Are we too busy? Or are we too distracted?
I was up again at 7 am logging into my writing sprint. I had my coffee at hand. My Bose headphones were on. I was ready to focus!
After our quick group check-in, off I went to delve into my writing work for the day.
Or did I? For a while, I stayed focused. But at some point, I wasn’t sure what to write, and my mind wondered if anything from work needed my attention. I pulled myself back to the page. But my mind went off track again. And then, I was in my email. Ugh! So frustrating!
This is what Nir Eyal, author of Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life and my latest podcast guest, would describe as an internal trigger and the discomfort that I need to learn to sit with so I can get traction on my work and make use of my time in the way I intend.
Nir shares how research shows that 90% of distraction is caused by internal triggers, not external ones like we’d think. “An internal trigger is an uncomfortable emotional state that we seek to escape, boredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, stress, anxiety. These are these uncomfortable sensations that lead to the overwhelming majority of distraction because distraction is nothing more than a desire to escape an uncomfortable feeling.”
Part of the Sustainable Ambition pillar of Right Effort is about how we can best use our energy so that we can go after our ambitions sustainably. There is benefit in learning how to work smarter, not harder.
That’s why the topic of focus is important. Most of us know what it’s like to struggle to stay focused and get work done. At the same time, many of us are plagued by feeling too busy. It’s hard to find time to do all we want or need to do.
Speaking with Nir made me wonder—is our busyness problem partly a distraction problem? Is part of the problem that we aren’t able to be efficient with our time, because we’re constantly distracted and not accomplishing what we intend both during work and during times that should fill us back up, like spending time with family and friends?
What’s important to note is that Nir says the opposite of distraction is traction. “Traction by definition is any action that pulls you towards what you said you were going to do, things that you do with intent, things that move you closer to your values, and help you become the kind of person you want to become. Those are acts of traction. The opposite of traction—distraction—is any action that pulls you away from what you plan to do, further away from your goals, further away from your values, further away from becoming the kind of person you want to become.”
What’s key is to be intentional with how we use our time. Being clear on: What am I going to do? And when am I going to do it? And learning to sit with the discomfort that comes up (those internal triggers) so we can be present to what we intend to do in each moment.
As Nir admits, this is a practice. It’s not easy. Mastering our internal triggers takes having a plan to address them because they’ll pop up all the time. Another mantra from Nir, “The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought.”
Meaning, we need to have a plan, a practice to help us get traction.
Here’s a place to start (but Nir’s book is the bible!):
Before you start an activity for a period of time, be clear on the intention you have for that time.
Consider where you might run into a block or get triggered to be distracted.
Have a plan of action to deal with that distraction and come back to the intended work at hand. (See Nir’s book for more.)
I hope you enjoy the conversation with Nir as much as I did. Here’s to getting traction on our work and making time for what matters.
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