Ever stop to think, and forget to start again? That’s how a lot of people live.
I do this sometimes with books I want to read. Months later the book is still on the nightstand, bookmarked on page seven.
We live in the Age of Distraction. There’s so much to watch on television and on the internet. There are so many social media friends making posts and sending texts. There’s so much freedom to do this and that and the other. We live in a world filled with a thousand times the options as our ancestors.
But with the benefits come the drawbacks. Nicholas Carr, author of the book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, describes the negative impact of technology:
“Over the last few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going – as far as I can tell – but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I feel it most strongly when I’m reading. I used to find it easy to immerse myself in a book or a lengthy article. My mind would get caught up in the twists and turns of the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration starts to drift after a page or two. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do.”1
In the Age of Distraction, we need our powers of focus that much more. Here are some ways to recover some power.
Focus Factor 1: Schedule Time Blocks
As hard as it may seem to do this, you can block out time where you shut off all outside interruptions. You turn off the phone, close the office door, put out a “Do Not Disturb” sign, and get away from the internet. I’ve been doing this for ten years now, and it is the sole reason I have so many books stacked up, ready to publish. I block out 8am to 10am every day that I’m not traveling. I don’t set breakfast appointments. I don’t play golf in the morning. I don’t take any calls. I don’t care how urgent it seems, I make it wait until 10am. By doing this one thing, I’ve accumulated over six thousand hours of writing time in the past ten years. It has done wonders for my life.
Focus Factor 2: Battle the Monkey Mind
Even when the doors are closed and the phone is off, my mind can scamper from one thing to the next like a monkey swinging through the canopy. I talk to myself to control the out-of-control trains of thought. “Okay, here’s what I’m working to focus on. I wonder how I can better understand and solve this particular problem?” I say things out loud, because I find that words have power to control the media screen of my mind. Words give me power to focus.
Focus Factor 3: Thin the Schedule
Most people overpack their schedules. They think busyness is a cardinal virtue. They usually don’t distinguish between worthless urgencies and truly important things, and lump everything together. And they work with people who are just as irresponsible with their task lists, so the sense of trivial urgency spreads throughout the workplace.
Most people believe they can accomplish more in one day than they really can, like a kids in buffet lines loading up on Salisbury steak. So they fail to do the things that matter most because their schedule is packed with spam.
The cure is to expect less in the short-term and more in the long-term.
In an Age of Distraction, people with focus stand out. There’s tremendous power in recovering your focus and investing long-term in what matters most.
1Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2010), p. 5.
