PlanTheFlow

AI Is Flying the Plane. When Did You Last Take the Controls?

Daniel Koprowski — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The While Loop Moment

I was doing a code review recently. A few hundred lines, just another PR, nothing out of the ordinary.

Then I hit a while loop with a continue statement inside it.

I paused. I had to trace the logic in my head before I felt confident enough to move forward. The kind of code I wrote on autopilot in university, in gamedev, in any project that wasn’t modern frontend.

It took me a moment longer than it should have. (In my defense, frontend code hasn’t needed much of a while loop since IE6.)

I’ve been writing code for over 10 years. I have a computer science degree. That loop still made me pause.

That’s a problem worth thinking about.

Autopilot Is Great. Until It Isn’t

I use GitHub Copilot every day. As a team lead, I rarely get uninterrupted hours to sit and code and Copilot genuinely changes what’s possible in the gaps. I pick up a Jira task, iterate to get a working version, then go through it manually and make it mine. Without that tool, I’d be far less technical than I am today. I’m not here to tell you to stop using it.

But there’s a tax we pay without noticing. Call it coding skill atrophy: the cognitive muscles we’re not using stop responding as quickly as they used to. Copilot writes the loop; we read it, nod, move on. Over months and years of doing that, the gap between “reading code” and “writing code from scratch” grows wider than you’d expect.

The output still looks fine. Our velocity is up. Our PRs ship. The erosion is invisible, right up until you’re in a code review, staring at a while loop, and realizing you need a second to think.

This isn’t a criticism of AI tools. It’s just how skills work. Use a muscle and it stays sharp. Park it for two years and it gets stiff. That’s not a moral failing; it’s biology. A 2025 analysis in Communications of the ACM calls it the deskilling paradox: short-term efficiency gains may hollow out deeper expertise without anyone noticing.

The Pilot Analogy

Commercial pilots fly on autopilot for the vast majority of every flight. Nobody in aviation considers this a problem. Autopilot is more precise than a human on a long cruise, less fatigued, and statistically safer on routine segments.

But airlines and regulators still require pilots to maintain manual flying proficiency through recurrent training and periodic checks. The reasoning is straightforward: when something goes wrong (unexpected weather, a system failure, an unusual approach) the pilot needs to take the controls and handle it. Immediately and correctly. There’s no time to recall how it works in theory.

The parallel to software development is almost too clean to be useful, but here it is anyway.

Copilot is the autopilot. We’re the pilots. It handles the repetitive, predictable work well. But production bugs don’t wait while we dust off our memory of basic control flow. A tricky Safari rendering issue, a subtle race condition, a performance regression nobody can explain: all of those require someone who can actually read and reason about the code, not just prompt their way toward a fix.

Nobody in aviation asks “is autopilot making pilots worse?” They just make sure pilots stay sharp regardless. That’s the conversation I think we should be having about AI coding tools. Macnamara et al.’s 2024 study on AI-induced skill decay takes the aviation comparison further: AI assistants likely cause more cognitive skill decay than traditional automation, because they offload the cognitively demanding work, not just the mechanical parts.

Debugging Code That Isn’t Yours

A while back I was building a feature for a side project. Nothing serious, just something cool I wanted for my own use, so I wasn’t being particularly rigorous. I let Copilot drive, accepted suggestions without reading too carefully, and hit a mobile Safari bug somewhere in the generated code.

Since I was already in “just make it work” mode, I kept that approach: describe the bug to Copilot, apply the fix, test, find it still broken, repeat. I spent a surprising amount of time in that loop.

The irony is that diving into the code manually would have been faster. But because I hadn’t written it, I had no mental model to start from. I didn’t know which part was doing what, or why. I was searching in the dark.

That’s the hidden cost of vibe coding. You can skip the understanding phase when things work. When they don’t, you pay it back with interest.

Schedule Your Manual Hours

The wrong response to all of this is to feel guilty every time you accept a Copilot suggestion. That’s not sustainable and it misses the point. Use the tool on real work.

The right response is to treat manual coding practice as something you schedule separately, away from shipping pressure. Pilots don’t practice emergency landings on a flight full of passengers. They do it in a simulator, on a schedule, when the stakes are low. That assumes you have protected time to schedule in the first place — keeping focus blocks clear is the prerequisite.

In practice, that means setting aside 30 minutes to an hour once or twice a week for exercises that work the actual thinking muscles: algorithm problems, tree traversal, boolean logic, complexity analysis. Not writing boilerplate by hand (that’s just tedious). The goal is to keep the reasoning sharp, not to prove you can type without autocomplete.

A few resources worth knowing:

Advent of Code — annual challenge, great variety of problems
Codewars — ranked kata-style exercises you can dip into anytime
CSSBattle — if you’re frontend-focused, this is a good way to keep CSS fundamentals honest
awesome-katas — a curated list of practice collections if you want more variety

This post is a reminder for myself to actually treat those exercises seriously. Crosswords don’t make you a better writer, but they keep the brain from going soft. Same idea.

The Minimum Bar: Understand What You Push

Deliberate practice is the long game. But there’s a shorter-term standard that applies right now, on every PR: understand the code you’re pushing.

As long as teams review each other’s work (and most still do), every line in a git commit should make sense to the person committing it. Not “Copilot generated it and it looks plausible” but actually understood. What it does, why it’s structured that way, what would break if you changed it.

There’s a simple professional argument here too. If you expect your teammates to review your code, the least you can do is read it yourself first. Sending a PR full of code you haven’t looked at is asking others to do work you skipped. Code reviewers can tell, and it slows everyone down.

Beyond reviews, there’s a practical angle too. Code you understand well enough to explain is easier to debug, easier to hand off, and easier to revisit when requirements change. That’s true whether you wrote it yourself or guided an AI to write it. The inverse is also true: code nobody fully understands becomes a knowledge silo problem, one PR at a time.

Stay a Software Engineer

None of this is an argument against AI tools. Use them. They’re genuinely effective and only getting better.

The engineers who still invest in their fundamentals on purpose have an advantage. When something breaks in a way the AI can’t explain (a bug in generated code nobody fully understands, a postmortem asking “who owns this logic?”), you want to be the person with an answer.

Scheduling some manual practice and understanding the code you ship doesn’t conflict with using Copilot on everything else. It’s skill maintenance.

Would you board a plane flown by a pilot who hasn’t touched the controls in two years because the autopilot handles it?

If you want more systems for staying sharp as an engineering lead, the newsletter is where I share them.

The Hidden Cost of Knowledge Silos in Your Dev Team

Daniel Koprowski — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I have seen many times a thought on LinkedIn: “Make yourself irreplaceable at work.” It sounds like career wisdom. Become so essential that the company can’t function without you. But here’s what I’ve learned after years as a software developer and team captain: being irreplaceable is actually holding you back.

This article is part of the Knowledge Silos series:

Part 1: The Hidden Cost of Knowledge Silos (you are here)
Part 2: The 4-Step System to Eliminate Knowledge Silos (coming soon)
Part 3: Why Being Replaceable Is Your Best Career Move (coming soon)

Last year, I took my first three-week vacation in my career. As a Team Captain I was a bit worried how things will go. You know what happened? The team thrived. They followed our established rituals, delivered value to customers, and handled everything smoothly. No emergencies, no urgent calls, no disasters.

This wasn’t an accident. It was the result of specific actions we took to build team resilience.

Being replaceable isn’t about being redundant. It’s about building resilient systems and empowering teams.

The Hidden Cost of Being “Irreplaceable”

When you’re the single person who knows how something works, you might feel secure, important, irreplaceable. But consider the real consequences:

You can’t take a real vacation. Your phone buzzes with “quick questions” even on the beach.
You become a bottleneck. Projects stall waiting for your input.
Your growth stagnates. You’re too valuable in your current role to be promoted.
Burnout becomes inevitable. You’re the single point of failure, and that weight never lifts.

