ones.

This principle powers every slot machine in Las Vegas. But also the “like” button. The push-notifications. The infinite scroll. And the algorithmic newsfeed.

Every second, intelligent systems perform millions of calculations. They test variations and dynamically adapt the app—all with one goal: to keep you engaged for as long as possible.

On Instagram, likes are often deliberately delayed because some algorithm discovered that you—user 79B3 in experiment 231—spend more time in the app when rewards follow this pattern instead of that.

The second mechanism is:

2. Social Approval

In prehistoric times, being accepted by the group was a matter of life or death.

This evolutionary mechanism is still active in our brains.

When dozens of people tap the heart on your Instagram post, it feels like the group gives you confirmation. But this dynamic cuts both ways: a lack of positive feedback causes stress. Our brain perceives this as a social threat, creating a powerful urge to constantly monitor our social standing.

This instinct explains why teens obsess over Snapchat streaks. And why people reply to messages immediately, even in dangerous situations like while driving.

You know these blue check marks on WhatsApp that show when someone has seen your message? That's not an innocent feature. That's a feature to exploit your psychological weakness.

If you take a closer look, you'll spot these mechanisms everywhere. Strava, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams, etc.

As Facebook’s former CEO Sean Parker said: "The entire thought process behind these apps is about just one thing: how do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?”

Now, I can hear you thinking: "Okay, Wim, this is not new. I know they're addictive, but...

"These apps are useful"

"I keep up with my colleagues, find recipes, and coördinate with family and friends."

These are good reasons.

The smartphone, the internet and social media are innovations that connect millions of people.

For most people, the actual benefits include things like:

Here's a revealing calculation: getting all of this value typically requires about 10-15 minutes a day.

The reality is that the average adult spends 3+ hours a day on these apps.

That's 20% of their time awake on this planet. The single most time-consuming activity of the day, after sleeping.

Fine, these tools are designed to be addictive and they consume too much time, but...

"I just use them for fun. What's the harm?"

Again, this belief is nonsense.

This brings us to a very important reality that we need to talk about, which is that these modern technologies cause significant harms, particularly to your professional success.

The average person picks up his phone 85 times a day.

A growing body of research is showing that spending large portions of your day in a state of fragmented attention — to “just look at WhatsApp”— can permanently reduce your capacity to concentrate.

Most people don't realize the reality that concentration is becoming the new gold - increasingly rare yet increasingly valuable in our economy.

Most of us are knowledge workers.

We think. We analyze. We create. We learn. We process. And we communicate knowledge and ideas.

We build prototypes. We write e-mails and reports. We design workshops. We give presentations.

We do this in an information economy which is, first, built on increasingly complex systems.

We're blinded by simple user experiences like the iPad or TikTok, but these examples are consumer products, not serious tools. Most of the (intelligent) machines you work with are complicated and hard to understand and master.

Secondly, these tools change at an increasing speed. the tools I used as a designer 10 years ago don't exist anymore. And the tools a designer uses today probably won't exist anymore in 10 years, maybe even 5.

As Yuval Harari puts it, every thirty year old today can say that the world looked completely different 10 years ago. Every year feels like a revolution.

To remain relevant in this new economy, you'll need the ability to produce valuable work and learn new, complicated things, quickly. And that requires deep, concentrated work.

A case for a Focused Life

  1. The attention economy spends billions to keep us hooked.
  2. This permanently recudes our capacity for concentration, making this skill increasingly rare.
  3. Wile at the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our knowledge economy.

That's why I designed a focused life.

It's productive. I have succesfully built and managed a global design system, earning trust and recognition along the way:

"Having managed a team of professionals over the past 15 years, I can confidently say that Wim is one of the most talented and professional experts I’ve ever worked with." - Tsvetomir Vassilev (Head of UX, Swift)

During my current sabbatical, I hand-coded a website, started an e-mail newsletter and became an expert in a new, unexplored field. Again, by investing care and attention into the work, I earned trust and sparked meaningful conversations:

"Wim geeft een frisse blik op technologie. Zijn inzichten zorgen meteen voor impact!" - Elke Geraerts (TEDx, "Focus is het nieuwe goud")

This is not to brag about myself.

It’s proof. Proof that when you guard your attention—when you stop slicing it into fragments—you unlock the capacity to do deep, meaningful, valuable work.

That’s a powerful way to work.

And it extends beyond work.

I read a physical newspaper. I listen to vinyl. I play piano, record music, develop film rolls, and bake my own bread. This might sound old-fashioned—but they are, in truth, very restorative.

I hope I convinced you about designing a more focused life.

Some may disagree. Some may critique. That’s fine—I welcome it.

But please, direct it to LinkedIn.