Distraction Starts from Within
And How to Earn Back Your Focus
Distraction starts from within.
The object of your distraction may be external—for me it’s Twitter and Youtube, for you it may be Instagram, doodling, or cleaning. Whatever you do instead of doing the thing you’re supposed to do, just know it’s not the cause of your distraction. It’s the symptom.
The cause of your distraction starts from within.
One of my favorite author story arcs is Nir Eyal. In the aughts he founded a company called AdNectar, an online platform that placed ads on Facebook. He became an expert in grabbing attention—in other words, distracting users. Nir then wrote a book about it appropriately called Hooked. This was back in 2014.
A few years later, after seeing the consequences of his work, Nir turned his focus to fighting distraction. He wanted to help people fight the addictive products he literally helped create. His second book, Indistractable, is one of my all-time favorites.
In Indistractable, Nir shares a paradigm-shifting revelation about the science of attention:
Distraction starts from within.
At the beginning of an addictive loop, there’s a trigger. This trigger prompts the person to engage in the addictive activity, whether that’s opening up Facebook, eating potato chips, or smoking cigarettes. This trigger, more often than not, is an internal one, not external.
Internal triggers are the primary culprit of distraction. When negative feelings well up inside of you, your brain looks for refuge in something that will numb or distract. The thing you choose to distract yourself is the symptom of the internal trigger.
This was literally a life-changing revelation for me. I have always struggled with attention. I easily get sucked into distraction. And for years, I thought the key to fighting distraction was to remove all the things that distracted me. This process was exhausting and frustrating because I always found something new to distract me.
After reading Indistractable, I learned that why this approach didn’t work. Unless you address the internal triggers that cause you to seek distraction, you will never get a handle on your focus.
Nir shares a useful protocol for identifying your internal triggers and working through them. It’s part journaling, part meditation:
First keep a notebook or digital note handy while working. You’ll use this to track your internal triggers.
As you work, pay attention to when you seek out distraction. At that very moment, write down the thoughts and feelings you’re having. This is your internal trigger. Write down the feelings in a very objective way, as if you’re a scientist observing a bug.
After writing down the internal trigger, sit and breath intentionally for 10 minutes (I.e., meditate)
After the 10 minutes is up, you now have permission to partake in the distraction if you still want to. Giving yourself this option is important. 99% of the time, the urge to distract yourself will have passed.
I find when doing this protocol that I can take 10 deep breaths instead of 10 minutes and achieve the same effect with less time.
The important part is stopping to observe your internal triggers. For me, these triggers are normally anxiety-related: I’m not good enough, I’m not moving fast enough, I don’t know what I’m doing, etc. Sometimes the trigger is boredom. Yours may be different.
When doing hard things (like writing a book, for example), your mind may seek out distraction to protect itself. It’s totally natural, but you don’t have to succumb to every internal trigger. Slow down, observe your thoughts, take a few deep breaths, and let the wave pass.
Then get on with your work.