I’ve seen brilliant developers trapped in the same role for years because their managers couldn’t afford to move them. They became victims of their own “irreplaceability.”

What is a Knowledge Silo?

A knowledge silo forms when critical information stays trapped within one person or one group, with no transfer to the rest of the team.

It’s not always one lone expert. It can be an entire subgroup — three developers who always pick tasks from the same module because that’s what they know, while the other five never touch it. It feels efficient. It’s comfortable. And it quietly turns into a fragile dependency nobody notices until someone goes on vacation. If the same names keep grabbing the same types of work during sprint planning, that’s a silo forming in real time.

That’s the thing about silos: they don’t form from bad intentions. They form from convenience.

Sound familiar? Maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s someone on your team. Either way, it’s a risk.

The Bus Factor: More Than Just a Metric

In software development, we talk about the “bus factor.” How many team members could be hit by a bus before a project fails? (That’s dark. Let’s say they missed the bus.)

If your team’s bus factor is 1 (you?), that’s a disaster waiting to happen.

Do you know, that in big corporations and governments, there are specific rules that people crucial for operations cannot travel together in the same bus, plane, or train? That’s how serious single points of failure are. Imagine this: half of your team is late for the flight to a conference — Congrats! You accidentally mitigated a risk.

How to Measure Your Team’s Bus Factor

You can’t fix what you don’t measure. Here’s a practical assessment framework to evaluate your team’s knowledge distribution.

Ask these questions about your team:

Critical Operations

Who’s the only person who can deploy to production?
Who can debug production issues?
Who holds tribal knowledge about the legacy system?

Day-to-Day Work

Which components have single owners?
Who can onboard new hires?
Who reviews architecture decisions?
Who has access to critical accounts and services?

What Happens During Absence

What happens when key people take vacation?
How many people can handle emergency decisions?
Who covers for the “irreplaceable” expert?

Scoring Your Bus Factor

For each critical area, count how many people can handle it independently:

Bus Factor 1 = Critical Risk. Entire project depends on one person. This is a red alert.
Bus Factor 2 = High Risk. Two people means less fragility, but still vulnerable. One absence creates a single point of failure.
Bus Factor 3 = Stable. Knowledge shared across three people. The team can handle vacations and unexpected absences.

Anything above 3 is a resilent team that mastered knowledge sharing.

Self-Assessment Exercise

The bus factor is not a single score for your whole team. It’s calculated per area. Each critical area has its own number, and your weakest area is your real risk.

Here’s how to do it in three steps:

List your five most critical areas. Think: deployment, architecture decisions, customer escalations, legacy system knowledge, on-call incident response. Pick the ones where a gap would actually hurt.
For each area, write down every person who can handle it independently. Without asking for help.
Count the names. That count is the bus factor for that area.

I built a ready-to-fill Team Bus Factor Calculator PDF template for this exercise — you can grab it at the end of the article.

Bus Factor 1 (bottom): one person owns everything. Bus Factor 3 (top): responsibilities are distributed. The difference between a resilient team and a single point of failure

Here’s what a filled table might look like:

Area	Who can handle it	Bus Factor
Deploy to production	Anna	1 🚨
Debug production issues	Anna, Ben	2 ⚠️
Legacy system knowledge	Ben	1 🚨
Onboard new hires	Anna, Ben, Clara	3 ✅
Architecture decisions	Anna, Clara	2 ⚠️

In this example, the team’s real bus factor is 1: because two critical areas depend on a single person. Even though onboarding looks healthy, one bus (or one resignation, sick leave, longer vacation) breaks the whole system. Notice Anna. She’s carrying half the team. She also probably hasn’t taken a vacation since she accidentally became important.

If you see one name listed across multiple areas, or just one name in any row, that’s your red flag. You don’t sum the scores. You look for the lowest number. A bus factor of 1 anywhere is a single point of failure, no matter how healthy the rest of the table looks.

The goal isn’t to replace experts. It’s to ensure expertise is shared, documented, and distributed so the team stays resilient even when someone is unavailable.

What This Means for You

If your bus factor score is below 3 in critical areas, you have an on organizational risk. It a good rule of thumb to have at least 2 people responsible for each piece of the project.

But here’s the good news: this isn’t permanent. Knowledge silos can be broken down systematically, without grinding productivity to a halt.

Now you’ve identified your single points of failure. The question is: how do you fix it without sacrificing velocity? In Part 2, I’ll show you the exact 4-step system my team used to increase our bus factor from 1 to 4 while maintaining velocity.

Don’t miss Part 2 — subscribe below and I’ll send it straight to your inbox when it’s out.

Download the Team Bus Factor Calculator – A free PDF template to map your team’s knowledge distribution and identify critical risks. Download the free PDF template →

Small Changes That Made Our Daily Stand-Ups More Useful

Daniel Koprowski — Sun, 03 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Daily stand-ups are a cornerstone of agile software development – but often they’re seen as a burden or a distraction. Why? Because they frequently devolve into long status reports that bore participants and add little real value.

Others see it as a waste of time or such regular part of their day, that it doesn’t deserve a second thought.

During the past two years, together with my team, I worked on improving our daily to transform it to a tool that helps every participant to kickstart their day. In this blogpost I share tips that might be useful also for your team.

What Is the Purpose of a Daily Meeting – and What It Isn’t

I often see complains on developers forums that a daily meetings are used only as a control mechanism – a way for managers to check up on what everyone did yesterday.

Since I trust my team, I’ve designed our daily meetings to bring real value to developers.

Instead of treating the daily as a status report, we use it as a chance for:

syncing plans and priorities for the current day,
signaling blockers early so the team can help,
encouraging collaboration and knowledge sharing,
building a sense of team ownership and support.

I don’t want a daily meeting where everyone focuses on yesterday. I want one where we help each other move forward.

While it’s tempting to ditch the “what I did yesterday” report entirely to avoid turning meetings into monotonous recaps, don’t abandon it completely.

Question about yesterday can reveal dysfunctions or blocker early, like when team members admit, “I didn’t get much done due to back-to-back meetings,” signaling a need for broader changes to free up focus time. My point is to keep it brief and tie it to today’s plans for maximum value.

The purpose of a daily meeting is to collaboratively kickstart the day by aligning individual plans with team goals, supporting each other, and uncovering blockers.

Benefits Of Collaborative Daily

Common Pitfalls: Reporting Mode and Knowledge Silos

Many teams get stuck in the “reporting mode,” where each developer spends most of their time describing their own yesterday’s work, often justifying themselves.

This leads to:

Monotony: Hearing detailed reports every day gets boring fast.
Disengagement: People stop listening or multitask in background.
Missed collaboration: Blockers and requests for help don’t get surfaced.
Knowledge silos: Important insights stay locked inside individuals.

That is my biggest nemesis. I always felt that purely reporting meetings are a burden, a waste of energy, those are spreading mistrust in the team. It might work in some setups – I don’t deny that there is a use case. Although, in a workflow that I value, I wanted to have a meeting, where we plan the upcoming day to spend the time productive.

🧠 Help improve daily stand-ups — take the quick survey and grab a gift!

Ineffective Daily Leads to Deeper Issues

Real-World Daily Stand-Up Examples

Avoid: The Classic “Justifying My Existence” Update

Read through this daily status update and think how could it be improved:

Yesterday, I fixed a bug assigned to me. Then, I attended all-hands meeting and I had to go out for some time. Then we had retro. I also started a new story from to-do. Today, I will continue working on it.

Key Issues:

Vague: No specific details on what was fixed or which story was started.
No Context: Generic terms like “assigned to me,” “new story,” and “continue working on it” do not provide actionable info. What story that dev is even mentioning? No one knows.
No Request for Help: No mention of needing assistance or collaboration.
No Value for Team: Update is mostly a personal log; teammates cannot offer help or gain insight.
Focused on Past: Update is mostly a report on yesterday’s activities, not today’s goals or blockers.

