Stop Fighting Distractions: Get Better at What Matters

Learn how expertise and proficiency keep your focus sharp and distractions at bay

Photo by Paul Schafer on Unsplash

Because you are really good at doing the things that distract you.

Let me guess: you’re an absolute ace and scrolling and swiping and liking through social media, expertly dodging sponsored posts, spotting camouflaged scam comments with ease.

Take a glance at every activity commonly deemed as “temptation.” They all have two qualities: the obvious one being, that it’s not what you ought to be doing.

But the second, more subtle one–and this is no coincidence–is that we are all elite-athlete level at performing them.

Our attention is pulled towards what we’re good at

That’s what make them enticing. Sure, food tastes good and Instagram provides instant social validation. But what makes them tempting distractions is that you can pull the open-easy lid of a can and be eating twenty seconds from now, and that you don’t have a degree in computer engineering to understand how social media interfaces work.

Sure, you’d let your mind wander off to a microwaved instant ramen, but not to a turkey roulade with apple and fennel filling. Because that’s just another form of labour…