DISTRACTION-CONSEQUENCES,CAUSES,REMEDIES

 

Need to know

          You are working on a really important research paper.AND’TING’goes the phone.You rush to find out ‘what’? Required?

Do you  receive messages that have a drop-everything-and-answer urgency to them?

And once u look at one ,aren’t you tempted to read one and all?Fear you will miss out on something you”ought to know”?

FOMO in my view is the biggest cause of distraction.

Nir Eval in his work ‘’indistractable’’ says that ‘’We’re blessed with pocket-sized supercomputers that connect us to anyone and everyone, and a buffet of information. But there’s a dark side: those same gadgets distract us, often at the moments that matter most.’’

‘’We blame the , smartphones-but they didn’t invent distraction . Before that, we blamed television. And before that, it was the telephone, or comic books, or the radio. Go back more than 2,000 years, and Socrates was even criticising the written word, for causing ‘forgetfulness in the learners’ souls’.One study in 2014 showed that when two people are talking, the mere presence of a smartphone resting on a table is enough to change the character of their conversation.’’ ‘digital detox’. – banish all the technology from your life, is not the answer.

Nir tells us we literally CREATE DISTRACTION- the laundry that needed to be folded right now, THE desk that needed to be tidied-up this minute.

Distraction COULD BE DUE TO  boredom, loneliness, insecurity, fatigue and uncertainty. These are the internal triggers –that prompt you to find the comfort of distraction and open a browser tab, Twitter or email, instead of focusing on the matter at hand. Distraction, in other words, is a symptom of a problem – not the problem itself. Those deeper and systemic reasons – such as an inability to cope with fear, anxiety or stress – deserve our concern, because it’s only when we start to address them that we can make real progress. When we begin to understand what we’re trying to avoid by clicking over to Twitter or checking the news for the 10th time today, we can begin to address the issue itself, and not medicate it through more distraction. We also begin to appreciate how habitual the act of avoiding discomfort via distraction can be, and how much it’s become a part of how we work and live.

Writing in 2001, the American psychologist Roy Baumeister and his colleagues observed: ‘If satisfaction and pleasure were permanent, there might be little incentive to continue seeking further benefits or advances.’ If we didn’t feel bad, in other words, we’d never achieve good.But chronic obsession with this can lead to second biggest cause of distraction in my view;FOBO:FEAR OF BETTER OPTIONS.

 

1.Self-explore

Identifying the triggers that made you feel bad in the first place requires self-exploration.

Whatever approach you take to address your inner triggers, it’s encouraging to note that merely recognising uncomfortable feelings and identifying them could be beneficial.

2.Define your priorities

3. ‘Hack back’ against external triggers

It means regaining a measure of control over your work environment and your information inputs – giving yourself the maximum time and room for focused work.

4.Plan ahead

Forethought is the antidote to impulsivity: you can use a ‘precommitment’ to a particular course of action to exert a powerful influence on your future behaviour.

 

Concluding-

Eval does not accept that digital platforms are capturing our attention, wrecking our relationships and hijacking our brains. In my view heavy use of social media reduces attention span’ .

But I agree when he says that ‘’ technology is not inherently good or bad. It has to do with how much tech you use, who is using it, what they are doing, and what they would be doing instead of using it.’’

Thankfully, technology companies are waking up to the need for a more balanced relationship with the devices and services they’ve created. It’s why you’re seeing features such as ‘Screen Time’ as defaults mobile products

Finally, and most importantly,  remember that it’s up to you not them. You don’t have to wait for Apple to release a software update or for Google to change how its browser is built for you to focus on what you ought to focus upon.

 

Ack:Nir Eval and other researches