After listening to such update, teammates wouldn’t think of how they could collaborate. They would be lost, forced to ask additional questions or simply fall back and wait for the next person.

📚 Coding in Quiet: How I Solved Slack Noise as a Developer

Improved: A Specific, Team-Focused Daily Update

Here is my attempt to improve such update:

Yesterday, I fixed a sidebar flickering bug. Please review my PR soon as it is annoying for customers. I started a video player story that we discussed at the last refinement. Since it’s my first time working with the player module, I’d appreciate pairing up or any tips from someone familiar with it.
Today, my focus is on wiring up the play/pause functionality. Happy to sync after stand-up if anyone’s available.

What’s Improved:

Specific: Names the details of bug and story.
Contextual: Explains the urgency (“annoying for customers”) and the origin of the story (“discussed at last refinement”).
Focus on Today: Highlights what is planned for today and where support is needed.
Expressed openness: Invites help both for pairing and advice–not just passive review.
Offered a sync: Proactively asks for a follow-up, lowering the barrier for collaboration.

Improved daily stand-up communication qualities

Additionally, when a Jira board (or whatever you use) is on a shared display the team should have no problem with following what this dev is talking about and how to help them.

How We Structure Our Daily Meetings to Create Value

In my current team, we organize our daily around three clear segments that keep the meeting focused, actionable, and team-oriented:

1. Daily Updates: Today’s Plans and Blockers

We start by opening our Jira board. It also signals that the „official” part has started and smalltalk should end now. There, using Jira filters we display stories for a particular teammate.

Then, each participant focuses on:

What do I plan to work on today?
Is something blocking me?
Do I need or can I offer help?

Focus is on today and blockers–not on lengthy reports of yesterday.

Example: Anna says, “I plan to finish the API integration today, but I’m stuck on authorization. Tomasz, who’s done this recently, offered to pair with me after the meeting.”
This sparks collaboration and skill sharing.

Offering help example: Tomasz says, „I just finished the new UI for YouTube block. Before I can start the story with integrating the block with our backend, I need to wait for Java team so I have a few hours where I could help or do a pair-programming session.”

📚 Try out Agile Poker to improve your estimations

2. Open Pull Requests Review

After every teammate has shared their plans and status for today, we take a quick look at open pull requests together. We only check what’s there, not reviewing.

We open our PRs dashboard on a shared screen, so the whole team can see:

What PRs are waiting for review
Which need priority attention
Where someone might need a second pair of eyes

The meeting facilitator goes from top to bottom asking authors for a quick overview of each PR. This prevents bottlenecks and speeds up reviews.

3. Bugman Dashboard: Checking the Health of Our App

Finally, we take a quick look at our bugman dashboard to review new bugs or any urgent issues impacting users. Person who carries the bugman role shares their status update.

Shared awareness keeps quality top of mind for everyone, not just QA or product owners.

If you have your app on prod, proper monitoring and observability can save you tons of time. You often know about the bugs before customers do.

The Role of the Daily Facilitator

To keep meetings sharp, we have a rotating Daily Facilitator role, changing every sprint (two weeks). This role is vital:

Keeps time: Ensures the meeting stays within 15 minutes.
Guards the agenda: Guides discussions through the three segments.
Shares screen: Presents Jira with filters showing the current speaker’s stories, keeping focus product-centered.
Redirects deep-dive discussions: When a technical topic gets detailed, encourages interested peers to continue the conversation after the daily or using a Slack thread.

Why rotating? Everyone gets a chance to develop facilitation skills, and it prevents the meeting from feeling like just a manager’s ritual. Plus it contributes to the shared ownership of the team.

Daily facilitator role

Handling Heated or Lengthy Technical Discussions

Sometimes, a topic sparks a deep or heated technical debate. We have a clear rule:

If a discussion is too detailed for the daily, we pause it and take it offline.

The involved contributors agree to continue over Slack, dedicated calls, or follow-up meetings.
This keeps the daily concise and relevant for everyone, respecting people’s time.

Example: During a recent daily, a debate about database indexing starts to get technical. The facilitator kindly stops the discussion and says, “Let’s take this to a separate session after the daily with the interested folks.” Problem solved and meeting stays on track. It’s worth to assign discussed topic to specific people, to avoid loosing the ownership.

📚 How to make your own playing cards + Agile Poker template

Benefits for Developer, Team and Organization

Turning daily stand-ups from boring status updates into quick, collaborative sessions isn’t just about cutting time; it’s about making things better for everyone. Here’s a breakdown of the key benefits for individual developers, the team, and the organization:

Individual Developer

Starts the day with clear plans and priorities.
Gains early assistance on blockers, allowing for quicker resolution and reduced frustration.
Receives opportunities for pairing, tips, and knowledge sharing. That boosts growth into senior positions.
Develops facilitation skills through rotating roles. It boosts confidence and helps in career as well as personal adventures.
Benefits from active listening and offering help, growing a supportive environment, minimizes isolation - break those silos!

Team

Encourages collaboration, turning meetings into tools for mutual support.
Reduces knowledge silos by surfacing insights and blockers, enabling better knowledge sharing across members.
Builds a sense of ownership and trust, as the focus shifts to helping each other move forward instead of individual justifications.
Prevents bottlenecks through structured PR reviews and bug checks, disarming potential frustrations and finger-pointing.

Organization

Improves overall productivity by time-boxing meetings to 10-15 minutes.
Enhances product quality and user impact through shared awareness of bugs and urgent issues via dashboards.
Fosters a culture of transparency and collaboration, reducing mistrust.
Speeds up development cycles by prioritizing reviews and early blocker resolution.

Tips for Making Your Daily Stand-ups Work

Prepare in advance: Know your stories and blockers before the meeting.
Active listening: Everyone should pay attention and look for ways to help.
Time-box tightly: Keep the daily within 10–15 minutes.
Use the agenda: Stick to updates, PR review, and health check. Put the agenda into your calendar event.
Rotate facilitation: Share the responsibility of hosting the daily.
Leverage your tools: Share screen with Jira filters, PR dashboards, and bug trackers. Prepare a shared daily note with all the links (for example a page in Confluence)
Don’t solve big problems: Surface blockers but take discussions offline.
Adapt for remote teams: Use video, shared screens, and async follow-ups if needed.

What’s Your Daily Meeting Like?

I’d love to hear about your experience with daily meetings.
I’ve put together a few quick questions about how your team runs daily meetings. In about a month, I’ll pick the most interesting challenges and add a Q&A section to this article to share real-world insights (yours included, if you’re up for it!).

👉 Take the short survey.
You’ll also get a free Agile Poker PDF as a thank-you.

Conclusion: Build Real Teams, Not Report Chains

When daily meetings are structured around collaboration, transparency, and mutual support–with a trusted process to keep time and agenda–your team transforms. It moves from isolated individuals reporting tasks to a group solving problems together.

Stop Doomscrolling: 7-Step Digital Detox Checklist

Daniel Koprowski — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Tired of endless doomscrolling and wasting hours online?

This 7-Step Digital Detox Checklist is your fast-track guide to reclaim focus and and regain control over your digital habits.

The checklist is a practical, step-by-step guide designed to help you reduce doomscrolling and build healthier digital routines. By following the actionable steps in this checklist, you can cut down on mindless screen time, improve your focus, and ultimately enhance your well-being.

This tool was created as an extension of my previous article How to Stop Doomscrolling Without Extra Software, where I explored ideas to limit digital distractions without the need for extra apps. Now, with this checklist, you get a hands-on workbook that empowers you to track your progress and make meaningful changes in your everyday life.

