How to Be Deliberate with Your Distractions
Don’t let clickbait and a flood of ‘good content’ run roughshod over your productivity.
Today’s topic is on the most devious form of distraction, and how to blast through it and keep laser-like focus, or what passes for focus in the 21st century.
Complicated is a word that could be used to describe most people’s relationship with the internet. For example, every time I try to get something productive done, something on the internet drags my attention away. Oh, look! A politician tweeted something! Bitcoin is now worth more than Google! Here’s an awesome picture of a black hole formed by two colliding galaxies! It’s all interesting but exhausting and, more importantly, a potential prudctivity killer.Â
Clickbait is Easy to Recognize
We all know you never, ever click on pictures of adorable, cute, fuzzy little kittens. Or sneak a peek at Justin Bieber’s latest zany adventures (hilarious!), MattyB’s YouTube channel (meaningful), or Taylor Swift’s manifesto on 18th-century lesbian poetry and its influence on the latest Australian elections (puzzling).Â
These are all clickbait and gossip. They’re there to titillate us, make us click a link, and make Google a cool $1.35 per click. Ka-ching!
When we follow clickbait, we know we’re being naughty. MattyB won’t make us more productive. And yet…and yet…his four billion channel views just went to four billion and one.Â
But these are minor compared to what’s become the worst and most devious of internet distractions.Â
There’s Too Much Good Content
The real problem happens when a friend sends an article on a new rocket engine that runs on oatmeal. Since you’re a rocket scientist (I’ll bet you’re wondering how I knew that), you click the link and read a fascinating article on the technology that’s going to revolutionize your industry. You’ll be able to power a rocket entirely off your Quaker Oats, maybe as soon as the year 2028.
That article has a sidebar with the headline, “How the new tax bill will change your life.” You’ve heard about this tax bill, and it’s probably pretty important, so you click on that article to read it. Two thousand words later, you have learned that you really need to call your accountant and review your financial situation, which you were planning to do anyway.
All that well-written, interesting content added up to … nothing much.
These articles are well-written, interesting, and useful. They have links to more well-written, interesting, useful articles. And after you’ve read several dozen of them, you know a little more about All the Things!Â
As for the work you’d planned for today, there just isn’t time. You’ll have to catch up tomorrow.Â
Any one of those articles was worth reading. But somehow, all that well-written, interesting content added up to…nothing much. You took a step forward, a step to the side, a step backwards, and a step to the other side. Lots of movement that left you right back where you started.
Today’s internet puts too much high quality content at our fingertips. We end up overwhelmed, and get nowhere.Â
Seek Out Information, Don’t Respond to It
Before the internet, good information was rare. When it crossed our paths, we read it and learned. Now that good information is everywhere, we need to be deliberate. No more reading whatever crosses your path, even if it’s well-written and interesting. Filter out anything that doesn’t help move you in the direction you want to go. And seek out anything that does.
Keep Your Focus on a Sticky Note
Decide what progress you want to make in your work and life. If you’re an entrepreneur, hoping to cash in on the growing demand for toenail fungus scrapers, you may decide that putting together your e-commerce website is where you want to make progress. Write it down on a sticky note and put it on your screen where you can’t miss it.
Now browse the web. When you see the article “How to build an e-commerce site in 5 minutes or less!,” glance at your sticky note. Ask, “will this link help me build an e-commerce site?” The answer is yes! Read the article and keep cranking.
Rehearse this. Look at some relevant links, and train yourself. Look at the link, match it against the sticky note, and move forward.
Also rehearse rejecting the irrelevant. Look at a link featuring details of a new fertilizer. It isn’t made from toenail fungus, so as fascinating as it is, your sticky note tells you to send it to your Read Later list. Rehearse this on real, interesting, well-written articles that just don’t fit your focus.Â
Use a Read Later List
“But I don’t have a Read Later list!” you cry. Never fear. Just create a folder called Read Later on your browser’s bookmarks bar. If you use Safari on a Mac, you can just use Safari’s built-in “Reading List.”
Anything that looks good but isn’t relevant to your immediate focus gets put in your Read Later bookmarks folder.
Resist the internet’s endless supply of good content!
Encountering Unknown Unknowns
With your sticky note and Read Later folder in place, you’ll be reading only things immediately relevant to your goals. But what if one of the things in your reading list will open you up to something amazing that you’d never even considered before, like learning that perfume is made from whale puke? Who knew? (Coco Chanel, actually. Though I’m not sure I want to know how she figured it out.)
So from time to time, set aside time to browse your reading list and check out a few articles. Again, be deliberate. You still have focus during these sessions. Your focus is broadening your horizons by reading well-written, interesting articles in new areas. Use a timer to limit these sessions to an hour or two a week. These are the sessions where you might discover your very own version of Coco Chanel’s whale vomit.
Resist the internet’s endless supply of good content! Choose your reading material with deliberation. Keep your goal in front of you at all times, and rehearse using it as a filter for deciding what to read. Put everything else in a Read Later list, and only read those when you decide to do so.
Most of your Read Later list will remain unread. But don’t fret—that’s the whole point. You’ll be using your reading time to read only things that move your life and your business forward. You’ll make real progress on what’s most important to you, and soon your life will come up smelling like roses. Or toenail fungus. But definitely not whale puke.
I’m Stever Robbins. Follow GetItDoneGuy on Twitter and Facebook. Want great keynote speeches on productivity, Living an Extraordinary Life, or entrepreneurship? Hire me! Find me at SteverRobbins.Â
Image of man at computer desk © Shutterstock
About the Author
Stever Robbins was the host of the podcast Get-it-Done Guy from 2007 to 2019. He is a graduate of W. Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management training program and a Certified Master Trainer Elite of NLP. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Sciences from MIT.Â
