Stop visiting HN more than once a day. Repeat this for every “news”/“feed” site and app that you use. It sounds completely nuts, but it forces you to stop slicing up “read the news” (a focused activity) into “read the news distractedly” (a timesliced activity).

Shut off push notifications for anything that is not money/shipping related or a direct IM with individuals. Email notifications off, news and feed notifications off, social site notifications off, Twitter “favorited” notifications off.

Turn off notification sounds for everything that’s left except direct messages from human beings or e.g. Pagerduty.

Aside from direct IMs — I got a total of 10 pushes yesterday. None made a sound. None required a response. None required interrupting my focus.

Do this for a month, on desktops, laptops, mobile. Your focus will improve dramatically, simply for having not wasted all your brain’s dopamine on “new email alert sounds”.

EDIT: Meditation is far more challenging when your brain is constantly looking out for the next “new notification” ding. It took me nearly a month to overcome the Pavlov ding response when I first implemented this approach in 2005. You’re going to hear a lot of phantom dings for a long time.

EDIT2: If you haven’t already done this muting approach, set your push notification sound to the red alert klaxon from BSG (three repetitions) – or any red alert sound from any sci-fi show. If ever there was a way to amplify the visceral effects of notification sounds to your conscious thought level for evaluation and consideration, that’ll do it.

EDIT3: If you’re autism spectrum, you may have “executive dysfunction”, which is a willpower disorder of sorts. Focus is willpower-related. There’s no magic fix, but awareness is half the battle, and it may offer steps you can take to reduce your life’s “willpower” drain so that you can have more of it for “focus” instead of whatever.