Download for free 👉 Stop Doomscrolling Checklist PDF ✅ or see below how it looks like.

Set Your Goals

Write Down Your Current Screen Time
Use your device’s tracker to note your average daily screen time.
Define a Clear Goal
For example: “Reduce screen time by 30 minutes per day.”

Action Steps

Evaluate Your Screen Time
- Check your phone or computer’s built-in tracker.
- Write down the times of day when you scroll the most.
Identify Problematic Behaviors
- List the apps and situations that trigger mindless scrolling. Notice habits.
- Note any patterns (e.g., right after waking up or before bed, tough task at work).
Limit Notifications
- Turn off notifications for apps that aren’t crucial.
- Use “Do Not Disturb” mode of your device during focus time.
Reorganize Your Home Screen
- Remove or hide apps that cause distractions.
- Keep only essential apps easily visible.
Use a Physical Planner
- Write down your tasks and ideas on paper instead of relying solely on digital notes.
- Use the Focus Calendar to achieve the most important thing every day.
Move Your Phone Out of the Bedroom
- Place your phone in another room at night.
- Use a physical alarm clock to wake up instead.
Engage in Offline Activities
- Use your breaks to grab a glass of water instead of a phone.
- Schedule offline activities during your usual doomscrolling periods.
- Do activities like reading a book, walking, or cooking to replace screen time.

Review and Adjust

At the end of each week, check your progress.
Note any changes in focus, sleep, or mood.
If you meet your initial goal, consider increasing the challenge.

PDF Preview

Conclusion

Tools like this checklist are created to empower you in your fight against doomscrolling. It’s best to print it and use it on paper to reduce screen time even more. I hope this checklist serves as a valuable resource on your journey to better digital habits and improved well-being.

If you found this checklist useful, consider joining the PlanTheFlow newsletter for more tips, insights, and tools designed to help you thrive in a digital world.

Stay strong, keep focused, and let’s beat doomscrolling together!

Focus on a Single Task Per Day!

Daniel Koprowski — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Hello There! 👋

A new month means a new opportunity to refocus on our goals. In the daily grind, we often get caught up in urgent tasks that don’t really move toward our long-term ambitions.

Focusing on one key task per day can make all the difference.

Inspired by a conversation with a friend, I’ve found that writing down a single task each day helps sharpen focus and drive meaningful progress. This single task should define the day. It doesn’t mean that it’s worth to do only one thing every day, but this task should be top priority: something that, if completed, will make the day feel productive and purposeful.

This was Issue #7 of the PlanTheFlow newsletter! If you’re enjoying this content and want more insights, feel free to subscribe here to get future issues straight to your inbox.

Introducing the Focus Calendar

To help you try this method, I created a free tool: the Focus Calendar. I designed it to be simple. Just choose your one task for the day, focus on it, and track your progress over time.

It looks like a regular monthly calendar PDF, but with additional fields for month’s priority and additional notes.

You can generate a printable calendar template for any month on my website, PlanTheFlow, and use it to plan your most important task every day.

Focus Calendar Preview

Check out the Focus Calendar here!

How I Created the Tool

I had a lot of fun building this project! Initially, I wanted to create the tool using only pure CSS, and I was pretty successful with that. I used the @media print query and styled everything for printing. The biggest challenge with this approach was inconsistencies between browsers, but surprisingly, it worked well across most major browsers.

Then came mobile Safari 😄. While it looked okayish, Safari added some unexpected print metadata, shrinking the design. It was more or less acceptable, but I wasn’t fully satisfied.

ReactPDF to the Rescue!

In my second and final approach, I switched to using the ReactPDF library. It’s much more predictable and works consistently across all browsers I tested. The only downside is that now my codebase has two solutions—one with pure CSS as a fallback when someone uses the default print behavior and the other with ReactPDF as a main solution under a button.

Get your Focus Calendar for October, and try this method to see how it helps you stay on track! More info about the idea of a “single task per day” is below the calendar generator on the website.

Share the Love

If you find the Focus Calendar useful, I’d appreciate it if you could share the link somewhere on the web. PlanTheFlow is still a new domain for search engines; every backlink helps a lot!

If you liked this newsletter issue and want to stay updated, subscribe to the PlanTheFlow newsletter to get more content like this. 📩

How to Make Your Own Playing Cards at Home (A4 Template)

Daniel Koprowski — Sun, 11 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Creating your own Agile Poker Cards can be a rewarding and hands-on project that enhances your Agile planning sessions. It is not just about the final product—it’s about the joy of working with your hands and taking a break from the digital world.

In this step-by-step tutorial, I’ll guide you through making your own cards, whether you’re using my Agile Poker Cards PDF or another design that suits your needs. These steps can also be applied to any card-based project, like designing your own board game!

Agile Poker Cards

In each section I give info what are the exact tools that I’ve used. Some of the tools I recommend below include affiliate links, which help support this blog at no extra cost to you.

Download the Agile Poker PDF

First of all, you will need a cards project. Either you can use your own or get the free one prepared by me.

You don’t need to use my cards to get value from this article—the tutorial works with any cards or your own custom design!

👉 Learn more about PlanTheFlow’s Agile Poker Cards — discover the opinionated approach with fewer cards and clear hints that makes estimation faster and more effective.

To access my Agile Poker Cards PDF, you’ll need to subscribe to my newsletter. Then, you’ll receive a free download link directly to your inbox. This helps support my work and ensures you get updates on new resources and tutorials.

👉 Subscribe to my newsletter to get PlanTheFlow’s Agile Poker Cards PDF for free. Don’t worry, I rarely send any emails.

How many playing cards fit on A4?

If you’re in North America, you will need to purchase A4 paper instead of the standard US Letter size. The A4 size allows for 10 playing cards per sheet¹, which isn’t possible with Letter paper. Don’t worry though, printers are international and can handle A4 paper without any issues.

Proper Printer Settings and Paper

For best results, it’s ideal to use a printer with duplex (double-sided) printing capability. I printed my cards at a copy shop using a large laser printer, but I was researching for a home solution. From what I’ve found the “Canon PIXMA” series comes highly recommended. One option is the Canon PIXMA G3270.

Printer Settings for Cards Printing

Key printer settings to consider:

Double-Sided: On (Short Edge)
- I found that without the (Short Edge) setting, one side of the printout was upside-down. Depending on your printer, you might need to adjust this setting differently to get the best result.
Paper Size: A4
- If you’re using my Agile Poker cards design, keep in mind that you should print it on A4 size.
Scale: 100%
- Printers tend to scale the printed design to their own settings. They add some margins and this might cause shift of the cutting guides.
- Printer scaling will also shrink cards, and they’ll no longer be poker sized. Smaller cards are less comfy to use.
- To ensure your cards are true to poker size and properly aligned, double-check that the scale is set to 100%.

Cards Printer Settings

Start by printing a single sheet and checking if the cutting lines on both sides align perfectly. You can hold the sheet up to a window with daylight shining through to ensure there’s no misalignment. If everything lines up, your printer is good to go.

Check if cards are aligned using the window or a strong light

Best Paper for Printing Playing Cards

For this project, I tested multiple papers and ended using 250g/m² paper, which strikes a good balance between thickness and flexibility. Without lamination, the 250g paper isn’t very stiff, but once you laminate it, the cards become much sturdier and more durable. I use Mondi Color Copy A4 250g/m2 paper.

If you decide not to laminate your cards, consider using a thicker paper. Make sure your printer can handle a thicker paper before proceeding! Home printers often have limits on max paper thickness around 250g/m².

If you prefer to use thinner paper, that’s also an option. However, in that case, I suggest using a thicker laminate to achieve a similar level of stiffness and quality. The key is to find a combination that works well with your printer and provides the right feel for your cards.

