Deep Dive on Dealing with Distraction – DBR 034

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When I talk about task and attention management, I usually talk about wastes of attention. And there are three primary wastes of attention that I’ve been able to identify with my clients. They are, in order of easiest to deal with to hardest to deal with: The first is interruption – external things in the world that attempt to catch our attention. The second one is multitasking. Multitasking, for me, is not intending to focus on just one thing at a time. The third one is distraction, and distraction is internal claims on our attention. And it’s this one that I want to drill down on in this podcast a little bit, because it’s the hardest one to deal with.

You have distractions if your mind is busy reminding you of other tasks while you’re trying to focus. You’re writing a report and “Ding – did you remember to feed the dog.” Or “Ding – maybe you should check email.” Eventually, you’ll give up and switch to one of those other tasks.

We’ll talk about what it takes to get distraction solved. Warning, this is the hardest one of the three to deal with.

Dealing with interruption – use the social structures
 
Dealing with multitasking – just a habit
You’re doing it intentionally because you don’t know (or believe) that it’s bad.
I said that distraction is really the hardest one to deal with, because it’s a function of the way our brains work. And there, there are easy (but not so simple) ways to deal with distraction, and we’ll get into those: the first is procedural, and the second is to train to tighten up your focus. We’ll talk about those solutions in a minute.

What is distraction?
  • Defining distraction – internal stimulus
  • The mental part – your brain is trained to hold on to tasks
  • Urgent vs important
    • Your brain works on urgency (roughly)
    • We’ve got to be careful about urgency (vs. importance).
    • Important is more of a conscious thought than an unconscious thought.
  • So we don’t necessarily want to respond to everything that our brain serves up.
  • Not instantly responding to a stimulus
    • Modern culture trains us to respond instantly we can decide – marshmallow experiment
    • Covey – “response-ability”
    • I have this notion about the brain just being another organ in my body or a muscle that sometimes cramps – there is no reason to believe that everything my brain serves up is useful or meaningful.
Procedural approach to distraction
  • Eject things from your brain
  • How to eject things – pretty simple, you’re probably already doing it, at least sometimes Problem is: it’s a lot of stuff
  • There is so much that your system is probably not adequate for it
  • Train your brain to trust a system
  • Keeping track of things we don’t need to be thinking about right now is a big part of Attention Compass
  • That kind of system is pretty well known – tickler file: get instructions here dobusyright.com/tickler-file
The philosophical, training piece
  • Define focus
    • Put and keep your attention where you want it
    • I don’t think we’re born with it, but anyone can learn to do it better
    • Focus and mindfulness
    • Mindfulness – learn to notice when your attention has wandered and bring it back
  • Suggestion – read some, or read more, or read differently
    • When you’re consuming information, you’re (usually) focusing But, the goal is to learn to notice when our attention has wandered
    • (which is a little hard to detect)
    • So, we need some duration, some time
    • You need a means to notice that your attention has drifted What about movies and/or TV?
    • The problem with audiobooks vs. “printed” books
    • So, it’s got to be e-books or paper books and probably start with fiction
  • Practical concerns on reading
    • Remember, You’re training yourself to focus
    • Start small (10 minutes, set a timer) and work up
    • Maybe start with ‘straightforward’ fiction – ‘entertainment’ Get rid of your association with textbooks (which, as books, are terrible)
  • Get reading down and then go as far as you want
Recap
This is a deep-dive into how to manage distraction. I’ve given you a procedural tool-based idea and a more philosophical training-oriented idea. If you can learn to manage distraction, your productivity will go up, because your task switching will go down. And, if you take on the reading challenge, you’ll be more entertained and more mindful. Don’t forget the tickler file to manage postponement decisions and get them out of your brain. Find it here: dobusyright.com/tickler-file.