Story Spotlights Roundup
Our Favorite Stories About Battling Distraction
Highlights from Medium by our very own content staff
In a time where there’s a global pandemic, a looming cicada uprising, and millions of new trending topics a day on socials, staying focused has been the hardest it’s ever been. Everyone here at Medium has been struggling with productivity, and consequently, we’ve really been into reading stories around battling distractions. We wanted to share some of our favorites with you, so here’s a roundup of a few standouts, courtesy of your friends at Medium.
You Are Making Progress Towards Your Goals — Even if it Doesn’t Feel Like it — Allison Wonchoba
When tackling a long-term project, all the to-do lists, short-term goals, and supplementary tasks can seem overwhelming. Whether you are frozen at the starting line by the sheer volume of it all, or feeling stuck years into your creative journey, it can sometimes be hard to find the motivation to continue producing.
Allison Wonchoba uses author James Clear’s 1% rule (from his book, Atomic Habits) to remind us that even a tiny amount of progress every day adds up to a huge difference. So don’t dwell on that long-term goal to the point that the journey becomes unbearable. You will get there, but it will take time.
Wonchoba adds additional value to this 1% principle with wonderful anecdotes to explain a variety of practices that help you stay motivated throughout the journey, recognizing and celebrating each step of your progress made along the way. It’s a powerful reminder that we are all in this together, learning and growing as we go.
— Sarah Marie, curation
Knowing the Difference Between “Traction” and “Distraction” will Change Your Life This Year — Nir Eyal
There’s a reason Nir Eyal’s books Hooked and Indistractable, on maintaining one’s focus in a world full of increasingly more (and more powerful) distractions, became bestsellers. The renowned behavioral-design and time-management expert has a way of helping us see familiar concepts in a new — and maybe more importantly, easily actionable — light.
In his recent Medium post, “Knowing the Difference Between ‘Traction’ and ‘Distraction’ Will Change Your Life This Year,” for example, he helps us look at the whole idea of distraction with fresh eyes.
“Any action can be either a distraction or traction depending on what you intend to do with your time,” he writes. “There’s nothing wrong with scrolling through your Facebook feed, watching YouTube videos, or playing a video game, as long as that’s what you intend to do. Taking a break can be good for you. It’s when you do things unintentionally that you get into trouble.”
His point: The trick to being productive is to be purposeful, not haphazard, with how you spend your time.
He follows that observation with characteristically useful advice — for instance, how to keep a detailed calendar to help you ensure that your actions are intentional.
That’s Nir’s go-to move: a perfect mix of the theoretical and the practical. It doesn’t hurt that he lets us off the hook for playing video games.
— Jon Gluck, editorial director
The Lost Art of Letting Your Mind Wander — Erik Ruof
When I read this piece by Erik Ruof, I was immediately transported to a past life where I helped run corporate conferences. For one productivity conference, I was made to send dozens of shower crayons (those kids drawing tools meant to make bathing fun and to encourage writing on walls) to the event. The speaker advocated for adults to keep them in the shower so when those great ideas/shower thoughts hit you, you could jot them down. Right there. In the middle of your shower.
As much as I hate when good ideas escape me, I think that the presence of those crayons defeated the purpose: the taunting shower crayons were a distraction, filling in the blank space my mind needs in order to creatively roam. Ruof speaks to the positive role of mindlessness with humor, and a quick dip into depth, that made me exhale and feel a lot better about doing nothing.
Like Ruof, without the chance for my mind to wander — to give it space from the endless scroll of distracting blue light emitting think pieces about Mare of Easttown’s hair — the subconscious trickles of inspiration are unable to flow. Also, Ruof made me really think hard about Koopalings and, to answer his mind-wandering question that turned into my hour long distraction. I think Bowser is part turtle/dragon/reptile so maybe one, er, encounter could produce/hatch many, many children?
— Donna K., curation
How to Use Affirmations to Boost Your Productivity — James Ssekamatte
One of the challenges with productivity advice is that different methods work for different people. If you’re aiming to be more productive in some area of your life, you might ask productive people what they do. They may recommend different apps, timers, courses, or planners that worked to get them where they are today. What’s interesting about James Ssekamatte’s method is that it allows you to look inward and not just out.
Using scientific research and advice from life coaches, business moguls, and even professional sports players, Ssekamatte details three different types of affirmations that can be used to help you create better habits and boost productivity. Very simply, affirmations move ideas from working to automatic memory. If you tell yourself something enough times, you believe it; it becomes ingrained in your automatic memory as a habit, an automatic state of being. As Ssekamatte explains, there are many different ideas about ourselves and our work that have been ingrained in our automatic memory from family, friends, work colleagues, and society. Not all of these are helpful.
Affirmations help you take control and rewrite the narrative — for example, by turning a general statement like “I am an awesome (insert profession, like writer)” into a more specific goal such as “I will complete everything on my to-do list today.”
Ssekamatte walks the reader through mental, visual, and verbal affirmations to help them find which option, or combination of options, works best for them. He also walks through how he uses them, giving readers a sense of how it all works together in a day. In this piece, Ssekamatte offers an option for finding focus that readers may not have been exposed to before and addresses the issue from a psychological stance: convincing yourself that you can do what you set out to do, because just as you can be your greatest critic, you can also be your greatest supporter.
— Sarah Marie, curator
The Only Source of Distraction Creators Should Worry About — Loudt Darrow
As an artist and writer, distraction is something I think about often. I imagine it’s the same for many creators — one minute you’re in a “flow state” and the next minute, you’ve unconsciously picked up your phone and are scrolling Instagram or Facebook without even realizing it.
It’s easy to blame the myriad distractions that compete for our attention — social media, Netflix, the news (the New York Times is my biggest “unconscious refresh” site!). There are many takes on creative productivity right here on Medium, but what stood out to me most about Darrow’s piece is the idea that distraction isn’t coming from an external source, like our phones, or TVs, but rather, an internal one — right inside our own minds.
Our brains are, of course, our greatest source of both inspiration and distraction. And we tend to focus on getting all the right productivity hacks down, or getting rid of all of our external distractions. But this piece helped me renegotiate with myself how I view the distractions in my life and how to do better brain management as opposed to just turning off my phone or having better organizational skills.
One of the areas of advice that really caught my eye was Darrow’s proclamation about embracing loneliness. With the rise in mindfulness content, we have significantly more positive associations with solitude, but we’re still apt to frame loneliness as something negative. Darrow urges us to consider the flow state that can be tapped into by viewing aloneness as a creative win.
Darrow’s got it right when he says, “distraction-blocking advice can only go so far.” The end goal, then, is not to get rid of distraction, but self-consciousness. He writes, “In fact, when you’re in flow state, your sense of self disappears altogether.” Ultimately, the biggest creative battle we face will always be with ourselves, but it’s one we’re capable of winning.
— Genesis Lauu, curation
On Living a Conscious Life — Darius Foroux
Darius Foroux is a master of staying in the present, but that doesn’t mean that it comes easy even to him. The entrepreneur/Stoic philosopher reminds us that our thoughts are constantly urging us away from the present moment, but that we can stay in control — release the thoughts that spin out and away from the task at hand, and focus on what really matters, right now. It takes practice — but it’s worth the effort.
— Amy Shearn, editor