Laminate Your Cards

Laminating your cards adds an extra layer of durability, making them last longer through many Agile Poker sessions. I use gloss, 80-micron/3 mil laminating pouches from Fellowes, which give the cards a nice, smooth finish that feels great in hand. The glossy laminate also makes the colors pop, giving your cards a professional look and feel.

I laminate the whole sheet at once before cutting. This way the process gets much easier.

When laminating, be sure to feed the pouches into the laminator straight and avoid any wrinkles. If you don’t have a laminator at home, you can get one pretty cheap. I use a basic model: Fellowes Ion and it works great.

How to Cut Out Cards

Once your cards are laminated, it’s time to cut them out. Precision is key here, so take your time to ensure each cut is perfectly straight, giving your cards a crisp and professional look.

How to Cut Paper Straight?

I’ve tried various methods, including scissors and different types of hand cutters, but the results weren’t always as clean as I’d like. I bought the Fiskars SureCut trimmer, it stands out for its ability to deliver precise cuts with ease thanks to the “Wire Cut Line” - a guide line. It is a metal string/line that shows you how the blade will move. The wire line is visible in the photo below:

Fiskars SureCut Wire Cut Line for straight cards

Laminated sheets gives smoother cut. Depending of the sharpness of the blade and tool that you’re using, cutting bare paper can result in jagged edges that don’t look as polished.

PRO TIP: I move the blade inside of the sheet and start cutting around 1cm inside. I also finish moving the blade, before I reach the edge of the sheet. I don’t cut all the way through the sheet. Thanks to that, I have a frame out of the laminated paper and the whole structure is stable.

Fiskars SureCut Cards Pro Tip

Take your time cutting along the red lines; the more precise your cuts, the more polished your final product will be. It’s worth the effort to go slow and steady for the best results.

Cut-Out Agile Poker Cards

Rounding Card Corners

Corner Rounder Punch

While optional, rounding the corners of your cards is a step I highly recommend. Not only does it give your cards a more finished look, but it also prevents the laminate from peeling over time, extending the life of your cards. Plus, rounded corners just feel better in hand!

Comparison of sharp and round card corners

A Corner Rounder Punch is a simple tool that can make this process easy. With a few snips, your cards will look like they came straight from a professional print shop.

This is quite time consuming as you have to cut each corner separately. Usually, I put 2 to 3 cards into the cutter at the same time to speed up.

Final Thoughts

Crafting your own Agile Poker Cards is a fun, hands-on way to bring a personal touch to your Agile planning sessions. When you’re done, I’d love to see your creations! Send me a picture or tag me on Twitter @Koprowski_it so I can see how they turned out.

If you’re in a planning session and not everyone has physical cards, no worries! My Agile Poker online tool is a perfect substitute and works great on a smartphone, ensuring everyone can participate.

Footnotes

Bridge size ~57mm x 88mm (2.25” x 3.5”). Sizes are slightly different among manufacturers ↩

How I Fixed Slack Noise: 3-Step System for Developers

Daniel Koprowski — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT

We’ve all been there: deep in debugging, mental model fully loaded, about to solve that tricky issue. Then: DING. A Slack message pulls you out of flow. Even if it’s not urgent, the damage is done. That thread you were holding in your head? Gone. Rebuilding that context takes 15-20 minutes.

One day I checked my Mac’s Screen Time report and saw something shocking: Slack was consuming hours of my day. Not because I was having productive conversations, but because constant notifications kept fragmenting my focus. Each interruption reset my ability to do deep work.

Try this experiment: Tomorrow, count how many times Slack interrupts you during focused work. You might be surprised. The research in The Math of Why You Can’t Focus at Work shows that even a few interruptions per hour can destroy your productive time.

Why Slack Interruptions Kill Your Productivity

Chat apps are supposed to help us communicate, but constant notifications make you feel like I need to check this right now. Each DING breaks your concentration, even if the message isn’t urgent. This consumes your focus, leaving little mental space for deep, complex work.

As a technical lead who still codes, this was unsustainable. I was becoming reactive instead of proactive, responding to notifications instead of focusing on the architectural decisions and deep work that actually moved projects forward.

The real issue isn’t the number of messages. It’s the interruptions. Even one notification during a 25-minute focus block destroys your flow state. It’s not just the 30 seconds to check a message, it’s the 15-20 minutes to rebuild your mental model afterward.

I needed a system that would let me stay responsive without being constantly interrupted.

My 3-Step Slack System for Team Leads

After years of experimentation, I found a system that works. Here’s the complete framework I use to manage Slack noise without missing important messages:

Step 1: Set the Foundation

Establish async expectations with team
Use Slack status to communicate your “Focus Time”

Step 2: Configure for Focus

Silent notifications
Custom sections ordered by priority
VIP list for direct reports + stakeholders
Disable red dot badge (Mac)

Step 3: Build the Workflow

Reminders for non-urgent messages
Scheduled review times (not reactive)
Focus mode during deep work blocks

Let me walk you through each step in detail.

Step 1: Establishing Expectations for Asynchronous Communication on Slack

The foundation of this entire system is simple: Slack is for asynchronous communication, not a hotline to your immediate attention. Once you internalize this, every other tactic becomes easier to implement.

If you’re managing a team, create a culture where focus time is normal and expected. I lead by example: when I block time for deep work, I set my status accordingly and my team sees it’s standard practice. This isn’t about having a formal conversation. It’s about openly demonstrating that protecting focus time is how we work.

Keep in mind that this has to be done openly. Some people are expecting instant replies and might get the wrong idea of why you’re not responding while having “active” status. The most straightforward tool to inform them is to set up a proper status icon and description.

Setting Slack status to focus time

Step 2: Configure Slack for Maximum Focus

With the foundation in place, it’s time to configure Slack itself. Understanding the primary function of each communication tool is key. Once that’s established, it’s crucial to customize the notification settings to minimize distractions.

Here’s how I fine-tune mine for better focus:

Selective Notifications: I set Slack to alert me only for direct messages and mentions. This filters out the noise, allowing me to pay attention to what really matters.
Silent Alerts: I disable sound for all notifications. The visual indicator of notification is there if I take a moment to glance, ensuring I don’t miss anything critical without constant sound interruption.
Slack Notifications on Mobile: I turn these off completely. This ensures my phone doesn’t pull me away from deep work sessions. When I grab my phone, it can lead to accidental doomscrolling pretty quickly. Learn more about blocking distracting content across devices.

Pro tip: Use focus mode of your Operating System!

Additionally to that, using OS focus modes is a life changer. I created a Shortcut for myself on Macbook, to set up 25 minutes deep work session. During the focus session, I don’t see ANY notifications from ANY app. The best thing in those modes is that I will not miss anything, as notification will wait for me once the session is finished. Async communication in a nutshell!

Turn a Focus on or off on Mac
Focus Sessions on Windows
Focus/Do Not Disturb modes are also available on popular Linux distros, depending on desktop environment.

Quick Win: Silent Notifications on Slack

One surprisingly effective change I made was to turn off sound notifications for Slack. I still get the push notifications but without this attention stealing KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK sound screaming into my ears. This minor tweak has made a huge difference.

Silent Slack notifications

How It Works: When I’m coding and deeply focused, I usually don’t even notice the silent notifications popping up. This is exactly what I want: I’m not pulled away from my work. If something urgent comes up, I’ll see the red badge with a number on the app icon during my next scheduled break or when I naturally shift tasks, which is usually within the next hour. This way, I don’t disrupt the flow of communication with my team, but I also don’t let it interrupt my focus.

This approach has been a game-changer. By removing the immediate, reflexive need to check Slack at every ding, I’ve found more peace and productivity in my workdays. It’s a simple step that any developer can implement right away, and it’s helped me balance the need for team communication with my need for uninterrupted coding time.

Mac: Disable the red dot on the Slack icon

Slack can show two things on the icon: one is a number badge with a red background, and the second one is just a dot with a red background.

