I'm too distracted to think of a title

You got any old books?

It’s 7:21 AM and I’ve opened 14 Google Chrome tabs in the last 15 minutes. A bunch are eBay listings. A few are estate sales. ChatGPT might as well be tattooed to the top of my screen.

Today’s obsession is rare books. Or, more specifically, opening a bookstore when I retire. The idea came to me last night, so for the next 48 hours, I won’t be able to think about anything else.

I’ve been collecting books for about five years. I have a few cool jewels: a signed Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe. A hardcover of The Bachman Books — one of the only ways to read Stephen King’s banned book, Rage. And an eerie little 19th-century spellbook written by Napoleon’s fortune-teller.

In between writing these paragraphs, I’m flipping to another window. I’m messaging a guy on Fiverr. He’s translating old French letters I found in an archive in Rome for a book I’m writing.

I’ll write 20 words, hear his message ping, click away. On the way back, I ask ChatGPT how to find estate sale liquidators near me. I skim 20% of the response, then come back here and keep writing.

And in a week, I’ll probably forget all about this. Then I’ll get into running. Or cooking. Or researching PubMed papers for confirmation bias around the blue textile dye I drink for its questionable metabolic health benefits.

Eventually, I’ll close this 14-tab window and be on to the next thing.

I always feel like there’s so much to do and so little time.
But that’s not true.

I’m just distracted.

—

When I was a kid, I could sink into a book for five hours at a time. My parents would knock on my door and tell me to turn off the light and go to sleep, so I’d flip the switch, crawl under my blankets, and read with the red glow of my alarm clock, wondering why Jigsaw Jones never got a crack at the big-time.

I had hours to read yesterday. But according to my Screen Time report, I picked up my phone 177 times.

The problem isn’t time — it’s focus. And it’s bringing us all down.

As a society, our brains are going in the wrong direction. A Northwestern study tracked nearly 400,000 Americans from 2006–2018. IQ scores during that stretch dropped in three out of four areas — logic, vocabulary, problem solving. Achievement scores are falling. Memory is fading. Focus is gone.

(In the last 60 seconds since I wrote that paragraph, I checked my email, read a message from an eBay seller, took a screenshot of the pictures he sent to me, and uploaded them to ChatGPT for analysis on the value of this copy of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. I’m buying it.)

The world today is so full of shiny objects, it’s like Zales built a house of mirrors. I want to write the Great American Novel. I want to work on my short game. And if I don’t get rich off AI in the next ten years, I’ll never forgive myself.

But season three of Squid Game just came out. And I can’t write today — I have to spend a few hours learning what political indoctrination my social media algorithms want me to promote this week.

(I just stood up, refilled my coffee, and stuck it in the microwave for 30 seconds.)

So instead of doing the 10 things I care about, I’ll maybe do one or two. They’ll take longer than they should. I’ll do them worse than I could have. But hey — at least I’ll get to bombard my amygdala with a few Instagram reels while I spend my life never living up to what I should be.

When your focus walks out the front door, your potential slips out the back.

—

In the short story Harrison Bergeron, Kurt Vonnegut imagined a future where smart people were forced to wear devices that blasted loud, jarring sounds into their ears — just to keep them from thinking too deeply.

(Just checked my phone. My credit card wants to confirm I spent $53 on a children’s book.)

Vonnegut wrote that story in 1961. And now, 64 years later, it’s real. Only difference? It’s not just smart people getting blasted by noise. It’s everyone. Constantly.

And that’s what makes this whole thing kind of funny.

Everything is easier — and more achievable — than it feels.

And it’s not because life got simpler. It’s just that everyone else has gotten too distracted to try.

(Just stopped writing, checked my word count, and brought this over to LinkedIn to see if it’ll fit there as a post. It won’t. It’s too long.)

Someone will always be smarter. Someone will always be more talented. Someone will always have more to lose. But focus is more than the great equalizer — it’s the great accelerator. The person with 50% of the intelligence and 100% of the focus will beat the person with 100% of the intelligence and 50% of the focus.

Sometimes, it annoys me how simple the answers to life’s big problems are.
This is one of those times.

If you want to achieve something, just commit to sticking with it longer than everyone else. When you get distracted, come back.

If you can focus, you’ll win. Simple as that.

So, yeah. Today, I’ll buy that first edition book.

But if I’m not careful, I’ll never write one.