How to Keep Your Focus in the AI Era

Have you lost touch with the feeling of being fully absorbed in your work?
When you’re doing task A, is your mind already racing through task B?

Compared to last year, AI has definitely made you more productive on paper. But do you actually feel more scattered and restless than before?

If your answer is “yes,” this article is worth reading to the end.

1. Why Learning Feels More Exhausting Than Ever

The endless chase of what’s hot

Here’s a pattern I see in most people learning AI today: they jump on whatever is trending.

What’s hot in the market, what the algorithm pushes hardest, what keeps showing up in your social feed – they dive right in.

Last year it was DeepSeek. This year it’s OpenClaw, then Claude Code.

But when you actually try to learn these tools, you quickly hit a wall. Without a solid foundation, you only scratch the surface. Understanding the full picture? Hard. Mastering it all? Nearly impossible. So you give up.

Then the next hype cycle arrives. You’re afraid of being left behind, afraid of missing that “life-changing opportunity.” So you chase again – and the result is the same.

Round and round it goes.

Eventually, you reach a state called learned helplessness. It’s not that you can’t learn a specific tool anymore – it’s that you become afraid of learning itself.

And here’s the kicker: even when you’re burned out, you can’t stop. Tools update too fast. Today’s version, tomorrow’s new feature. Before you’ve put anything into practice, the next release is already out. You instinctively feel that “learning equals owning,” that you should finish one and move to the next. But in reality, you haven’t truly mastered anything.

Information source anxiety

Not being able to learn everything is bad enough. But you also don’t know when to learn or what really matters.

So you start hoarding information sources. Every blogger’s “curated list of primary sources” – you follow them all. Why? Because deep down you feel that “following equals owning.” And you’re terrified that missing one will cost you a fortune.

But let’s be honest: can you actually keep up with all those people? Do you know each blogger’s strength and the specific scenario they’re best for? You haven’t even read their past posts – how can you fully understand what they’re posting now?

The result is ironic: you follow more and more people, and the few truly high‑quality sources that actually helped you get buried. You lose the ability to learn with precision.

There’s another layer to this. When information floods in, you start feeling that opportunities are everywhere. You want to try every new method, and any delay feels like falling behind. But as we just said – if you can’t even finish learning, how can you possibly practice it all?

These layers stack on top of each other and create the extreme anxiety so many people feel in the AI space today.

2. One Fundamental Mindset Shift

If I had to give just one piece of advice, it would be this:

Learning and practice that are not aimed at solving a real problem are a waste of time.

Look back with this mindset, and you’ll see that much of your “following” was just for the sake of following. Much of your “learning” was just for the sake of learning.

The truly effective approach is this: when you have an actual problem – from work, life, or study – use that problem as your anchor. Go and search for knowledge that helps you solve it. This way, you won’t be fooled by endless new tools, nor dragged around by anxiety.

That’s the “Tao” level. Now let me share four practical “technique” level suggestions.

3. Four Actionable Tips

1. Out of sight, out of mind

The Tao Te Ching says: “Do not display the desirable, and the people’s hearts will not be disturbed.” Many things stop bothering you once you can’t see them.

Here’s a personal example. I used to have a compulsive habit in Obsidian – obsessing over note titles and folder structures. It seriously hurt my writing. Then after a conversation with a friend, I realized I could simply hide the sidebar. Once hidden, the problem disappeared.

The same principle applies to notifications. Most people give every app on their phone permission to interrupt them. A buzz here, a pop‑up there – your attention gets chopped into tiny pieces.

Here’s how I handle it (I admit it’s on the extreme side):

You might ask: won’t this make you miss important messages? In reality, no. Truly urgent matters will reach you through a call or repeated contact. The vast majority of pop‑up notifications are things that can wait.

2. Reverse‑engineer the algorithm

Because my work used to be entirely offline, I barely touched social media – no TikTok, no Instagram Reels, no YouTube Shorts. On X (Twitter), I only follow a handful of key people and check their latest posts periodically.

If your feed is full of noise, you can actively “train” the algorithm: ignore the low‑effort content you consume when you’re tired. Instead, give likes and thoughtful comments to quality sources. Over time, your timeline will clean itself up.

Here’s the key insight: algorithms are not fixed. They are shaped by your behavior. Every tap, every pause, every swipe tells the algorithm “I like this.” So if you’re seeing too much junk, first look at what signals you’ve been sending.