Slack notification badges on macOS icon - number badge for direct messages or mentions and red dot indicator for channel activity

The dot was annoying for me as it was ALWAYS THERE! As mentioned, I have dozens of very active Slack channels at work, so whenever something happens, this badge grabs my attention, urges me to check what is happening.

I want to know when someone really writes to me, not when anyone writes on any channel.

The solution is to disable the red dot badge but keep the number badge. When someone writes a direct message to me, I will see a number on my Slack icon. Otherwise, the icon is clean.

To do it go to Preferences, Notifications and Below Sound & appearance, uncheck Show a badge • on Slack’s icon to indicate new activity.

This setting is only available on Mac, on Windows and Linux the icon behavior is a bit different

Step 3: Build Your Daily Workflow with Reminders

Even with less aggressive notification settings, navigating the digital workplace means constantly dealing with incoming messages that require a follow up action.

While not all of those actions are urgent, ignoring them isn’t an option either. I’ve discovered a strategy that allows me to maintain focus on my current tasks while ensuring nothing disappears in chaos of the day.

Slack Reminders illustration

My go-to solution is utilizing Slack’s reminder feature. I use it a lot. It enables me to mark important messages for later attention, recognizing their importance without allowing them to interrupt my current flow.

How do I use Slack reminders?

Integrating reminders into my daily routine involves a few key steps:

Set Reminders: Upon receiving an important but non-urgent task, I immediately set a reminder for it in Slack. I don’t even need to set the deadline, I click “Save for later”.
Utilize the “Later” Section: These reminded tasks are then automatically sorted into the “Later” section. This acts as my personalized to-do list, which I can attend to at the right time.
Flexible Review: Instead of scheduling specific times, I review the “Later” section when I take a break from current tasks or in between meetings, during times reserved for “shallow” work.

⚠️ Danger: Make sure to review the “Later” section at the end of the day or at least once a week. Things saved there are often messages that are nice to read or not-important, not-urgent. If you keep ignoring them long enough, you will stop trust in the “Later” section and keep storing unimportant things there.

For me, the best approach is to review it and if something is blocked or not important just move it to other system, either your to do app or to your notes (or just delete that reminder without hesitation).

👉 Keep the “Later” section clean, if something is there it’s a call to action.

Benefits:

Minimizes Task Switching: By using reminders, I stay engaged with my current work, avoiding the mental strain associated with frequent task switching.
Guarantees Task Completion: Reminders give me the confidence that no critical task will be overlooked, freeing me to concentrate fully on the task at hand.
Organizes Tasks Effectively: The “Later” section serves as a centralized hub for tasks awaiting my attention, keeping them organized and ready for when I’m available to tackle them.

With reminders, every significant task is taken care of in due course, allowing me to remain focused and efficient on my current projects.

Grouping and Ordering Channels by Priority

Another critical part of Step 2 is organizing your sidebar.

After experimenting for years with my noisy Slack in a big company with hundreds of channels, I finally found a setup that works for me. I required a bit of understanding of what is important and requires attention, and what can be read once per day or week (or never?).

First, I grouped and ordered channels by topics in custom sections:

team-related channels,
department-related ones,
my office location,
topics and initiatives that I’m involved in, but not related to my current organisational hierarchy
all other channels.

After grouping similar channels, I manually ordered the navigation bar. Groups that require my attention the most are at the very top - like team-related channels, then a wider circle of department and so on.

Thanks to this approach, I can immediately see when a message is waiting in an important channel. When I have some spare time or “shallow work” window, I simply scroll down and check what’s happening in the rest of the company.

For channels that don’t require my attention, but I also don’t want to leave them, as from time to time I have to ask for help or assistance there I simply mute them. Thanks to that, those are never highlighted and don’t scream for my attention. Those also don’t appear on “unread” view (described below).

I learned that custom sections is only available on a paid plan. In a free plan, you are limited to Starred section.

VIP Feature

It’s possible to add the closest coworkers to the “VIP” group. Thanks to this little feature, you get a few perks. Their direct messages are always on top. You can silence notifications for everyone except VIPs with a single click.

Here is a cool article how the Slack team designed the VIP feature: Raising the Volume Quietly by Carla Gonzales.

Alternative Workflow: The Unreads View

If you prefer an email-style workflow, there is a special view in Slack that allows to read messages on all channels in order of arrival. From this view, we can decide if it is important enough to keep it as “unread” or just mark it as “read” and not bother with this message anymore. It behaves a little bit like an email client. It’s possible to display the content of unread messages and decide if you keep each one of them in the inbox or archive.

Note: This workflow might work well in a small company or if your Slack has minimal noise. But if you’re reading this article, you probably already have too much noise for this approach to be sustainable.

⚠️ Danger: This view is addictive. I work with dozens of active channels that are constantly flooded with new content. I tried to keep my “inbox zero” using this view and I spent way too much time keeping my “unreads” clean. So, I ended up disabling this feature completely. Depending on your environment and “noise” that your Slack is generating, this might be useful; that’s why I kept this section.

The Unreads view might not be enabled by default in your Slack. Here are instructions on how you can enable the Unreads view:

Click your profile picture in the sidebar.
(image from Slack.com)
Select Preferences from the menu.
Click Home.
Under Always show in the sidebar, check the box next to the “Unreads” item.

Pro tip: Navigate with arrow keys and mark messages as “read” using the Esc key. More about shortcuts and mobile features of this view can be found in the Slack help article.

What Actually Worked: A Small Win

After implementing this system, I noticed something interesting about the Unreads workflow. Having it active meant I constantly checked it, refreshing to see if there were new unread messages. It didn’t bring any value except noise and anxiety about keeping things clean.

So I disabled the Unreads view completely and relied on my ordered channel sections instead. This was a bigger win than I expected.

I shared this observation with my teammate during a 1-on-1. She mentioned having the same issue: constantly checking Unreads, feeling like she needed to keep it at “zero.” She followed my example and disabled it too. The relief was immediate for both of us.

I share tips like this occasionally when they come up naturally in conversation, but the real lesson here is simple: systems that create artificial urgency aren’t helping you—they’re just adding noise.

The goal isn’t to process every message immediately. It’s to create space for focused work while staying available for what actually matters.

Related Strategies for Deep Work

Slack is just one piece of managing focus as a technical leader. Check out these related systems:

Focus Calendar - A one-task-per-day printable planner that pairs well with your new distraction-free Slack setup
How to block distracting content across devices - Complement Slack settings with browser-level blocking
Small changes that made our daily stand-ups more useful - Reduce meeting overhead to create more focus time

Want more focus strategies? Join the PlanTheFlow newsletter for weekly systems that help engineering leaders reclaim their time.

Stay strong, keep focused! 💪

3 Content Blocking Tactics I Tested to Stop Mindless Scrolling

Daniel Koprowski — Sat, 12 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMT

As a developer, I noticed a pattern: I’d open Tech Twitter (or Reddit) “just to check one thing” during a brief mental break, and 30 minutes later I’d be deep in comment threads. The problem wasn’t willpower. These sites are engineered to keep you engaged. Infinite scroll, algorithmic recommendations, notification badges. They’re designed by teams of engineers to maximize time-on-site.

So I treated it like a production incident: I identified the attack vectors and built defenses.

I tested three different content-blocking strategies over several months. One failed. One worked for specific situations. And one actually changed how I work.

Want a complete system? Grab my free 7-Step Digital Detox Checklist.

The Three Tactics I Tested

Tactic	Result After 1 Month	Recommendation
Time limits (15 min/day)	Created more craving	Skip this
Grayscale mode	Works for videos, not text	Try for YouTube addiction
Complete blocking + buffer	a few hours/week gained	Best option

Here’s what happened with each:

“15 minutes per day to saturate with content” tactic

This seemed like a reasonable compromise at first. Give myself 15 minutes per day to check Reddit or news sites, then block access completely.

