This is The Guardian.
And now I spend an average of four hours a day faffing about online and can only get through a novel when I'm on holiday.
And it's not just me.
I went through a moment at which I could feel my attention leaching out of my skin.
I could feel that the way I was able to engage with the text had corroded so badly over the last decade that I decided that I would have to take sort of fairly dramatic measures.
This is Catherine Rundle.
She's an award-winning children's author and an English literature scholar at Oxford University.
And even she found herself struggling to get through a book.
So she sought help.
So I now have an enormous amount of tools, physical tools,
to try to keep my brain on the path which it used to find easy to walk.
Meet Catherine's Brick.
I have it nearby.
Would you like me to grab it for you?
Okay.
This is not a paid advert for the brick, which is a small plastic.
It's an actual physical thing.
You tap it to your phone, and when you tap it to your phone,
you can block an enormous number of things on your phone.
So I have blocked on my phone everything except WhatsApp, Maps, Music.