3. Hard things start with the easy part

There’s no shortcut to building fundamentals.

Yesterday, Yubo posted something worth repeating: “If you really want to learn AI, stop following the cutting‑edge bloggers.” I strongly agree.

I have nothing against those bloggers – they are excellent sources of frontier information. But from the perspective of a hands‑on trainer, from the perspective of a beginner: if you haven’t even figured out the basics of Doubao, if you’re still learning to walk, then chasing hot topics – no matter how high‑quality or free the content – actually hurts you more than it helps.

If you really want to learn from someone, pick one person. Bookmark their homepage. Start from their earliest post and read all the way to the latest. Only then move to the next person.

If that’s too much to read, try this method I wrote about before: import all of that person’s content into a NotebookLM knowledge base. Use a conversational format to ask it to help you build a systematic understanding of the basics from the ground up.

Beginners look for shortcuts. Experts practice the fundamentals.

Here’s a simple routine to build fundamentals:

1. Pick one AI tool you want to master (e.g., Doubao)
2. Spend 30 minutes every day doing only one thing: use that tool to solve one small, real problem
3. Write down what you tried and what worked or didn’t
4. Stick with this for two weeks. Don’t touch any new tools during that time
5. After two weeks, revisit the “hot” topics – you’ll find them much easier to understand

4. Body and mind as one

There’s a well‑known story about an old monk.

Someone asked him: what did you do before you attained enlightenment?
He said: chop wood, sweep the floor, carry water.

And after enlightenment?
Same: chop wood, sweep the floor, carry water.

Then what changed?

He said: before, when I chopped wood, I was thinking about sweeping. When I swept, I was thinking about carrying water. Now, chopping wood is just chopping wood. Sweeping is just sweeping. Carrying water is just carrying water.

In the AI era, too many people are disconnected – body doing one thing, mind racing elsewhere. In that state, you can’t do anything well, and you can’t enter a flow state.

Right now, as you read this article, check yourself: do you feel the urge to jump to the next post? Is there something else you think you should be doing?

If yes, either close this article and go do that thing – no hesitation, no guilt – or set aside those distractions, finish reading calmly, and then leave a thoughtful comment.

4. Frequently Asked Questions

Q: I’m bombarded by AI news every day. If I don’t keep up, I feel like I’ll miss something important. What should I do?

A: Switch from “passive push” to “active pull.” Set a fixed time each day (say 9 PM) and spend 15 minutes scanning the 2–3 core sources you truly trust. Turn off all notifications the rest of the time. 99% of what you “miss” was never worth seeing in the first place.

Q: I know I should focus on fundamentals, but I keep chasing shiny new tools. How do I stop?

A: Impose a mandatory “cooling‑off period.” Whenever a new tool appears, wait 30 days. If it’s still being discussed after 30 days, it might have real value. If no one mentions it anymore, it was just a flash in the pan. Most tools don’t survive 30 days.

Q: My job forces me to juggle many things at once. How can I possibly focus on only one thing?

A: Body‑mind unity does not mean doing only one thing. It means that whatever you are doing at this moment, your full attention is there. Use the Pomodoro technique – 25 minutes on a single task, then a 5‑minute break to switch. The key is not how often you switch, but how focused you are during each block.

Q: I follow dozens of bloggers. I want to cut down, but I don’t know who to keep.

A: Apply a simple rule: keep only those whose content you have actually read carefully and tried to apply in the last 30 days. Unfollow everyone else. Before unfollowing, you can spend 5 minutes skimming their last 10 posts – if something seems genuinely valuable, read it first, then decide.

Q: What exactly is “flow state”? How do I know when I’m in it?

A: Flow is the state of being completely immersed in an activity – losing track of time, self, and surroundings. The test is simple: you start doing something, and then suddenly you realize one or two hours have passed. You haven’t checked your phone, you haven’t daydreamed, and you don’t feel tired. That’s flow.

5. A Final Thought

Above are the “Tao” and “technique” level ideas on how to keep your focus in the AI era. These are things that have genuinely helped me in my own practice.

One last thing: you don’t need to follow me. What I post are my real, unfiltered thoughts – authentic but rough. You don’t have to read everything. Just remember once in a while that there’s someone named Guan Zi, drop by and browse through his longer posts, and see if anything is useful for you. That’s enough.

I hope that in the days ahead, you can reunite your body and mind, protect your attention, and enter the flow state that belongs to you.