Last night I needed to go somewhere that I’ve only been to a handful of times, and not a single one of those times has been in the past year. I knew the way to go in general, but the final destination itself was a bit murky in my mind. In addition, I was driving in the dark and it was raining steadily, which made it doubly difficult to make out landmarks with all the oncoming headlights glinting off my wet windshield.
Without being aware of it, I was also slightly distracted by the music playing in the background from my local classical radio station.
At first I was driving in a familiar direction, which lulled me into a sense of complacency. That familiarity caused me to lower my guard and I stopped actively paying attention to where I was headed. That’s what got me turned around.
Instead of turning right at an intersection, I went straight out of habit. I was a quarter mile down the wrong road before I realized my mistake and had to find a safe place to turn around. Now flustered, I ended up missing my left-hand turn and needed to find a spot to turn around once again.
That’s when I turned the music off.
The limited nature of focus
Even though the music wasn’t loud and demanding my attention, when mixed in with the driving conditions—and my now souring mood—it was one more thing pulling energy away from my ability to focus on the most important task: Safely arriving at my destination.
In the book, Mastermind: How to Think like Sherlock Holmes, author Maria Konnikova writes “attention is a limited resource…we cannot allocate our attention to multiple things at once and expect it to function at the same level as it would if we were to focus on just one activity.”
This is just as true in our writing as it is in any other area of our life.
We live in a world that’s constantly putting multiple demands on our attention at once. This makes it especially difficult to rein in our focus when we have to spread out our attention between our day jobs, our family obligations, our concerns about what’s going on in the world at large, and what we hope to accomplish with our writing.
I’ve found this constant demand to be aware of all the things going on to be one of my biggest challenges in the past year—even with spending most of my time at home and on my own.
And as a result, I’ve frequently found myself feeling flustered, frustrated, and flummoxed.
Which is why I’ve been reminded that it’s important to actively pay attention to the things demanding our attention. Although there may never really be a way to remove all of the things competing for our time at once, we can take steps to weed out the obvious distractions and limit others.
Three simple ways to weed out distractions
Limit social media. Even though it seems like you’re only engaging in one activity, the truth is your mind is being flooded with a torrent of information in bite-size pieces at once. Think of it like shoveling one bite of cake into your mouth after another before giving yourself a chance to chew and swallow. Because the mind can’t properly process all that information at once, it’s going to choke and start spitting it all back out.
I don’t just limit my time on social media. I limit my access. Timers and blockers have been a godsend in this area. I’ve found that over time, it’s become less enticing to turn to those mediums while working on editing and writing projects, which in turn has allowed me to have better focus.
Put the phone on Do Not Disturb. For as amazing as technology is for keeping us connected, it’s also a double edged sword. It results in us feeling like we have to be constantly available for everyone at all times.
With the exception of texts and calls, none of my apps notify me of new messages. And when I’m working on a project I let my family know I’m not available for a set amount of time before turning off my phone. This doesn’t just cut out a distraction for me, it helps reinforce healthy boundaries around my writing time. It also assures my friends and family that when I am available to talk, they’re going to get my full attention.
Give yourself a mental break between tasks. If you want to do something well, you need to be able to give it your full attention. Just like you can’t wash the dishes, fold the laundry, vacuum the carpets, and feed a child simultaneously without ending up with a disaster on your hands, trying to jump from one project into the next without taking a breath between them can leave you asking yourself what you were thinking.
If you’re not already familiar with the Pomodoro Technique, give it a look. I’ve found it to be a helpful tool that aids me in focusing on the task at hand. When the timer goes off, I take a physical break from the screen to move around, do a chore, or enjoy a little me time.
Focus, like any muscle, needs time and practice to fully develop. But the more we engage in behaviors that encourage active focus in our lives, the less likely we are to get turned around while driving on a dark and stormy night.
Write boldly and courageously, my friends!
Jen