When faced with distraction, keep your goals in mind
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Your brain reacts to the bombardment of environmental stimuli coming its way. But while you’re definitely doing something, you’re rarely achieving your goals.
When you have fewer things to react to or you make it harder to react to them, you’ll be less reactive.
- Control your context: You can’t react to what’s not there.
- Stay calm: Stress and reacting leads to dumb behavior.
- Think about your goals: Get Stoicism, mindfulness and dopamine on your side.
- Make a deliberate decision: When you do, your brain is better able to resist no-no’s.
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Most of the time we don’t second guess them, and even if we do, they often end up overwhelming us.
Negative feelings are very powerful and harder to question: we identify with them effortlessly. “I feel it, so it must be true” is often our default setting.
Don’t check your email or anything else that is going to dictate your behavior.
If you start your day by checking and replying to emails, it means you'll just react as new things come in until the day ends or you are too exhausted to do what was important.
5: Confirmation of an emotion’s legitimacy
4: Pursuit of the topic
3: Acknowledgment
2: Implicit recognition (but changing the topic)
1: Perfunctory recognition (autopilot)
0: Denial/contradiction