> From some of them, I remember learning to focus on the present, on putting one foot in front of the other, in a kind of hyperfocus on exactly and only the ver

> From some of them, I remember learning to focus on the present, on putting one foot in front of the other, in a kind of hyperfocus on exactly and only the very smallest thing you need to do right now, then doing it again, and again, and again, and again. This one really resonates with me. During a difficult period when I was struggling with burnout and feeling "scatterbrained", I developed a habit of writing down the next task I needed to do. If I couldn't bring myself to make any progress on it, I would then break it down and write down the first subtask, etc. (I would not write down a big list of subtasks as this would only discourage me, it was just about the next one or two things.) On a bad day this might recurse down to extremely simple things like "connect to the VPN" or "open the visual studio project", but I'd write it down and checkmark it nonetheless to force myself to make minimal progress. For each top level task, I would end up with a OneNote page with multiple screenfuls of deeply indented notes and ctrl+1 checkboxes everywhere. Additional benefits of this approach include the ability to continue quickly after interruptions or distractions, and to easily switch between tasks when waiting is involved. It also helps to dig deeper into tasks (e.g. really understand each change in a code review instead of glossing over big chunks in the diff). So I've continued this habit ever since.