Reducing Distractions Improved My Life (and It Might Improve Yours)
My experience with reducing screen time and promoting focused work and grounded presence
Over the last 2 years and a half, I went through a lot of changes.
I started a spiritual journey, had a baby, quit a successful career in an international tech startup, moved to my dream home in the woods, and started my online entrepreneurial adventure.
The common denominator in this sea of change has been my increasing ability to be grounded in the present moment.
As a parent, presence is key for me.
Both because it’s what allows me to be intentional in how I respond to parenting challenges and because it’s what makes it possible for me to work on my goals with the little time and energy I have available.
Parents have fewer chances to work on projects uninterruptedly.
With naptimes being unpredictable and little humans needing our constant attention (on top of years of sleepless nights), we never know if we’re going to be able to dedicate 10 minutes to something, or 2 hours.
If we want to have a chance at getting anything done we need to become able to manage our time efficiently.
That, most of the time, starts with removing the distractions that cause us to waste time switching from task to task and mess with our ability to focus.
This journey, for me, started with getting rid of my TV.
Moving to a small home in the woods calls you to rethink your priorities, and with a one-year-old with us, the occasions for Netflix and chill became rare.
People are usually amazed at how easily we were able to quit that habit, but it came naturally to us. We didn’t have to make a conscious effort to stop watching it, we simply acknowledged that — considering how our life looked like at that moment — it would have been a waste of precious space to bring it along with us.
That opened up a 2-hour time slot in my day for much better activities and also freed up cognitive resources that would otherwise get wasted thinking about what could possibly happen in the next episode of whatever show I was caught up in at any given moment.
In that new window of time that magically opened up for me, I started journaling. And with that came the habit of planning my days ahead.
What a blast is it to start every day and every project knowing exactly what I need to do, instead of wasting precious time thinking about how to start!
Keeping my phone out of sight most of the time is another thing that improved the quality of my relationships massively.
I have ambitious goals to work on and a household to run, as well as a child to raise (soon two!). Removing the distraction of endless WhatsApp notifications and social media temptation makes it possible for me to really be there with everything I do, and accomplish much more in much less time.
It started as blocking “phone-free” time in specific moments of my day, and it ended with me only checking it when I’m nap-trapped, after lunch, and before going to sleep.
I realize this isn’t something everyone can do, but I can’t stress enough what a liberation it is!
You’ll be amazed at how much you can get done by simply scheduling one single phone-free hour every morning.
Finally, silencing social media notifications has been another game-changer for me.
I’m on X and obviously on Medium, and the only notifications I enabled on my phone and email are the ones from my Stripe account (always welcomed!).
This way, when I do check my phone it doesn’t take me two hours to get on top of everything and I don’t fall for the temptation of scrolling through my feeds when all I wanted to do was answer a text from a friend.
With that being my new modus operandi, I started noticing what an “attention vacuum” notifications are. I see friends checking their phones to see what time it is and ending up mindlessly getting caught up in a sea of unrequested information for several minutes.
With the frantic lives we live, giving our undivided attention to whatever task we are doing is not common practice.
Despite research that has proven the damage it causes, multitasking is still considered a skill. But context switching has a cost and comes at the expense of our mental well-being and quality of life.
Getting rid of my TV, planning my days ahead, blocking time for phone usage, and silencing social media notifications have improved my mental health, ability to focus and get things done, and the quality of my relationships massively.
I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone looking to become more mindful and present.
