This ‘21st-century Syndrome’ is due to two factors:
- An overabundance of dopamine-inducing options is taking its toll on our minds, making it difficult to relax.
- A sea of unprocessed emotions coupled with social disconnection is making us constantly uneasy.
Our brains are facing an onslaught of information and ‘supernormal stimuli’ from a variety of sources like social media, gaming, pornography and the likes.
The brain needs time and space to process information. The breaks we take during work, like talking to a colleague at the watercooler provides a ‘downtime’ and helps process information.
This takes the shape of distractions when we are at home. You could even be problem-solving while quietly doing the laundry at home, as your brain processes the events and information in the background.
Our feelings, emotions and fears remain largely unshared at home, when we are trying to do many things at once, fighting countless battles single-handedly to balance everything.
Not having someone to talk to gets us into distractions, and when we force ourselves to not indulge, it makes us want to do it more.
Providing yourself with an identity of the kind of person you aspire to be, like a non-smoker, a non-distractible person or someone who is sober and calm, provides a narrative for you to focus on.
The more you tell yourself what kind of person you are, the more it turns out to be true.
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- We are less likely to get distracted if we enjoy doing something. Get clear on your priorities and organize time around the things you 'say' you want to focus on - family, friends, work, hobbies.
- Find fun in whatever you're doing. Perceived difficulty is often a matter of perspective. You can choose to re-imagine almost any discomfort as a blessing.
- If something you enjoy doing is distracts you from important tasks, block off chunks of time for them in your day.... schedule your diversions.
- Reflect on the time during the day you had done what was the goal, and on what occasions were you distracted. This can be done using time-tracking apps or a simple journal.
- Refine your calendar by timeboxing your main objectives to map your daily and weekly productivity, along with the real-time improvisations or delays that have occurred.
It’s impossible to be completely indistractable, but if we are able to meet our objectives and protect our most precious resource, which is time, then we have ample play in the day to live the life we want.
Designate a place to add and organize your tasks that’s not your head: a pen-and-paper to-do list or a digital task manager like Todoist . By capturing tasks to come back to later, you can free your attention to focus on your immediate work, not remembering what you need to get done in the future.