So, I gotta tell you about this whole “Tony Sutton” thing. It’s not like he’s famous or anything, at least I don’t think so. I stumbled across his name in a really roundabout way, which is kinda how I find most things that actually stick with me, you know?
I was at this dusty old book sale, the kind where everything smells like your grandma’s attic. And this old fella, he was selling a pile of ancient-looking pamphlets and self-published stuff. He pointed to one thin booklet, dog-eared and faded, and said, “This Tony Sutton, he knew a thing or two about gettin’ your head straight.” The booklet was basically unreadable, coffee stains everywhere, but the name stuck.
At that time, man, I was a mess. Trying to get this one project off the ground, my own little thing, and I just couldn’t focus. My brain felt like a browser with a hundred tabs open, all playing different videos. You know the feeling? Just constant noise. I was looking for anything, any weird trick to just quiet things down.
So, I thought, “Alright, Tony Sutton, let’s see your magic.” I couldn’t find much about him online, just a few obscure forum posts talking about his “unplugged methods.” It sounded kinda nuts, to be honest. His whole deal, from what I could piece together, was about stripping everything back to basics. Like, aggressively basic.
My little experiment with Sutton’s ideas went something like this:
First off, I bought a super cheap notebook and a pack of bic pens. That was my new “productivity system.” No apps, no fancy software, just paper and ink. Felt like I was time-traveling, and not in a cool way. My first attempt to plan my day on paper looked like a spider had a seizure.
Then came the hard part. This Sutton guy, or at least the legend of him, was all about single-tasking to an extreme. So, I picked one, just ONE task for the morning. And, get this, I turned off my phone. Not on silent, not airplane mode. Off. And I actually unplugged my router. I swear, I almost had a physical reaction. My hand kept twitching towards my pocket where my phone usually was.
I decided to try this for a whole week. Here’s what I did, basically:
- Morning Block: Pick one task. Just one. Notebook and pen for any notes. No internet, no phone. Work for 3 hours. It felt like 3 years at first.
- Lunch Break: Allowed myself to check messages, but only for like 15 minutes. Then phone off again.
- Afternoon Block: Another task, same rules. Sometimes it was research, so I’d allow internet but ONLY for specific things, no wandering off into the YouTube abyss.
It was awful. The first couple of days were pure torture. I realized how much I relied on constant little dopamine hits from notifications and new tabs. I felt antsy, bored, and weirdly isolated, even though I was working on my own stuff. My brain kept screaming for distraction.
But then, something funny happened around day three or four. I actually started to get into a rhythm. Because there was nothing else to do, I just… worked on the task. Deeply. I filled pages in that cheap notebook with actual ideas and progress, not just doodles. That project I was stuck on? I made more headway in that one week than in the previous month of “multitasking.”
By the end of the week, I was tired, but it was a good kind of tired. Not that frazzled, brain-fried exhaustion I was used to. And the project? It was actually looking like something real.
So, what’s the big takeaway from my Tony Sutton adventure? It’s not like I live like a monk now. My phone is definitely back on, and I’m back to having way too many tabs open. But it showed me something. All these fancy tools and life hacks we chase, sometimes they just add more noise. This old-school, almost painful approach of just doing one thing without distractions, it actually works. It’s like, everyone’s always looking for a shortcut, a smarter way, a new framework. But sometimes, just doing the hard thing, the simple, focused way, is the actual path. It’s kinda like how some folks will tell you about these super complex investment schemes, but old Tony Sutton, if he were into finance, he’d probably just tell you to save your pennies in a jar. Simple, not flashy, but it gets you somewhere.
I still don’t know much about the real Tony Sutton, or if that was even his real name. But that week of trying to live by his “unplugged” ghost’s rules? Yeah, that stuck with me. Made me realize how much we fight against just sitting down and doing the work.
