On choosing our distractions wisely

Distractions are just our underlying focus trying to get our attention. And our life usually takes shape from what are we distracting ourselves with.

Focus on what matters the most

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On a lovely evening, my daughter was thoroughly engrossed in her play on the swing, as usual, losing track of time. With dinnertime fast approaching, I felt the urgency to bring her home before the world witnessed her hangry version.

I asked her if she wanted to go back home - the answer obviously was a no.

After rounds of such "no"s, I picked her up, and distracted her from the swing to the enchanting moon and the stars, as we walked towards home - not giving her any time for tantrums!

The dinner was ready as we reached home. While she had her eye on the plate full of rice dal and salad, I tricked her into getting to wash her hands first.

And then this occurred to me:

There is a distraction involved in every transition of her activities.

From brushing the teeth, to eating breakfast, to taking the bath, to wearing the clothes, there is substantial distraction involved amidst all of it.

She being a toddler has little to no control at the moment in choosing her distractions and the transitions.

But isn't the adult life a series of distractions too?

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What are you distracting yourselves with?

Apart from eating, sleeping and taking dumps, aren't we as adults spending heavy amount of times in our distractions?

I once was stressed and was feeling low. I stopped whatever I was doing, and ended up watching bloopers in youtube. It made me feel better.

Similar thing happened while I was waiting at the airport for my flight - I kept myself occupied (or distracted) by watching Netflix.

To avoid an awkward moment, we usually pick up the phone and become consumers of the incessant content.

With any current reality that we want to avoid, there is a distraction waiting for us.

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The hook

Hook(n.): a thing designed to catch people's attention

Our minds are an instant gratification monkey, & social media platforms have essentially curated their feeds to serve our minds with instant entertainment loops. It is these algorithms that keep us hooked.

Remember when you switch over to instagram to casually scroll for a few minutes but eventually end up hours of watching reels?

And the hooks are present everywhere.

Social media is notorious for introducing hooks, but hooks exist in various aspects of our offline lives too.

And some of these offline hooks are quite interesting too.

I was once traveling alone and wanted to save my phone's battery. With the casual scrolling through my phone being out of context, I started observing the fellow travellers at the airport (I have a strict rule to observe without judgement)

There was a family of three, and the toddler had already lost his patience. The parents looked like they had exhausted all their options to keep the kid entertained. I wondered what the parents would do next!

The very next moment, the father picked his son and took him for a stroll across the long pathway of the airport. He started asking questions to the kid, triggering the kid's curiosity in the things happening around. This made the kid to momentarily forget about his fatigue and boredom.

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So what's catching your attention?

I had written earlier about living life with some purpose than passively

And when you learn to put your life in these fleeting glimpses of time, it makes us aware towards spending our limited time as a commodity and a privilege, instead of abusing it by being disrespectful of its existence.

Starve your distractions, feed your focus - Jay Shetty

While I was trying to put all the different distractions around me into context, I was able to broadly categorise them into 2:

1. Active [anything that helps you learn and grow]

2. Passive [no brainer entertainment]

Soon I realised that the passive distractions were eating away most of my time, and were detrimental to my focus and overall well-being.

After being able to categorise the distractions, I needed to design a system for myself which would then help me streamline my investments in them.

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Few tips that have helped me in finding the balance:

By being mindful

Being mindful helps me to stay present and focused. One good tool is the screentime app in my phone, which gives me a graph of the time spent on different categories of apps during the week. Every week, I try to cut any app that is not adding value to my little life.

Tip: Every time I reach for my phone, I make a conscious effort to remember my original purpose for picking it up. It's all too easy to get swept away by the flood of notifications clamouring for my immediate attention.

Passive distractions

Passive distractions are something that do not contribute towards our personal or professional development. I absolutely try and avoid overconsumption of anything that is just mindless passive entertainment.

P.S: I'm no saint, and I'm not oblivious to the fact that I might find myself indulging in funny cat videos, music clips, or other random content. However, the underlying message is about being mindful of the time we dedicate to such consumption.

Distractions as a reward

10 mins of instagram for an hour of focused work (and not the other way round, unless you are an instagram model!)

Choose your focus activity and the reward wisely.

Meaningful distractions

Any hobbies you have cultivated can serve as a meaningful distraction. Reading, playing an instrument, learning an art, or practising a skill.

I reward myself with a 10-min strum on my guitar every hour, or maybe pruning the plants in my garden or just playing with my cat.

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Parting Thoughts

Distractions may seem to be jolly, exciting and fun. And we need them in our daily lives.

I am absolutely not advocating to cut off entertainment from our lives and make it all about learning. Entertainment is absolutely essential.

The overall crux is asking yourselves - "What is catching my attention?"

And perhaps by exploring these distractions, you might discover a new hobby or even take you an inch closer to uncovering your true purpose.

It is more about finding the right fit of a distraction for our souls, to make our lives a little better with every passing day.

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[Remembering Baba on his 4th death anniversary, and dedicating this piece to him for he was my primary source of motivation to start blogging]

#grateful

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