Margit Holst

She argues that willpower-based focus advice asks people to win the same fight repeatedly, which is exhausting and has a low long-run success rate, whereas environment design only has to be done once and then keeps working passively. A phone in another room can't be checked without a deliberate multi-step action; a phone on the desk can be checked with a glance, and the glance is where focus actually breaks.

Her signature practice is doing first-pass thinking on paper — an analog notebook for outlining and initial drafts — before ever opening a laptop for a task, because paper has no notifications, no tabs, and no path to a distracting site. The laptop is opened only once the thinking is far enough along that transcription, not exploration, is the remaining work.

She walks through a physical room audit: removing the router from visual line of sight, using a separate low-distraction device or account for deep work if possible, and keeping the deep-work space visually distinct from where shallow work happens, so the room itself becomes a cue. A person sitting in the same chair for both deep and shallow work, in her account, never fully escapes the shallow-work mindset in that seat.

Because environments decay — a stray phone left on the desk, a new tab habit — she recommends a short weekly environment audit rather than assuming a one-time setup lasts forever. The audit takes minutes and catches drift before it becomes the new normal.