I have been thinking about focus lately.
More specifically, I have been thinking about how hard it is to focus when every idea now feels like something I can actually build, test, write, draw, or explore.
Part of me wonders if AI has made my attention worse. The other part of me wonders if this has always been how my brain worked, and AI just made it more obvious.
Honestly, I think it is probably both.
Growing up, I struggled in school unless I cared about the subject. I took special learning classes in elementary school, including reading and math up through fourth grade. I was not the kid who could sit down, focus, and grind through every assignment because someone told me it mattered.
But if the subject was art, history, or something I was genuinely interested in, I could lock in. I could spend hours thinking about it, drawing it, reading about it, or connecting it to some other idea in my head.
That pattern has followed me into adulthood.
I can focus. I can focus very intensely. But it usually has to be something that pulls me in.
Then AI showed up.
When I first started using ChatGPT a couple years ago, I noticed that I was asking questions differently than I did with Google. Search engines were usually about finding an answer. ChatGPT felt more like opening a door.
I could ask a question, then ask a better question, then follow a weird thread, then compare ideas, then turn that into a plan. I could explore topics in a way that felt closer to how my brain already worked.
Then tools like Claude came along. Then Claude Code. And that changed things again.
Now the idea is not just something I think about. It can become something I start building.
That sounds great, and in a lot of ways it is. But it also creates a new kind of problem.
I can have seven to ten AI projects floating around in my head at the same time. Some are practical. Some are weird. Some are half-built. Some probably should have stayed as notes in a folder.
Meanwhile, during the actual workday, I am still jumping between client meetings, website designs, proposals, image cleanup, content strategy, accessibility reviews, and all the normal things that come with running a business.
So now my brain has its regular work, plus this extra layer of AI possibility sitting on top of it.
That is where it gets tricky.
AI makes it easier to move fast. It also makes it easier to move sideways.
You can start with one useful task and end up three hours later with a prototype for an app, a rewritten blog post, a fantasy game concept, a cleaned-up vector image, and a list of ideas for something you never planned to work on.
Some of that is fun. Some of it is productive. Some of it is probably avoidance wearing a very convincing costume.
I do not think AI gave me ADHD. I am not even saying I have ADHD in any formal sense. But I do think AI has amplified the way my attention already works.
It rewards curiosity. It rewards jumping between ideas. It rewards asking one more question. It rewards starting.
It does not automatically reward finishing.
That is the part I am trying to pay more attention to.
Because the real value is not in having 40 ideas. I have always had ideas. The value is in choosing which ones deserve time, which ones are distractions, and which ones need to sit quietly until later.
AI has made me more capable. It has also made me more scattered.
Maybe that is the tradeoff.
Or maybe it is just a reminder that tools do not fix focus. They give you more leverage. What you aim that leverage at still matters.
Anywho, just a thought I wanted to get out there.