I have an attention battle with my phone all day.
I push myself to be more disciplined and not look at it as much. I’m aware of the dopamine hits my brain gets when I look.
I judge myself a lot for not being better at “not looking.”
I’m also feeling the sense of fragmentation in my day that it causes.
And I continually adapt to it. I struggle to keep up with WhatsApp, Teams, text messages, Slack, email, LinkedIn, and voicemails that notify me with alerts throughout the day.
My desire to be responsive and caring puts extra pressure on me to respond quickly. I started to wonder if I’m overworked, stressed, or losing some essential capacity.
I am participating in a training program about nervous system regulation, and I have started to lean into what my body feels when I move my attention in this way—to WhatsApp, to stop writing this newsletter post, to look at my Teams feed, and now to come back to it.
I’m starting to understand that I’ve trained my nervous system to do something very specific: Seek microcompletion in a world that never fully completes.
I reach for the phone. The scroll. The feed. The hit of novelty. Not for pleasure—for regulation, a way to stabilize. I don’t think I’m chasing a dopamine hit. Rather, I think I’m looking for coherence relief.
When leaders run on tension—unspoken pressure, value drift, and constant stimulation—their system becomes “incoherent.”
Thoughts race in one direction. Behavior pulls another. The body tightens, and language sharpens. That dissonance costs energy.
Coherence relief is the exhale when alignment returns. It might come from:
- naming the truth instead of managing optics.
- taking five minutes of awe in nature.
- removing the phone from the room.
- pausing long enough to notice what’s actually happening inside.
When life feels fragmented and incomplete, let’s face it: For most of us in these times and with the pace at which we work, just about everything can feel incomplete. I think our nervous systems are looking for small moments of closure just to feel stable. I think mine is, at least.
Micro-coherence has become a stand-in for the macro-coherence that’s missing for me. I’m longing for more coherence between what matters most to me in life and where I put my attention. I seek the ability to discern and choose—and make a choice that’s in alignment with my deepest Work and truest Self.
So, What’s Actually Happening?
Over time, I’ve become habituated to:
- fast context switching.
- low-attention dwelling.
- constant novelty intake.
- micro-reward loops.
- interruption tolerance.
- background stimulation as a baseline.
What’s Actually Happening Neurologically
Deep work starts to feel wrong. Agitating. Uncomfortable. Too quiet. Too slow. Too still—not because I’ve lost the capacity for depth but because my system is no longer conditioned for sustained presence.
The Reframe That Changes Everything
This isn’t addictive behavior. It’s self-soothing through stimulation in a fragmented field. As humans, we’re regulating, not indulging.
That is why productivity advice hasn’t worked for me. I don’t have a productivity problem. I have a nervous system conditioning pattern. Why does this matter to me? Because I know what amazing things emerge from deep work and sustained presence. And I want more of it.
Why This Matters for Leaders
The benefits of reclaiming deep work aren’t just personal. They’re organizational.
Leaders who can access depth:
- make better decisions (because they can hold complexity without defaulting to reactivity).
- build stronger relationships (because they’re actually present in conversation).
- see what others miss (because they can sustain attention long enough to notice patterns).
- model resilience (which permits their teams to slow down).
The risks of not addressing this are real:
- Strategic myopia—you can’t see the system when you’re always in the weeds.
- Relational erosion—people feel it when you’re only half there.
- Burnout contagion—fragmented leaders create fragmented cultures.
- Loss of creative capacity—breakthrough thinking requires sustained thought.
One client I admire so very much made presence a cultural value, behavior, and norm during two full-day meetings. That meant when I was with the client and their team in the room, we weren’t looking at our phones; we weren’t multitasking; and we weren’t using our laptops. That all happened on breaks.
That became the norm for this leadership team, and it translated throughout the entire organization of over 20,000 employees. When we’re together, we’re present with each other. We experienced one of the biggest and most trusting containers I’ve ever witnessed.