The theory was sound: I get my “fix” without losing too much time.

What actually happened:

The time limit made things worse. When the timer cut me off in the middle of an interesting discussion thread, my brain went into overdrive. I spent the next hour wondering how the conversation ended. I found myself checking other sites trying to find similar content.

The psychological effect was like telling a kid they can only have one cookie. Suddenly, that cookie becomes the most important thing in the world.

Why this fails:

Your brain treats limited access as scarcity. Scarcity triggers obsession. Instead of reducing the mental load, time limits increase it. You spend cognitive resources thinking about what you’re missing instead of focusing on your work.

The verdict: Skip this approach entirely. It creates artificial desire where none existed before.

One exception: This might work if you need to check news sites for work-related reasons (staying updated on tech news, for example). But even then, scheduled blocks work better than hard daily limits.

Turn the entire screen into grayscale

The logic behind this tactic is simple: colorful interfaces are designed to grab attention. Remove the colors, remove the appeal.

I tried two variations: grayscale only on specific blocked websites, and turning my entire phone display to grayscale.

How to enable grayscale:

On most phones, you can find this in the developer options or accessibility settings. WIRED has a good step-by-step guide for both iOS and Android.

What worked:

Grayscale reduced my YouTube and Instagram usage significantly. Without the colorful thumbnails and vibrant photos, these apps lost their immediate appeal. Opening Instagram in grayscale feels like looking at an old newspaper. The dopamine hit just isn’t there.

App icons in grayscale look dull. I found myself hesitating before tapping them.

What didn’t work:

Text-based content remained just as engaging. Reddit threads, Twitter discussions, Hacker News posts. None of these rely on color to keep you hooked. They hook you with ideas, arguments, and stories. Grayscale does nothing to stop that.

I could read technical articles, documentation, and comment sections for hours without noticing the lack of color.

The verdict:

This works if your primary time sink is visual content (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram). If you’re addicted to reading discussions, debates, or news articles, grayscale won’t help much.

Bonus insight: Friends who see your grayscale phone often ask about it. This creates social accountability, which can reinforce your commitment to reducing screen time.

Complete Blocking with Small Buffer

This is the winner. After trying the other two approaches, I settled on complete blocking with one smart addition: a small time buffer for legitimate links.

Here’s how it works.

Desktop configuration:

Complete block on news sites and Reddit during work hours (9am to 6pm)
10-minute delay buffer for links from colleagues or documentation
After 10 minutes of reading, LeechBlock shows a reminder to get back to work

Why the buffer? Sometimes a colleague shares a Reddit thread about a technical problem we’re facing. The 10-minute window lets me read it without getting sucked into the sidebar recommendations.

Mobile configuration:

Complete block, no exceptions
No delay buffer, no workarounds

The phone is where I’m most vulnerable. Small screen, always in my pocket, perfect for “just checking” during any moment of boredom. So I treat it differently than desktop.

If something is truly important, I can check it on desktop with the 10-minute buffer. This extra friction is the point.

Optional Enhancement: Redirect Instead of Block Page

Instead of seeing a boring “this site is blocked” message, you can redirect to something valuable. When I try to access a blocked site, I see my newsletter inbox or RSS reader.

Why this works:

Your brain doesn’t like void. A block page feels like punishment. But a redirect to human-curated content (Substack newsletters, RSS feeds, saved articles) satisfies the “check something” impulse without the infinite scroll trap.

The difference:

Human-curated sources are finite. I can read 3 newsletters and be done. There’s an end. No algorithms pushing “recommended for you” content. No engagement optimization designed to keep me clicking.

Examples of good redirect targets:

Your email inbox (if you only subscribe to quality newsletters)
RSS reader with hand-picked engineering blogs
Pocket/Raindrop queue of intentionally saved articles
Your “Read Later” bookmarks folder

Setup: Use LeechBlock (described in my content blocking guide). Configure it to redirect to your email client or RSS reader instead of showing a block page.

Important: This only works if you curate aggressively. Apply the same rigor you use in code review. If a newsletter doesn’t deliver value for 2-3 consecutive issues, unsubscribe immediately. I review my subscriptions monthly and cut about 30%.

The Results

The adaptation period:

First week was rough. I caught myself typing blocked URLs out of pure habit. Muscle memory is strong.

Week two got easier. The automatic reach for my phone decreased.

After 2 to 3 weeks, the cravings disappeared. My brain stopped expecting the dopamine hit. I redirected that “check something” impulse to my curated newsletter and RSS feed instead.

Measured impact:

I tracked my time before and after this system. The result: I gained back a few hours per week of focused work time. That’s basically a full workday every week that was being stolen by algorithm-driven feeds.

But the bigger win isn’t just time. It’s cognitive load. Not fighting the urge to check Twitter 20 times a day frees up mental energy for actual problem-solving.

The Key Insight

Complete blocking works because it removes the “maybe I can access it” uncertainty. Your brain adapts faster when there’s no negotiation, no loopholes, no exceptions.

Time limits create artificial scarcity, which increases desire. Grayscale only works for visual media. But complete blocking with a small buffer for legitimate needs gives you the best of both worlds: protection from habitual scrolling while maintaining access to work-related content.

The redirect enhancement turns blocking from punishment into redirection. Instead of fighting urges, you channel them toward better habits.

Related Focus Systems

Content blocking is one piece of protecting deep work. Also check:

Focus Calendar - A free printable one-task-per-day planner that keeps your daily priorities clear
How to manage Slack notifications to stop chat from fragmenting your day
More doomscrolling strategies for phone-specific tactics

Want more focus strategies? Subscribe to PlanTheFlow for weekly systems that help engineering leaders reclaim their time.

How to block distracting content across devices

Daniel Koprowski — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMT

After implementing these blocking strategies, I reclaimed 6+ hours per week that I used to lose to mindless browsing during “waiting moments”: compiling code, waiting for AI responses, during context switches between tasks, or simply when my cognitive load is overwhelmed. The key was finding the right balance between restriction and flexibility.

As a technical lead who still codes, has a side project and wants to be present for the family, I can’t afford those losses. In my previous post about reducing mindless scrolling, I covered why blocking distracting content matters. Here’s how to block “too attractive” content across all your devices.

The New Context Switching Trap: AI Assistant Waiting Time

Nowdays, there’s a new distraction pattern: while waiting for GitHub Copilot to generate code, Claude to finish a response, or ChatGPT to complete a suggestion, your brain seeks instant gratification. That 5-second wait becomes a “quick check” of HackerNews or Twitter.

Those “quick checks” compound, bring distractions and drain energy from the brain. Content blocking isn’t about discipline; it’s about removing the option during these micro-waiting moments.

What Is Content Blocking and Why It Matters

Blocking means that when you try to enter your favourite time-wasting website you will see a limited amount of information or nothing at all.

You might also be redirected to another website if you want:

✅ Inspiring quotes or motivational pages
✅ Call to action websites like “drink water” or “do 10 push-ups now”
✅ Your project stats dashboard to remind you of your goals
✅ Your email newsletter inbox to feed yourself with valuable content

💡 Pro tip: I redirect blocked sites to a custom page that reminds me to drink water or take a walk. This way, every time I try to procrastinate, I’m reminded to take care of myself instead. It’s surprisingly effective for breaking the doomscrolling cycle!

How to Block Distracting Websites on Desktop Browsers

Blocking on laptops/computers is the easiest thing. Just install the proper extension into your browser and setup correctly. I use LeechBlock NG extension. It is open-source and IMO best in class extension for all major browsers.

Why best in class? Because the number of configurations in that extension is more than expected. Multiple corner cases are covered like filters: “turn website blurry/black-white/dimmed instead of blocking” etc.

