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Handling Distractions

And Holding Your Focus

Mild trigger warning: This article contains ideas which presume the reader can tell the difference between self-examination (a constructive form of self-criticism which results in bettering your ability to guide yourself toward a desired goal) as a different concept from self-criticism (as we commonly think of it as a way of becoming overly focused on one's own shortcomings and/or flaws in a destructive manner that reinforces a detrimental self-image wherein you believe yourself to be less than you desire to be, and incapable of improvement). If you struggle with holding securely to improving yourself through an exercise in self-examination without slipping into denigrating yourself with self-criticism, a if you struggle to congratulate yourself on your victories while also noting with enthusiasm the ways in which you could do better, you should (in stead of or in addition to reading this article) research concepts like 'how to handle criticism' and 'growth mindset'.

Now, where were we - ah, yes; distractions.

This month I've had, at any given moment, a small handful of articles and video scripts I'm writing, as well as my usual responsibilities at work, and an inbox that is overflowing. I've been behind and felt behind on my duties and projects almost every day this month. Also, I've spent a few hours every day focused on tasks I didn't intend to be focused on.

In other words: I've been distracted.

But those 'other words' aren't the right words still; because to say 'I've been distracted' implies the agency for how I spend my time is not my own. To say 'I've been distracted' implies that an outside force has acted upon me in a manner that distracts me from focusing my attention with intent on an effort I find worthwhile. Such is not the case as I experience it in moments of distraction.

In moments when 'I have been distracted' I do not feel as though I am being acted upon by an outside force powerful enough to draw my attention away from where I wish to focus my attention, rather in moments of distraction I experience myself as the agent of action, but an unsuccessful agent of the action I intend.

When distracted, I am not acted upon by outside power (I am not 'being distracted') but I am noticing myself to be a force of action with insufficient power to hold a grip on my own focus for as long a duration or as great an intensity as I would like to.

In other words: Instead of saying 'I have been distracted' I should say, 'I have not focused.'

That makes a difference!

'I have been' distracted implies that my attention and focus is subject to a power beyond my own intent and beyond my own will. The implication is that I can only thrive in the absence of a greater power to which I am subject, prey and victim. Alternatively 'I have not focused' implies I have a course of action when I want to give something or someone my attention... I can focus! If the problem of distraction is that I have not exerted sufficient power to hold my own focus then I just need to exert more power, or gain more strength, or practice to gain or improve the skill. I need to focus.

The idea is simple, but it isn't easy. It's not easy to focus, and it's not a trivial thing. Focusing doesn't happen by accident. In fact it could be argued that the entire economy is built upon people paying other people to focus - either to focus on providing a service or constructing a product, often based on specialized skill and knowledge which required focus to obtain.

I'll beat distractions by simply focusing. The task is simple but the implementation is not easy.

So here's a perspective to start with:

Your time and attention are on a budget. You have a limited number of hours and minutes in a day. Also you have a limited amount of mental energy throughout the day - you will after a certain combination of long duration and/or high intensity focus become too mentally fatigued to continue until you've slept, ate, and otherwise recovered neuro-physiologically. Your daily amount of time is limited, and your daily amount of attention is limited.

At every moment in a day you have the option to spend your time/attention budget on something that you believe is worth doing. Also at any given moment an endless list of things that you could do (endless because it includes everything that is not the few things you would really like to accomplish today) is an option for you to spend your time/attention budget on. At each opportunity to spend time and attention on something other than what you intend to focus on, what you believe is worth doing (at every potential distraction), remind yourself that this portion of your time/attention budget could be spent focusing on what you'd like to focus on, or it could be spent on this potential distraction. Take a pause to acknowledge to yourself that you have the choice to steer your focus where you want it, or to steer it no where in particular and allow distraction to ensue, knowing full well that you won't spend this time and this attention on your priorities.

Such an exercise has hazards.

This exercise requires a sufficient level of self care and self compassion. You need to remember that this one instance of choosing between focus or distraction is not an indicator of how you always are or how you always will be. Isolate this one instance to 'I didn't focus' and do not allow the thought to slip into self-criticism. Otherwise, once self-criticism begins to pick yourself apart, the single even of 'I didn't focus' becomes one instance in the pattern of the larger idea of 'I don't focus' which can be fine to acknowledge in self-examination, with the sincere enthusiasm to change the pattern or change the environment which facilitates the pattern, but the hazard of self-criticism will take hold of the idea of that patter: 'I don't focus' and will destructively attack your idea of faith in yourself and your competence by changing 'I don't focus' into 'I can't focus'. Once that happens the next step is the abysmal slip from 'I can't focus' to 'I won't focus' which predicts a fatalistic and fixed view of the future.