Later, when this client had meetings with other parts of the organization where presence wasn’t a cultural value, the client’s department noticed a significant difference in how they were able to contribute. They were distracted; the conversations didn’t go as deep, and the experience was more fragmented.
Although unsettling at first, when other teams within the organization joined the cultural norm of presence, it became magnetic. People felt seen and heard more. While this can be uncomfortable when individuals are not used to it, they got a taste of what deep presence can bring and the difference in the outcomes. And they wanted more.
We Don’t Need Discipline—We Need Reconditioning
The solution isn’t more willpower, more rules, more apps. The solution is nervous system retraining. Because fragmented lives train fragmented minds. And coherent lives retain depth.
One Practice to Start that Is Working for Me:
Replace stimulation with regulation. (Put this on a sticky note.)
When I want to scroll or check for alerts—or when I catch myself already scrolling—I take one breath. Then I do anything but scroll. I immediately set my phone down, and I walk away from it. I stretch. And I look out the window and think about or say to myself five things I see as I look outside.
We’re not fighting an addiction. We’re teaching our systems that completion doesn’t have to come in microdoses. That it’s safe to dwell. That depth is available.
I don’t think my brain has forgotten how to focus. I think it’s forgotten that it’s safe to be there.
4 Ways to Retrain Your Brain for Deep Work
Here is a resource guide to recondition your system to feel safer in “the dwelling.” I encourage you to bring this guide to your teams and create micro-challenges each week to support each other. Don’t make it a contest. We don’t want to elicit shame or guilt but, instead, reflect on what we’re learning as we try these practices.
Remember: This is not a discipline challenge; this is a reconditioning exercise.
1) Create one daily depth container.
- Forty-five to sixty minutes. Block it on your calendar.
- At the same time. Same place. Same ritual.
- No phone. No notifications. No feeds. No inputs.
- Only creation or focused thinking.
If you’re doing this with your team, find an agreed-upon time daily so you can all support NOT interrupting each other and keeping that space sacred.
2) Remove the phone from your nervous system field.
- Not silent. Not face down. Out of the room.
- Your brain reacts to proximity, not usage.
For the TEAM: Try having at least one team meeting a week where no phones or tech are involved, and see what you learn and experience.
3) Retrain stillness safety.
- Ten minutes per day of device-free stillness.
- No goal. No productivity. No task.
- Just presence. Silence. Breath.
- Try staring out the window or looking at something from nature for ten minutes.
For the TEAM: Choose a time a week for your entire team to do this and calendar it.
4) Replace stimulation with regulation.
When you want to scroll, try:
- walking or moving.
- taking three deep breaths.
- drinking a sip of water.
- stretching.
- performing twenty jumping jacks (burns off the edgy energy).
- shaking your wrists, fingers, and hands for a few minutes.
- touching something and noticing the texture: Cold? Warm? Hard? Soft? Think of five adjectives to describe what it feels like.
- smelling your food or a flower and taking it in.
For the TEAM: Have fun with this. Bring this list to your team, and create a challenge during team meetings. Pick one and practice it. For example, taking a sip of water. If anyone feels compelled to look at their phone, they take a sip of water. You can have fun with this; give everyone clear water bottles and see who has taken the most sips, and celebrate: hydration + reconditioning = awesome sauce!
If you’ve made it this far, notice that. Notice the part of you that longs for depth. For relief from the hum. For a different way to lead and live.
Fragmentation isn’t a moral failure. It’s an adaptation to a fast, noisy world. And adaptations can change. When you reclaim coherence, something subtle but powerful happens.
You stop managing optics and start naming truth. You stop chasing micro-completion and start finishing what matters. And the ripple is real. Teams feel it when you’re fully there. Coherent leaders create coherent cultures.
Remove stimulation. Add regulation. Create one sacred depth container. Lead one phone-free meeting. Practice five minutes of “awe” before you open your inbox.
You may discover that your brain never forgot how to focus. It just needed to remember that it’s safe to dwell. And when you remember that, you don’t just get more done.
You become someone your nervous system, and your team members’ nervous systems, can trust.
