Be Awesomely Effective Part 1: Embodied cognition
Be Awesomely Effective Part 2: Decision points
Be Awesomely Effective Part 3: Mental Energy
Be Awesomely Effective Part 5: Mind-body connection
Be Awesomely Effective Part 6: Workspace
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 39 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Be Awesomely Effective Part 4: Stop fighting distractions
— From Two Awesome Hours: Science-Based Strategies to Harness Your Best Time and Get Your Most Important Work Done by Josh Davis, Ph.D.
By now, in this miniseries, you can recognize the decision points in your day and choose your next task based on your mental energy and emotions. Woohoo! Today, Josh Davis, Ph.D., will share with us his uncommon—but very commonsensical—view on distractions and mind wandering.
As we shoot for creating Two Awesome Hours of productive work, we need to learn how to stay focused for prolonged periods of time.
Yet in today’s world, where our attention span is shorter than that of a goldfish, we tend to reproach ourselves every time we get distracted. “Focus!” “Pay Attention!” “Stay on task!” we tell ourselves, and we feel as if we’re being lazy for letting our minds wander off.
“Although our ability to sustain attention on a task is critical for our success, finding focus… without distraction is a remarkably difficult thing to do.” Our brains are wired to respond to distractions, scan our surroundings constantly, and be on the lookout for dangers—it’s a survival mechanism. But we also have the ability to come back to what we were doing previously whenever our focus shifts, “parts of our brain are devoted to switching attention—to disengaging and reorienting to a changing environment.”
This is indeed good news: “It is wholly unnatural to focus without wavering. If you have failed at maintaining continual focus throughout your work sessions, rejoice. If you had, you’d be remarkably dysfunctional.” Proof of this is that if we try to suppress it, it backfires with our consequent frustration.
Scientific evidence points out that the more we try to avoid or suppress distractions the more we get stuck on them. “When people are asked not to think about something, it increases the likelihood that they will think about these things. Don’t think about a polar bear right now, and see how that goes.”
I bet the polar bear took you to other images of polar bears, your visits to the zoo as a child, a documentary you saw, etc. Our neurons work in networks, which means they’re associated with many others. Thus, your neuron for polar bear fired up other neurons associated with this thought, taking you down a rabbit trail (polar bear trail?) of images and memories.
To somewhat control this, Davis says we must master two skills: removing distractions and letting our minds wander.
Let’s get the first one out of the way: distractions are like booby-traps. No one in their right mind would set a bucket of water over a door frame, spread thumbtacks on the carpet or put a whoopee cushion on a chair at a workplace. Davis says, “That’s more or less what you are doing to yourself when you set up your devices and workspace so that distractions are coming to you all the time. You have created a work setting booby-trapped not with buckets of water and thumbtacks, but with phones, screens, websites, open doors, etc.” And all the buzzing, notifications, and people stopping by are distracting you from your two hours of maximum productivity.
“There’s no need to be a hermit of drop off the grid. Just find a way that your devices can’t divert you for perhaps twenty minutes at a time.” Turn off notifications, close your open door, wear noise cancelling headphones, put your devices away, etc.
While we can remove distractors as much as possible within our circumstances, we can’t remove distractions entirely. We can’t stop the blasting siren of an ambulance out on the street, for example. And we can’t do away with another, unavoidable distraction: our wandering mind.
“Research suggests that mind wandering may not be a flaw after all. It may have important benefits when it comes to […] creative problem solving and long-term planning.” Davis shares the results of studies: “mind wandering didn’t make participants more creative in general, it helped them creatively solve the problems they had been working on before they started mind wandering.” Also, it is good for long-term planning because “it enables us to think in the right ways about the future.”
Yet it’s important to make the distinction between mind wandering in a productive way and getting completely sidetracked. To avoid the latter, Davis suggests mindful attention: as we find ourselves losing focus, “noting without judgment that our thoughts have drifted, gently bring our attention back to what we are experiencing in the present moment.”
Be nice to yourself, says Davis, “when it comes to staying focused for a prolonged period of time, our secret weapon is not discipline or willpower but self-compassion.”
ACTION
TODAY & FUTURE: Given that your mind will wander, Davis suggests enabling it when you want to solve a problem by choosing a super easy task ahead of time that requires very little thinking. Pick a task that will take a brief moment (minutes) and from which you will recover naturally, not one that will make you fall into autopilot for hours on end. Here’s what he means by very easy: appreciating a picture on the wall, a plant, the view, straightening up your desk, listening to music and noticing all instruments, etc.
These are the tasks you need to avoid engaging in when your mind wanders. They’ll quickly absorb and sidetrack you, as they require lots of thinking and are loaded with decisions and emotions: filing paperwork, reading the news, checking email, rehearsing presentations, prepping for meetings, working or a crossword puzzle.
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