Stop Overwhelm And Distraction To Move Forward With Laser Focus
3 steps to stop bouncing between tasks and stay focused on what matters
Ever found yourself switching between tabs, emails, and apps, only to realise you’ve achieved absolutely nothing?
That was me a couple of weeks ago - phone in hand, flitting from device to device, and no darn idea why.
This scatter-brained feeling isn’t just annoying but exhausting. Why couldn’t I sit still, focus, and get things done? It was scary.
Here’s the truth: my brain wasn’t being lazy - it was avoiding discomfort.
Flitting between small tasks gave me a sense of progress without needing real effort. It felt easy in the moment as the micro-tasks flowed nicely, but it wasn’t time well spent.
A distraction break is fine in between periods of focused effort. But when the tug of mindless flitting feels like a siren’s call enticing you onto the land of lost time, you must pay attention.
This is the paradox of how our brains work. We crave ease but thrive on effort.
When left unchecked, we default to short-term rewards - like online distractions or comfort food - while avoiding the harder, more meaningful tasks that move us forward.
The good news? You can break the cycle.
By understanding how your brain works - and how modern life hijacks it - you’ll retrain your mind for clarity and focus to achieve what matters.
Why you feel stuck and scattered
Your brain’s locus coeruleus (LC) - a key part of its focus system (or blue dot network because the LC looks blue when it’s stained during research) - regulates noradrenaline.
This neurotransmitter controls alertness, adaptability, and focus. Dopamine gets so much celebrity, but noradrenaline needs some love too. Yes, I feel sad for ignored neurotransmitters…
When working effectively, the blue dot network helps you stay engaged and responsive, adapting to the world by ramping your mental gears and focused attention up and down.
But stress and overload throw the blue dot network out of balance. Too much noradrenaline floods your system, leaving you hypervigilant, scattered, and restless.
This is why you feel fidgety and jump between tasks but can’t lock in on anything meaningful. Instead of deep focus, it’s the ants-in-your-pants feeling without the 15 coffees.
Distractions, like checking your inbox or scrolling YouTube cat shorts (yes, it’s me), temporarily ease the blue dot network by providing a quick dopamine hit.
This low-effort reward calms LC activity briefly, redirecting attention away from stress and hypervigilance to the novel reward and accomplishment i.e. refreshing the feed or finishing the short.
But as Mithu Storoni explains in Hyperefficient: Optimise your Brain and Transform the Way you Work, these short-term fixes train your brain to prioritise micro-rewards over deep focus and meaningful progress.
It’s frustrating because you create a cycle and habit of seeking distractions when you feel discomfort.
So, when you have to sit down and focus on completing a complex job, it feels even harder because you do have to put more effort in to stick with it, at first.
To break free, you must lower your brain’s baseline stress and train it to value meaningful effort over instant gratification.
Just like you go to the gym to build muscle strength, practice focused effort to build mental attention so it gets easier over time.
The secret to laser focus: do less, not more and build steadily
If your brain feels scattered, doing more won’t help (sorry, I don’t believe you can do it all).
It’s why diving headlong into new productivity systems, toolkits and solutions overwhelms most people when they feel like this, and they give up.
How many online courses and products are in your digital graveyard? (you can share - I won’t tell anyone.)
Getting organised is great. But you must ruthlessly prune your list first so your brain gets used to achieving hard things when you want.
Once you’ve retrained and expanded your focused attention capacity, go ahead and ramp up task-by-task.
Doing less but with laser-sharp intention serves you better in the long run.
3-steps to build laser focus:
1. Declutter your mind
Hidden drains, like unresolved stress, loss, overthinking, or a chaotic environment, sap your energy without you realising it.
Storoni highlights how these “invisible energy leaks” keep your blue dot network stuck in overdrive. Start by simplifying your world.
I recently experimented with environment change to reset my crappy post-viral sleep pattern. Removing distractions and being a different location meant I slept when I was tired and had the most productive day when I woke up. Pure joy!
Changing your environment or context is so effective. If mindset change is a struggle, look to the physical.
Reflection prompts:
What’s genuinely worth my energy right now?
What hidden drains can I let go of e.g., biological habits, environment, people etc?
Reducing these drains helps rebalance noradrenaline levels, ramping down your blue dot network and restoring mental clarity.
By the way, sleep and rest are vital for these rewiring-the-brain changes to stick - I start here whenever I’m frazzled and forgetful.
