Don’t get distracted

It’s one thing fending off external demands on our attention, but how do we stop distracting ourselves?

Addicted may not be too strong an adjective to describe our relationship with our diversions.

We fear disaster lurking in our emails and we’d rather know now than find out later.

Or our inbox contains the possibility of good news that we can’t wait to hear.

The cortisol of fear drives us to uncover the unknown and the dopamine of reward pulls us to claim small wins.

Meanwhile our socials are little boxes of serotonin.

How many people ‘like’ my post (i.e. like me)?

And what am I missing out on?

Our deep-rooted desire to socially belong feeds our hope that we are wanted whilst fuelling the fear that we are being excluded.

Caught between the push and pull of these powerful drugs we are, at best, beholden to habit.

At worst, we are powerless to stop ourselves.

There’s an inevitability to this.

After all, we have Palaeolithic brains and futuristic technology.

But sometimes addiction requires radical intervention.

For example, the Fundraiser who books a rail round trip from London to Edinburgh to finish a grant application.

It’s too hard to stay at home and just turn the internet off.

The inconsistency of train wifi means she has to focus on the job at hand.

Or the Producer who gets a friend to commit to ‘no phone Sundays’.

Their loyalty to the pact and their desire not to let someone they care about down is stronger than their hunger to check Twitter over Sunday lunch.

Or the Manager that just goes public.

They tell everyone they’re off their phone in the evenings.

The dread of the social humiliation that comes with not achieving their publicised goal can be stronger than the fear of leaving your emails unchecked til morning.

Or the Marketing Exec who rewards themselves for a weekend unplugged.

One big treat that tops the small hits the screens would otherwise bring.

The new t-shirt, record, dinner or puppy they’ve been promising themselves.

(Okay maybe not a puppy; although, it’s very hard to get excited about Instagram when you’ve got a puppy in your lap - unless you’re instagramming the puppy of course. But I digress).

The point is this: we delude ourselves if we think we can defeat self-distraction with willpower alone.

We only have so much of that stuff each day and, frankly, there are better things to spend it on than resisting the touch of a 6-inch rectangle of metal and glass.

But get radical with your interventions and in time, new habits will emerge.

Ones where the only distractions you need to worry about come from the outside.

And you can finally master your own attention.