Why do we fail at ‘Un-Distracting’ ourselves and what is the solution
Self-help has remained the best-selling genre in recent years.
7 million copies of the famous Atomic Habits book were sold in total. Time management courses and apps to control your screentime (disguised as well-being tools, really!) are at all times high. Contents on how to get control of your time, and how to avoid distractions are liked by people across the world.
What this means is, that people are trying to get a hold of their time, to undistract themselves and focus on things that matter, still! it is not working for most of them.
The short answer is that distractions were never around us, they were always within us.
We create distractions and then we project them into something easily available and consumable, something that is an easy source of instant gratification and immediately releases a load of dopamine with minimum effort.
As a result, we never get the actual work done and we are always clouded in guilt, shame and feeling dissatisfied most of the time.
Personal story — I tried quitting social media several times, I read in a couple of books and articles that take the hard decision — remove the apps, and you are sorted, you are now focused — go and change the world. Total failure!
When you do these amateurish things, your mind beats you every time. I did uninstall the apps but then I started browsing the same content via my phone browsers to feed my distractions. Distractions immediately shift their source, just like that.
After a lot of shame and self-loathing, I found out that I was not alone, my friends and people in my family have tried the same and failed.
The solution I have found is — don’t start by fighting distractions, start by doing things that matter to you.
See, un-distracting is never the intention, we are fighting distractions because we feel that they are consuming our time which we would have otherwise used for activities that matter to us, but that was never the priority.
So, reverse the strategy — start doing those activities that contribute to your goal first and we’ll see what we have to do with those distractions later on.
I am urging you to rearrange, not eliminate.
When you start doing things, you start to feel happy, you feel that you were able to control your time and do something meaningful, and you like the ‘good dopamine’ even though paltry that you get from your efforts. After this, even if you spend some time on your distractions, you will not feel too bad about it.
Slowly, even with the distractions around you, you will feel more powerful and slowly they will start retreating from you, become weak and will no longer have an impact on you.
There are several ways to start doing things — two quick tips are to follow the do something principle and build a habit.
Let me know about your thoughts on this one and how you are beating your distractions and keeping yourself focussed in the comments below.
