Distraction is good

Here is your average Monday morning: you couldn't rest properly over a weekend because a work-related topic was bothering you. Falling asleep on Sunday night, you give yourself a promise to take action as soon as you arrive in the office on Monday morning. You have the whole plan set up. You even picture the weather on that day. The music behind, the strikes on a keyboard, how focused and determined you look.

Monday morning comes, and things are not so swift to start. Well, the weather is crap, but neither are you the focused robot you were planning to be. You decide to come down for a coffee. Coffee should cheer you up. You meet your colleague around the way, and he reminds you of something else. Oh yeah, that thing. Let me get in first. You get to it as soon as you return to your desk with coffee in your hand. Phew. The crisis is avoided, and an urgent email is sent. Let's read some news and see what's going around. "Dynamic Island" on an iPhone? What the heck is that? I should definitely click. By the way, it's almost lunch.

... and there goes your main task which was bothering you from the weekend. Are you a bad employee? Certainly not. You are just human. A very anxious human.

We tend to blame ourselves for losing focus. There are a bunch of fancy books put together by intelligent fellas like Cal Newport or Nir Eyal to specifically teach you how to be more focused. Use a "Pomodoro technique". Turn off notifications. Try to break tasks into sub-tasks. Find your inner motivation. Listen to Gary Vee in the morning to pump you up.

When everything else fails, we tend to conclude that something is wrong with us. And then we are getting diagnosed (or self-diagnosed) with ADHD. "No wonder I am always anxious. I can't focus on anything!" people tend to think as soon as the ADHD news hits them.

Well, the recent data shows that we got it backwards as well. It's not that your ADHD creates anxiety - you are getting distracted because you are anxious.

Yeah, you heard that right.

Here is a renowned physician and author, Dr Gabor Mate explaining it in more detail:

(quote from Joe Rogan Experience Podcast)

"Tuning out is not a disease. If I distress you right now, your options would be "fight or flight. What if you didn't have those options? You are stuck. And what does your brain do when you are stuck? You tune out. In other words, it is a coping mechanism."

Distraction is a coping mechanism. You get distracted because otherwise, you couldn't get through life if you were hyper-focused on stuff around you all the time. What would your parents say to you when you have a doctor's appointment tomorrow with you loathe with all your heart? "Just think of something else, the thing about something good". In other words - "tune out". Don't think about it.

The true enemy behind the lines it's not that you are getting distracted. It's the fact that you are anxious most of the time. You are thinking about the past, about the future, reacting to things.

According to the University of California at San Diego, on average, we consume 34 GB of information per day, which is a 350% increase over the last three decades. What your brain does to navigate you through your day-to-day life without being overwhelmed is tuning out to present precious "bytes" of your brainpower.

The problem is that brain sucks at this job. It can qualify an important job interview as an "unimportant activity" while fully locking in on the new House of Dragon episode.

To finish this little article, I need to channel my inner Gordon Gekko:

The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that distraction, for lack of a better word, is good.

Distraction is right.

Distraction works.

Distraction clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

And it's our job to learn how to make it our friend. Which we will talk about next week.