But living things are not fixed, unchanging creatures. We have life within us and we perpetually have the potential to change, improve and reinvent ourselves. Again, if you are struggling with this self-criticism thought spiral of 'didn't do/don't do/can't-do/won't-do' you need to research 'how to handle criticism' and 'growth mindset'.

Now for a Narrative!

I gave it a try. I decided to think of my time and attention as a finite budget that I could spend either on things I want to spend it on accomplishing, or to spend it on things that are easily available but that I don't expect or intend to spend my time and attention on. I made a list of three small tasks which I would like to accomplish, right now, with the time and attention I can spend, now. The list was as follows

1) to reply to a message from a former teacher - he'd asked me to send him a link to an idea we were discussing a few days ago.

2) to reply to a message from a former roommate getting back in touch after having gone a few months without seeing each other.

3) to finish writing a nice letter I'd been drafting to a family member.

I paused at the third item on my list, it felt intimidating to set my objective at finishing the letter. The letter was important to me, and I am rarely ever able to write an important thing in fewer than a doze sittings. I amended the third item to complete the bullet points of things I'd like to include in the letter. Goals should be challenging, but attainable. I have the goal of writing the letter, but around and encompassing that goal of letter writing is the larger goal of spending my time and attention where I intend to rather than spending it on distractions. Giving myself a smaller goal within my larger goal of getting a handle on my focus sets me up for victory, and victory is the beginning of building beneficial habits.

Replying to my former teacher and my former roommate were the easier of the three, so I started there. Both messages had been sent through Facebook, so I opened my account with the intent to focus only on those messages where I'd like to spend my time and attention.

Two challenges met me immediately:

The first was on the news feed, that notorious slot machine of dopamine-inducing videos and images offered freely for our time and attention, based on algorithms most likely to catch our time and attention. The first thing on my news feed, and the only thing in view, was a video of a comedian, and the title described a joke of the type I would very much enjoy hearing. I resisted the challenge, instead clicking on the icon to view my messages.

The second challenge met me in my message inbox. I saw the message from my former teacher, as well as the message from my former roommate, as well as a message from my wife, sending me humorous or inspirational things she'd found on her own Facebook news feed.

I made an executive decision... Life is full of decisions and most decisions are made for us when we act in accordance with our mood. We follow the rules (the rules of neurochemistry) when we act and react based on our mood. Humans are unique, however, in our capacity for 'executive function' which is the ability to choose which rules we follow, to choose which rules we don't follow, and to choose which rules we change and how we change them. An executive decision does not refer to a decision made by a high-ranking executive, rather it means a decision of executive function, in choosing to alter the rules which we follow.

...I made an executive decision to view the Facebook links my wife had sent me, and then I'd spend my focus on the messages I'd come to Facebook for in the first place. I stand by that choice as a matter of principle. It's important to be able to control your focus. It's important to not get distracted. And it's more important to give your full attention to your spouse when they request it.

(Musing) Put your spouse to the higher priority than your a moment of focus, that's a general rule. Like any rule bound rigidly within executive function there are exceptions and flexibility permissible within executive function - what a peculiar thing the frontal cortex is. Perhaps if my task of exercising control of my focus were more sensitive or more dire, perhaps if I were more doubtful of my ability to focus, if I were in more need of reassurance than I am; then I would have left my wife's message unread, spent my time and attention completing my list of three actions to focus on and accomplish before enjoying the Facebook links she'd shared.

Perhaps too, if I were in more dire need of reassuring myself of my own capacity for focus, yet in seeing a more urgent message from my wife, I would still have put off my exercise in spending my time and attention with focused intent. The frontal cortex is truly a remarkable thing to allow for the creation, preservation, revision and integration of rules which can be amended, changed, and even directly violated without the whole structure of rule-based reality and identity collapsing... we'll revisit that tangent another time.

Back to the narrative!

After being amused and inspired respectively by the links my wife had shared to me, I then turned my attention to the messages I wished to reply to... or at least I tried. The video of the comedian would be the next place I'd spend some time and attention, as a distraction, without amending or adapting the rules, I was failing to focus.

Before playing the video, in accordance with the exercise, I reminded myself that I intended to spend my time and attention right now only on two messages, then on further drafting a letter. I reminded myself that I had never intended to watch this video of this comedian. I reminded myself that if I watch this video, I could easily watch another, or search through my Facebook feed endlessly, exerting nothing but insufficient power to steer my focus where I wanted it.

