Three Months Later: Does the Attention Diet Work?

Back in July, I explained my idea of an “Attention Diet,” -- a regimented limitation of information to improve mental health and productivity. When I posted it, I announced my plan to implement the attention diet into my own life and invited readers to do the same and report back their results. Well, it’s been three months. How did things go?

1. Like a nutritional diet, the attention diet is not an all-or-nothing affair. You will have moments where you cave to your impulses, where you will “cheat” and binge on Instagram, moments where you will completely fail to uphold the standards you set for yourself.

And like nutritional dieting, you have to be able to let this go and not beat yourself up about it.

I had to learn when and how to let myself go a bit. When was it okay to go down a youtube rabbit hole? When was it okay to spend an hour texting with a friend I hadn’t talked to in ages? When was it okay to abandon all previous plans to melt into my couch playing video games for four hours?

One thing I’ve long argued is that achieving results is not …

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