Paying attention is a skill like free throws. Nobody’s naturally good at it; the good ones just take more shots.

Attention behaves like a trainable skill rather than a personality trait. People who can hold a thought for an hour are not built differently, they have done it more often, mostly in poor conditions. Treating focus as something you either have or lack removes any reason to practise. Treating it as a skill puts it back in your hands.

Pick one thing this week and stay with it for twenty-five minutes with nothing else open. You will drift, which is not failure, and the practice is in coming back rather than in never leaving. Do it most days and watch the number of returns drop on its own.