I was not, in this moment, sufficiently strong to focus on the things I wished to spend my time and attention on.

So a new question emerged: noticing that I've not been victorious this time (I'm going to succumb to distraction, I will watch a video I had no intention of giving my time and attention to) how can I minimize the loss, or how can I glean a partial victory from this experience of defeated, and insufficient focus?

I can do a few things in defeat which gain a partial victory, and a partial victory is a world of difference away from a complete defeat or zero victory. The options as I saw them:

A) The video is ten minutes long. Though I'm going to spend SOME of my time and attention on this video, more than I would like, I can still gain partial victory by limiting the amount of time I spend. I won't watch the full ten minutes. I'll watch fewer than five. I'll only watch enough to see the joke mentioned in the title, and if the video runs close to five minutes before I find that joke, I'll cut my losses and close the video.

B) Furthermore, even if I were to watch the whole video (which I won't but, as an examination of all my options I'm thinking through the scenario of watching the whole thing), I can mute the video and read the subtitles instead. This would be a way to limit the amount of my daily mental energy (my attention) I'm spending on the video, as I find reading to be less mentally taxing than listening to someone speak. Also I could read the subtitles while also limiting the amount of time, thus reducing the amount of time and the amount of attention I spend on this video.

C) A third option occurred to me as well, one that I need to consider, what if I were to watch the full video, all ten minutes, with the audio and the subtitles (what if I were to give this video as much of my time and attention as is possible). That would be the largest defeat I could imagine from this little exercise in controlling my focus.

I needed to consider this scenario because sometimes we find ourselves struggling against challenges we can handle, gaining victories or partial victories; but what do we do in complete defeat? Small victories toward a greater goal are the life-saving ladder to pull ourselves our of the misery of the "I didn't / I don't / I can't / I won't" negative spiral of self-criticism. So what will be my parachute if I find myself wavering in that tailspin?

If you couldn't exert any focus to not become distracted (in my case if I've spent as much time and attention as I possibly could have, in a way I didn't want to), then after that distraction concludes (for me, after watching the video) that's when it's time to retrospectively re-frame and re-imagine the thing you did, re-classify the distraction (watching the whole video with sound on) to view the distraction as having some tiny fragment of value. Find a way to view a distraction of moments past as an experience which served to passively further your progress towards a different greater goal you're currently striving towards, even though that different goal would be better reached with active effort.

For my example, if I watched the full video with sound on, I would (retrospectively in hindsight) tell myself that by listening to the joke-telling style of a comedian I'd never heard before, I was gaining new information toward refining my own style and joke-telling repertoire - which is a longer-term goal I've been working on but have not been giving much time to.

In the end, I chose to watch part of the video, with the sound on, and then went straight on to reply to the messages and add to my drafted letter a satisfactory amount. Then I sat down and began writing these thoughts about handling distractions.

The nugget from all these tangents - how to handle distractions when you'd rather focus.

Moving forward, when I find myself needing to focus, and struggling to do so. When I want to build the skill of focusing, built firmly on the foundation of a pattern of victories, when I have the opportunity to spend my time and attention on either something worthwhile or on a distraction instead; I'll remember the following:

When I find myself avoiding effort - mindlessly busying my attention through escapism or other proxy for worthwhile actions - when I find myself trying not to think about the worthwhile things I'd rather be focusing on, I'll remember these better alternatives.

This moment, NOW, I have time and attention that would be better spent on something that is more important to me (more important than the present distraction).

If I don't break away from the distraction immediately to focus on something I'd prefer, then I'll limit the time I spend on this distraction.

If I don't limit the time I spend on this present distraction, then I'll limit the attention I spend on it. Perhaps I'll shut off the audio, or perhaps I'll play it only as audio, ignoring the video and visual components while I also split my attention toward gathering any tools and materials needed for focusing on a more worthwhile task.

If I don't limit my time or attention on this distraction then I'll find within it one tiny shred of value toward any one of many larger, long term goals.

And if I truly and sincerely can not find any value or virtue in a thing I've spent my time and attention on, I will remember that just because I didn't do better this time, and even if I don't do better often, doesn't mean I can't do better, nor does it mean that I won't even do better; and knowing that I can do better, I know that eventually I will do better.

The only way to become better at something is to spend some time and attention being bad at it. The only way to build skill is to be unskilled, to spend time and attention watching yourself, in self-examination, taking note of what you do well, and what you do poorly, and practicing at what you'd like to improve on until you aren't bad at it anymore.

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