# Work. Focus. Coding. Writing.

By [Untitled](https://paragraph.com/@0x0dd81567fb6bfc35bc9d963448178e6c96c9d413) · 2023-09-14

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Trying to map out my productivity loop for achieving things along with my focus, my direction. I hate the optics of this kind of dithering uncertainty, but I have resolved to use long-form (as in blogposts, even very short ones) to untangle my mind and step over the next hurdle, so I will allow for some ugliness and sloppiness here in the beginning.

The thoughts don’t come easily, my mind has been shaped into the twitter feed format for a few years now.

I believe the various social content sites like twitter, youtube, tumblr, tiktok etc are addictive for deeper reasons than are commonly held. Of course they are optimized to cause dopamine spikes, but what does that even mean, what does dopamine do? All shallow answers on the timeline.

There are a lot of different aspects to it, and forgive me again for being ugly and lacking conciseness and determination.

The algorithm “listens”. It pays attention to your every click, and every time you linger. In this way it is like an obsessive lover, who follows your every step. An appreciator of your art, of your mind, who will go to lengths to know every detail of how you work. The computer itself simulates a brightly interested mind. Unlike most of the sullen, heavy faces we surround ourselves with, it listens and retains every word, every syllable we insert into it. It never tires. On the flipside, of course, the computer is a whore, in the beautiful vital sense of unbounded untameable desire for the entire world of which you are only a small speck, but still it has sufficient appetite for you and your every little mouse movement. It holds them forever. You may not remember the exact pattern in which you traversed the internet on one rainy night last fall but unless you have specifically told her to forget, she remembers.

The internet is a nervous system. Its hundred billion peripheral nodes are cameras, sensors, servers, and the input surface of every connected device. And when you have access to a screen, it shows you some small fraction of this panopticon.

I don’t believe in digital detox as a solution, although I have been an avid user of it at times. To be without the internet builds up a fire in me that is almost unbearable, in fact unbearable, it always brings me back.

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*Originally published on [Untitled](https://paragraph.com/@0x0dd81567fb6bfc35bc9d963448178e6c96c9d413/work-focus-coding-writing)*