Choose Your Distractions

Choose your distractions...

Think about your ambitions, your goals, and your dreams that you want to achieve- either immediate goals you may be currently working on or future larger aspirations that you haven’t yet started. How do you see yourself accomplishing them? What are your actions, habits, and mindsets that will enable you to bring them into fruition? How would you plan out your process, and in what timeframe, to make the necessary progress?

These may be obvious questions to consider when you are working on goals, however, perhaps also thinking about your intent throughout the process can help keep you dialed in and focused. Your intention for not only for why to achieve the goal itself, but your intention on how you plan to keep yourself on track when there are often many obstacles in the way.

As far as being focused and how to best maintain it, our attention seems to be under constant attack. For the modern professional there is an onslaught of distractions all around us every day. Have you ever considered how to limit the excess noise and the steady stream of stimulation? Do you truly need to pay attention to all those things you are constantly thinking about? Perhaps we are standing in our own way with the amount of mental stimulation.

Perhaps it’s not so much in learning how to do more each day, but rather how do you spend your valuable time on the most important and vital activities that drive the specific results you want?

When it comes to attention, more broadly, I believe that one of the more powerful mindsets we can instill to better materialize our achievements is actually being intentional about our distractions that can pull us away from our path.

In my experience, I tend to define a distraction as any activity or mental state that does not directly support and promote your core goals and mission; anything that pulls your attention and time away from the specific ambitions you want to accomplish. The natural consequence of a distraction is that it causes you to focus on something that isn’t a priority and only delays achieving your goal; it puts happenstance in the driver’s seat rather than progress.

Distractions don’t necessarily have to be negative; they just don’t directly compliment you in maintaining that progress. Rather, I prefer to focus on intentional attention where, quite literally, I am not only preparing to avoid the very things that I know can distract me but also being more deliberate and diligent about where I want my attention to go before it starts to wane. It’s a shift in perspective that can help increase your efficiency throughout your achievements.

Have you ever heard of not relying on motivation to spark you to pursue your ambitions? Waiting to be motivated can often lead to being unfulfilled as you are depending on your emotions to propel you to success, but more objectively, having a logical system based on actions is much more reliable and effective.

Consider shifting your perspective from trying to get motivated and forcing yourself to focus, to literally identifying the actual activities or thoughts that you know will pull you away from your process. Not hoping or trying to just stay on track but being prepared and having a specific strategy to navigate what would distract you before it even happens. Instead of trying to avoid distractions in general, you identify them before they even occur. Think about what would likely pull your attention away and create a system to avoid those specific situations and mindsets.

Most of us are aware of what events will get the best of us. This approach empowers you to stay in control and to better influence your time and attention by remaining steady and not being a victim of randomness. You already know what will distract you during your process, so you won’t be surprised or caught off guard when the distraction does creep in. You are expecting it to occur and when it does, you know how to respond. You won’t fall victim to feeling drawn to it and end up feeling guilty that you had to make a choice to either waste time or to work on your goal. The choice was made by you prior to that moment, and it would be easier for you to then ignore or redirect that distraction. You get to declare what your distractions will be and avoid being surprised when they pop up, you already predetermined both the diversion and the solution.

Would you agree that certain mindsets could also be a distraction and misleading you to ultimately procrastinate? Does a distraction need to be an activity, or could it simply be an unproductive thought? How well is your inner dialogue preparing you to stay diligent in your process?

How can you identify these potential deviations and then pair a tangible solution?

Instead of listing random situations that I may assume will distract most of us, consider these questions with the intention of being honest and open-minded to see what resonates with you:

-When do you tend to procrastinate the most? How do you spend that time?

-What actions for your goals are you avoiding the most? Which tasks can you complete that will provide the most progress and relief?

-How do you feel when you engage in certain activities for your goals, what emotions do you experience, are you looking forward to working on your ambition? What would need to change to improve your perspective?

-What nominal activities are you spending more time on over your more important items? How can you reprioritize your tasks?

-What activities do you notice that are taking longer than necessary? When you reflect on why, what comes up?

-What excuses do you notice you are making when deciding to work on your goals or spend time doing something else?

-How engaged do you feel when you are working on your goals, do you feel that you can easily be pulled away or are you in flow?

-What specific tasks do you simply not enjoy doing? Are there methods you can use to better endure the activity and produce a quality result?

-Do you dedicate any specific times, places, or methods to work uninterrupted and solely on one objective? How consistent are you in your days, weeks, and months? How do you feel about your progress?

-Are you setting timelines for each stage and each activity you are working on? How does your progress look over the course of a longer stretch of time?

Life is full of distractions, so you must be very deliberate about how you manage your free time unless these unexpected diversions come in and steal that time from you. If you don’t identify and structure the specific activities that you are intentionally working on, as well as strategizing against the ones that you know will compromise your progress, then anything can come in and jeopardize your schedule.

At some point, intentional or not, certain thoughts and activities which are not your immediate priority will occupy your mind space. How deliberate are you in dictating exactly what they are and how they will affect you?

Building resilience against distractions involves consistent systems, time management, objective routines, and the right mindset. For this particular approach, you are anticipating what could potentially slow you down and you are just preparing yourself, so it won’t. Again, being more intentional about your process.

In this context, could we then ultimately redefine what a distraction is?

Perhaps we can define a distraction as an unexpected event or surprise that causes us to lose focus because we were not prepared to navigate it when it showed up. However, if we prepare for the unexpected, then it wouldn’t derail us when it does come about, and we won’t ever be distracted to begin with.

Nonetheless, choosing your distractions empowers you just a bit more to tilt the scale of progress in your favor.