Deep focus feels good. It connects to flow, autonomy, mastery — the things that correlate with genuine satisfaction. People know this intuitively, which is why books about reclaiming attention sell millions of copies.

But the systems around us optimise for something else entirely. A focused person is harder to monetise than a distracted one. Every notification, every infinite scroll, every “just checking in” message — these are not accidents. Fragmented attention is the revenue model.

Corporations design for exactly this. Feeds refresh endlessly, videos autoplay, streaks punish you for stepping away, and every surface is gamified to hold you just a little longer. The individual experiences it as a constant pull — away from anything sustained, toward whatever is next.

These mechanisms layer on top of each other. A notification here, a recommendation there, a badge for coming back tomorrow. Each one is individually reasonable from a business perspective. Collectively, they fragment attention into slivers. And no single corporation is incentivised to stop, because engagement is how they measure success.

There is also a risk asymmetry at play. A platform that reduces notifications risks losing users to a noisier competitor. A service that respects your attention gets outcompeted by one that captures it. The rational corporate response is always more engagement, more prompts, more reasons to return — growing the claim on your time at the cost of your cognitive capacity.

This is a classic collective action problem. Every individual would benefit from less interruption, but no single actor can unilaterally create that environment. The person who turns off notifications falls behind. The company that sends fewer messages loses mindshare. The platform that stops sending alerts loses engagement. So everyone defects toward more noise — and a society of people who all want the same thing ends up building the exact opposite.

This is why the people who sustain deep focus tend to rely on hard structural constraints — deliberate environments, ruthless tool selection, firm social boundaries — rather than willpower alone.

Willpower assumes the default environment is neutral. It is not. The default is hostile to the thing almost everyone claims to want.