2. Prioritise ruthlessly
High achievers try to do everything at once.
We mistake knowing the solution for being able to implement it all immediately (i.e. visualising the outcome vs completing the steps to get there aren’t equivalent, even if we wish they were. Dammit.)
Instead, focus on 1-2 high-impact tasks and let the rest go. Follow these steps and you’ll get more done in the end so don’t freak out just yet.
Reflection prompts:
What’s urgent vs. important right now?
What can wait or be delegated to someone else or a later date?
Prioritising reduces decision fatigue, again ramping down the blue dot network and improving your focused attention skills.
3. Start small, stay consistent and ride through the pain (don’t ignore this step!)
Big tasks feel overwhelming, so your brain actively resists them.
Break them into smaller, manageable steps and commit to one at a time (ooof, I know). Even a 10-minute timer to allocate time to a specific activity makes a difference.
When you inevitably get the urge to flit or be distracted (stop reaching for your phone - I see you!), tell yourself you’ll do it in 2 minutes.
This mini contract with yourself, or the 2-minute rule, is a great way to stick to tricky tasks when discomfort hits. The distraction urge subsides and you keep going anyway.
That’s what you’re aiming for here.
It’s possibly the most important step because sitting through discomfort is how you retrain your brain and expand your focused attention skills.
If you keep drifting at the start, don’t worry. Get back on that horse and keep going - brain change needs to be repetitive before it’s automatic.
Reflection prompts:
What’s one small step can I commit to take today to move forward?
What’s one small win I can celebrate today?
When you complete a task, it’s a small win. This creates a steady noradrenaline release, retraining your brain to see effort as rewarding without overwhelming it.
The brain’s paradox push and why change feels hard
Here’s the annoying paradox getting in the way:
You want to fix everything at once because your brain simplifies the process in your mind.
You resist starting because your brain calculates the actual effort and decides it’s too much.
It maketh no sense, but this is why you feel that restless, fidgety energy when you’re stuck. Your brain oscillates between wanting to move forward and clinging to the safety of what’s familiar.
Contrary to popular belief, (and thanks to from Dr K from HealthyGamerGG on YouTube who framed it this way) you don’t have a motivation problem.
You have the strongest motivation - except it’s to not change.
This rings so true to me. I could start the day wanting to explore a new café, and within an hour, I’ve convinced myself why I don’t want to go, and how it’s better to stay at home on the sofa. Infuriating!
I’m actively challenging this motivated stuckness in 2025 - this weekend, I’ve visited 3 mediaeval castles, walked along a freezing beach, and visited 3 new cafés/restaurants.
As Storoni explains, reducing mental friction is the key to retraining your brain for focus.
Small, consistent actions signal the effort is manageable and discomfort is tolerable (trust me, you won’t self-combust), making it easier to sustain over time.
Key takeaways
It’s frustrating when you feel stuck, overwhelmed and unable to get tasks done. It drives guilt and shame, which are strong motivators to avoid change and hide.
But don’t give into the allure of micro-rewards whilst the tricky stuff piles up. Retrain your brain and leverage your blue dot network to expand your focused attention skills.
Here’s the 3-step process:
Clear mental clutter: Hidden drains, like unresolved stress or multitasking, pull your focus. Let go of what no longer serves you.
Focus on fewer things: Stop trying to do it all. Pick 1–2 priorities that genuinely matter and commit to them.
Start small: Big changes feel daunting, but tiny actions add up. Progress beats perfection every time.
Overwhelm thrives on chaos, and stuckness is motivation pointed to the wrong place. Laser focus is built on clarity, simplicity, and deliberate effort.
Make a few small but repeatable shifts, and you’ll see the positive impact in no time.
P.S. What’s one small thing to focus on today to make the biggest difference by the end of the week? Share in the comments and let’s support each other.
Sabrina - I wish Substack had the highlight capacity of Medium as I'd highlight this:
"It’s possibly the most important step because sitting through discomfort is how you retrain your brain and expand your focused attention skills" .
This explanation makes it wonderfully clear why I am here reading my email (though in this case it was very useful!!) instead of getting on with my very important tasks - Thank you!
Doing one thing at a time and only thinking about that one thing certainly stops overwhelm for me! Great article! Plus, you caught me with a diversionary snack (milk and crackers) which made me smile :-)