How to avoid doomscrolling at your workplace

Doomscrolling isn’t just a personal vice. It’s often the byproduct of a system that’s quietly misfiring. When ownership is vague, time is unstructured, and energy cues are ignored, attention becomes collateral damage. What looks like a lapse in discipline is often a signal—your work environment might be optimized for drift, not direction.

Distraction rarely kicks down the door. It slips in quietly: a quick Slack reply here, a scroll through LinkedIn there. What begins as a harmless mental breather morphs into a full-fledged context switch—especially when no one's marked the edge between task and transition. Hybrid routines only blur the boundaries further. And when founders model constant online presence or late-night check-ins, the culture doesn’t just follow—it adapts.

The impact isn’t just on your calendar—it’s in your momentum. Progress stalls. Decision-making gets delayed. Tasks that should take an hour stretch across the afternoon. Worse, it chips away at self-trust. People stop acting with confidence and start waiting—hoping for more clarity that rarely comes. Over time, this isn’t just distraction. It’s systemic drag.

Clarisse doesn’t recommend focus hacks. She calls for structural repair.

• Trigger Mapping
  Begin with a diagnostic. For three days, jot down exactly when and why you drift. Is it post-meeting? Mid-task? Late afternoon? The patterns often reveal more than any productivity tool can.
• Mode Switching Cues
  Anchor your attention shifts with visible signals. Calendar changes, soundscapes, desk setups—anything that marks a shift from “reactive” to “intentional.” These cues aren’t cosmetic. They’re behavioral scaffolding.
• Team Rhythm Reset
  Make deep work the default, not the exception. Silence Slack channels by design. Coordinate heads-down hours across the team. Treat attention like you treat budget—finite and collective.

If you disappeared for two hours, would your team know what you were working on—or notice you were gone?
If that question lands awkwardly, it’s not about focus. It’s about visibility. And clarity.

Early-stage teams often confuse hustle with structure. Rapid-fire messages get mistaken for alignment. Being “always on” gets mistaken for being accountable. But as the team grows, so do the cracks. What worked in a room of five stops working in a Slack org of fifteen. Doomscrolling flourishes in teams where urgency is unrelenting—but priorities are a moving target. Without deliberate systems, distraction doesn’t just creep in. It takes over.