In the past I’ve prided myself on replying instantly to every request, but as social media has become more prevalent I find that each time I stop to reply to something it becomes more of a “if-you-give-a-mouse-a-cookie” type situation. I’ll open my phone to check the weather forecast and notice that I have a text. In responding to the text I’ll check the maps app and doing so will remind me of the last place I searched, which was a nearby restaurant for dinner. After I respond to the text I open up a restaurant’s dinner menu, which redirects me to its Facebook page, and then I see a little notification in the upper right corner, and you know the rest… (I never did check the weather!)
Does this sounds familiar to you? I think a lot of people get caught up in this process of getting distracted and giving every distraction high priority. Our devices make it so easy to access anything we desire and if we’re not careful we could spend YEARS wandering around the internet.
I read two articles recently that reminded me why it’s important not to be so easily lured from one thing to the next: “Smarter Not Harder” and “Why Attention is the Currency of Achievement“. Both had a very similar theme: devoting undivided attention to a few important activities creates a much more valuable result.
In “Smarter Not Harder”, the author discusses how some of the most successful business leaders utilize a block system–basically dividing each day into 96 15-minute blocks and choosing wisely what goes into them.
“Eliminating things that you care about is hard. You have to make tradeoffs. If you can’t make those tradeoffs, you’re not going to get far. The cost of not being focused is high.” (fs.blog)
“Why Attention is the Currency of Achievement” takes it one step further: assigning value to the quality of work you can produce with undivided attention. Srinivas Rao outlines a simple example: if deep work gets $1000/hr and shallow work gets $1/hr, then doing 2 hours of deep work will net you $2000 whereas doing 8 hours of shallow work will give you only $8. I think I’d rather work 2 hours, thank you very much.
The point is that in order to focus deeply we need to remove the extra stuff that doesn’t matter. Activities that don’t contribute to our goals–aside from basic things that just need to be done–must be cut.
Because I spend a lot of time tending my garden the analogy of productive plants comes to mind. If a plant is surrounded by weeds, the weeds will siphon vital nutrients away from it. The weeds may become entangled with the plant or block precious sunlight. When we make sure to remove the weeds we enable the plant to be more productive. Pruning and pinching-out work the same way: cutting back parts of the plant in order to encourage energy to be directed to producing what we desire.
I suppose this is why some people abstain from social media altogether. Allowing a few weeds here and there isn’t a big deal, but if we get lazy the weeds take over. It may be easier to simply avoid it entirely.
I’m not ready to completely write it off, but I do find that being mindful about the task at hand, and not allowing myself to be distracted, makes me feel much more alive. Devoting our whole hearts to an activity that we have deemed important is the best thing we can do–for ourselves, our work, and our loved ones.