Step-by-Step: Configure LeechBlock for Maximum Focus

In the screenshot below I marked important sections to pay attention to.

Domain names are all the websites that should be restricted,
Time periods are when you want to block – usually I just select the “All day” button to always block,
“10 minutes every 6 hours” option means that I give myself some time to enter those forbidden websites – e.g. when someone sends me a link and I desperately want to see it I have some buffer,
Important setting: “Select when to block these sites ‘within time periods AND after the time limit’”. Otherwise, it would apply OR and in the case where the “All day” is selected my time buffer wouldn’t work.

LeechBlock configuration showing domain blocking settings with time periods and access limits highlighted. The interface displays fields for blocked domains, an "All day" time selection, and a "10 minutes every 6 hours" time limit option.

🚨 Danger: Don’t forget to password-protect your LeechBlock settings (available in the extension options). Otherwise, you’ll be tempted to disable blocking during weak moments. Ask someone you trust to set the password for you.

Common pitfall: Blocking too aggressively leads to frustration and uninstalling everything. Start with 2-3 sites that waste most of your time, then expand gradually. The time buffer strategy (10 minutes every few hours) helps maintain this balance.

How to Block Distracting Content on Mobile Devices

Blocking on a desktop is easy. When it comes to mobile browsers it is much harder. There are lots of apps that can do it but for safety reasons, I don’t want to give any app permission to all network traffic on my mobile device. I was looking for a less intrusive solution.

Block Websites on Android Using Firefox Extensions

On Firefox for Android, there is a possibility to install extensions. This is great because I just installed LeechBlock and configured it the same way as on the desktop.

How to Block Websites on iPhone and iPad with Screen Time

Unfortunately, iOS browsers don’t support content-blocking extensions like LeechBlock. Here I used a built-in tool for content management.

Launch Settings from the home screen
Choose Screen Time
Tap Content & Privacy Restrictions
Toggle Content & Privacy Restrictions on
Select App Store, Media, Web & Games
Tap Web Content
Choose Limit Adult Websites (despite the name, this setting lets you add any websites you want to block, not just adult content)
Now inside Always Block you can specify websites that should always be blocked

The same mechanism is present on devices running macOS like Macbooks, Macs and also on iPadOS. On macOS, I recommend installing a browser extension though.

Here we don’t have any options regarding time limits. Once you put the website on that list it is always blocked. The good part of that is that it is not only blocked in the browser but also in in-app popup windows, which provides system-wide protection.

How to Measure If Content Blocking Actually Works

The only way to know if your blocking strategy is effective is to track it. Here’s what I monitor:

Weekly Screen Time Review: Check your device’s built-in Screen Time (iOS) or Digital Wellbeing (Android) reports every Sunday. Look for downward trends in social media and browser usage. I went to under 2 hours daily within a month (that’s still a lot, but I’m working on it).

LeechBlock Statistics: The extension tracks how many times you’ve tried to access blocked sites. Open LeechBlock settings and check the statistics page. High numbers mean you’re building new habits - your brain is being retrained.

Productivity Metrics: Track outcomes: tasks completed, deep work sessions, or projects finished. If blocking isn’t translating to more meaningful work, adjust your blocked sites list or time windows.

Don’t expect perfect results immediately. Give each configuration 1-2 weeks before making changes. The goal is progress, not perfection.

Take Action Now

Start with one device and 2-3 websites that waste most of your time. Test the setup for a week, then expand to other devices and sites. Remember: the goal isn’t perfect blocking, it’s creating enough friction to break automatic habits.

For more strategies on managing digital distractions, check out:

Focus Calendar - A one-task-per-day printable planner to replace mindless browsing with intentional daily focus
My three content-blocking tactics with different blocking approaches
Stop Doomscrolling Checklist for a complete digital detox guide

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Stay strong, keep focused! 💪

How to Stop Doomscrolling Without Extra Software

Daniel Koprowski — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Every week I lose multiple hours scrolling through memes, news, and comment sections. It distracts me from the important stuff, makes my eyes sore, and destroys my ability to focus.

What’s more, the dopamine reward loop mechanism affects my mood. Without those little bursts of excitement, I feel down. This issue hits many developers hard. After all, we spend most of our time in front of a screen.

So, how can we limit our scrolling time and reclaim control?

The Science Behind Mindless Scrolling

Excessive screen time can do more than just affect our mood¹. It can also lead to real changes in our brain².

Studies reveal that as digital engagement intensifies, issues like decreased focus and attention deficits become more pronounced. In addition, spending long hours in front of screens has been linked to a reduction in gray matter volume, which is essential for everyday brain functions.

Moreover, using screens late into the night can disrupt our sleep by interfering with melatonin production, further impacting the ability to concentrate and think clearly the next day.

The Vicious Cycle of Mindless Scrolling Effects

How to Measure Your Screen Time

Do you think you lose less time on scrolling? Check your phone right now:

On iPhone, navigate to Screen Time in settings to review your usage from the past week.
On Android, look for Digital Wellbeing (the exact name might vary depending on your device).

Tracking your screen time can be a real eye-opener and is a critical first step toward digital detox.

How to Stop Scrolling on Your Phone

I’ve managed to almost eliminate endless scrolling on my desktop by using browser extensions to block distracting pages and logging out of services. However, cutting down on smartphone scrolling is tougher. Our phones are always within reach, easy to unlock, and constantly buzzing with notifications.

Originally from my newsletter. Subscribe for more.

I prepared a 7-Step Digital Detox Checklist. Download and use it for free.

Avoid Installing Addictive Apps

Here’s a radical idea — don’t panic, I’ve got workarounds!

Uninstall Unnecessary Apps

Apps are designed to be engaging, often bombarding you with notifications. By uninstalling them, you remove those tempting icons from your home screen, reducing the urge to check them.

But I want to see content from this app… I can’t just uninstall it!

That is a fair point. Most “apps” are just gateways to websites. If you really need to check Facebook, 9GAG, Insta or any other service, try accessing it via your mobile browser.

Usin mobile browser requires an extra step. It requires effort. Mobile websites are usually designed worse than apps. GOOD – those drawbacks are beneficial for us. The brain is a lazy being. Thanks to that I have fewer opportunities to enter endless content but I keep the ability to use those services.

Choose Effort to Reduce Distractions

Disable Push Notifications

For apps you can’t uninstall, simply disable notifications.

On iOS, notifications are disabled by default until you opt in, whereas on Android they’re typically enabled automatically.

This helps a lot and it seems like many of those URGENT things are not so urgent after all. Without a smartphone constantly screaming about some new post that was added here and there I maintaining focus is easier.

Turning off notifications reduces distractions proving that not every alert is truly urgent.

Additional Strategies for Digital Detox

Take Mindful Breaks: Instead of automatically grabbing your phone during a break, try moving for a glass of water, taking a walk, or doing some light stretching.
Use a Physical Planner: Write down your tasks or ideas in a paper notebook instead of using your phone or computer all the time. Get my free Focus Calendar PDF.
Use Grayscale Mode: Switching your phone’s display to grayscale makes apps and notifications less visually appealing.
Set Screen Time Limits: Leverage your phone’s built-in features to set daily limits on app usage. This extra control layer helps maintain a healthier balance.
Set a Bedtime Routine: Keep your phone away before sleep to improve your rest and avoid late-night scrolling.
Move Your Phone Out of the Bedroom: Leave your phone in another room and use a physical alarm clock to wake up. This helps you avoid both late-night and early-morning scrolling.

Tips for Reducing Phone Distractions

For more specific guide check out my other blogpost: Three content-blocking tactics to avoid careless scrolling .

Wrapping Up

These are simple (doesn’t mean it’s easy) yet effective suggestions to reduce mindless scrolling without the need for extra software.

Phone scrolling is just one piece of managing focus. Check out how to manage Slack noise as a developer and optimize your daily standups.