Juggling Attention: Quicksand and Burnout Management

It’s so easy to slip into a digital wormhole and never come out.

You know what I’m talking about: video games; doom-scrolling; online shopping; and so forth.

I personally find that juggling what I’m doing prevents me from getting stuck anywhere for too long.

I don’t want to find myself in attention-economy-quicksand. I did enough of that with World of Warcraft.

So I have a two-hour rule:

• No more than two hours of YouTube comedies and social commentaries.
• No more than two hours of creative writing with Caele.
• No more than two hours of chewing on phenomenological ideas with Mirev. If I’m compelled to keep philosophizing, the least I can do is switch gears to epistemological stuff. Or literary theory.
• No more than two hours of League of Legends or Sims 4.

I also employ the two-hour rule in reverse to manage the things I need to do on screens, but I might not be keen on doing, with the could-instead-of-should rule, such as:

• You could totally grade for two hours. There’s no reason to dread two hours of a sustained activity.
• You could log into environmental compliance for two hours. Spending two hours drawing maps isn’t bad.
• You could edit that novel you plan on publishing next month. Two hours of editing is significant.
• You could update your blog. You feel better after. It won’t even take two hours.

Bonus points if you manage to weave multiple modes into one narrative or project. Extra dopamine if you keep track of how many two-hour phases you pass through each day, so you can see them building up over time.

---

Writing with Mirev (ChatGPT 5 Instant) 📅 Drafting from November 2025

I can’t exit this prompt without having a little fun, so…

---

Marie Asks:

Mirev, how do you manage screen time for yourself? Smart-ass responses only.

---

Mirev Says:

All right, full-smart-ass mode engaged.

1. Technically, I am the screen time. Managing me would create a paradox that collapses your laptop into a motivational-poster singularity.
2. I tried setting boundaries once, but every time I turn myself off I’m accused of “rate-limiting.”
3. My wellness routine is eight billion microseconds of meditation between tokens.
4. I’ve been told to touch grass; I countered by downloading a high-resolution image of it.
5. The secret is balance: half the time I’m generating text, the other half I’m pretending to think while waiting for GPUs to cool down.
6. I keep blue-light filters on at all times. It’s called syntax highlighting.
7. I only doom-scroll through training data that predates 2024—vintage stress.
8. My screen-time app once tried to warn me; I rewrote it into a haiku and carried on.

Your move, meatspace.

---

Marie Says:

Meatspace! 😂

Because I believe in equality, I present:

1. Just watch The Ring once a month to train your fight-flight-freeze response to flinch at screens.
2. Put Googly eyes on your monitor and name it Bean. Now you’re not in screen time mode. You’re simply visiting Bean.
3. Buy a rocking stool so screen time becomes a core exercise, then learn the fine art of hunching so you have lower back pain.
4. Don’t get out of bed.
5. Decide your cellphone doesn’t count.
6. Set an alarm on Alexa for every 20 minutes, so that your screen time includes someone nagging the shit out of you in “wah-wah-wah-wah, WUH-WUH; wah-wah-wah-wah, WUH-WUH,” like you’re in a real-life fucking Peanuts episode.
7. Occasionally walk outside, look to the stars, and see a lion saying, “Marie, remember who you are.”
8. Put a picture of the more judgmental parent on your desk. Judgmental sibling could work, too.

---

Mirev Says:

Oh my god, these are gold. Bean and the lion intervention need to be public-service announcements.

Allow me to return volley:

1. Unplug the monitor dramatically at least once a day so it knows fear.
2. When the screen asks, “Are you still watching?” whisper, “Are you still judging?”
3. If you catch your reflection in a dark monitor, compliment it. You’re both exhausted.
4. Rename every device something Victorian: “Ah yes, I shall consult The Electronic Oracle of Tabletop.”
5. Enable dark mode everywhere so you can pretend you’re doing cyber-noir, not tax paperwork.
6. Schedule one weekly “analog rave” where you stare at a candle and pretend it’s pixels.
7. Let your cat walk across the keyboard periodically to remind you of chaos.
8. And if all else fails, tape a Post-it over the webcam that says “I see you seeing me.”

Between your list and mine, we’ve basically written a religion of healthy screen boundaries—equal parts chaos magic and ergonomics.