How many apps did you download this year and never actually learn?
Brooks has a name for where those go. The download graveyard. You grab something because a list looked smart, you open it twice, and then it sits there while you go back to whatever you already use. When a new tech stack or a long productivity list starts to feel like too much, Brooks doesn’t download the pile. He picks exactly one tool. He uses it until it becomes habitual and he can tell it’s helping. Only then does he move to the next one.
That rule is the point. Everything below is how he protects the attention it takes to follow it.
Give your brain an hour off
Brooks uses a structured gym program, like Orange Theory, on purpose. The structure removes the cognitive load of planning a workout. He shows up. He executes. He leaves.
For that hour, he doesn’t have to think. Just execute. That’s an hour of life spent doing the thing instead of designing the thing. Physical health is the obvious win. The other win is mental recovery, and the kind of consistency you only get when the session is already decided before you walk in.
Does this sound familiar? You skip training because you can’t decide what to do when you get there. Or the planning becomes the workout.
Outsource decision-making in a low-stakes area this week. Fitness is the clean example. Meals work too. Get those choices off your plate so the high-stakes work still has a brain left to use.
Reset with something mindless
Brooks plays craps on his phone before high-focus work like recording a live podcast.
Craps. A simple, low-stakes game. He’s not warming up with a plan, and he’s not trying to meditate his way into concentration. He wants a complete reset. He says a brief stretch of mindless, low-cognitive-load activity clears his head better than trying to force focus.
When was the last time a break actually emptied your head? Scrolling social media still feeds you more to process. Another planning pass still asks you to choose. Brooks takes a micro-break that asks almost nothing, then he starts the hard thing.
If you need your head empty before a recording or a deep-work block, use a low-cognitive activity. A simple game. Something with no feed. Then begin.
Keep one focus where you’ll actually see it
How many tabs do you open before you remember what you were supposed to be doing?
Brooks uses the Momentum browser extension to put a single main focus for the day on every new tab. You go to wander, and the page puts the day’s job back in front of you. A visual anchor. Hard to ignore.
Set a daily intention in a browser extension or a desktop widget. Put it in the path of the distraction.
He plans on a map. Brooks uses mind mapping for 99% of his planning and thinking, including book notes and scenario analysis. He argues the non-linear structure is better for complex ideation and for connecting ideas that don’t sit in a straight line.
If you feel stuck in linear notes, try a mind-mapping tool like MindNode. Use the map to think. Use a list later, once you already know what the work is.
Stop doing the copy-paste job by hand
Brooks uses a browser extension that copies all open tabs as a Markdown list. He pastes that list directly into his CMS for show notes. Every title. Every URL. In one move. That kills the manual labor of copying links one at a time, which is the kind of busywork that makes content take longer than it should.
If you research with a pile of tabs, get a Copy as Markdown extension and use it. Boring, tactical, and useful for anyone who manages a lot of links. Writers. Marketers. Anyone building a resource list.
Run the same test on the rest of your tools. Brooks uses the same core apps across Mac, Windows, and iOS: 1Password, TextExpander, OmniFocus, and Apple Notes. Capture has to work. Tasks have to move. Grabbing something on a Windows laptop and keeping going on an iPhone matters more to him than a feature that only lives on one platform.
Audit your stack for single-platform traps. If you switch devices during the day, or you’ve got mixed machines at home, a tool that dies when you change OS is a break in the workflow.
Assume a disaster you haven’t met yet
Hardware can survive a disaster and the files can still be gone. A flood, fire, or theft does not wait for a convenient time.
He still treats backup redundancy as non-negotiable. Multiple layers. A local SSD. A cloud service. An offsite copy. You never know what disaster will strike, and the peace of mind from the offsite backup is the real value.
When did you last check that the offsite copy actually exists? Verify yours today. Local and offsite. Both. A local-only backup can disappear in the same event as the original.
Do this today
You can take every tactic in this post and still stall if you try to install them as a bundle.
Brooks’s One Thing rule exists because that bundle is how you end up with a download graveyard. Don’t download everything. Pick exactly one tool. Use it until it’s habitual and useful. Then pick the next one.
Open your phone. Find one tool you downloaded and never mastered. That’s your job for now. Use it until it sticks.
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