Ignoring the noise and the benefits of taking on less
A connected world has brought so much more information into our lives. There are many benefits to easy access to information. For instance, it has never been simpler to reach out and connect with people. However, these come at a cost. The world is far nosier.
I find there are many distractions; many things and people are competing for attention. It can feel like overload. Devices ring and beep — almost in a needy and whinny way to gain attention. With so much inconsistent, fake and clickbait, so much toxicity, it can be difficult to understand and navigate the modern world. With this noise being a distraction how can I focus? How can I make sense of the world?
It is an ongoing challenge and one that I still have not fully understood or overcome. The challenge is more of a mental, thinking and discipline problem for me. By reflecting on my own experience, there have been some insights that might be useful to those that also struggle with these problems.
The choice is ours — cutting back
The self-promotion and airbrushed images all over the media make it so tempting to compare myself with others. Comparing against fake images of reality will always be a road to failure; how can reality hold up to an intentionally manufactured view of perfection. It is a hopeless losing game to play, which begs the question — why play the game?
We can choose where we spend are time and attention. We can choose the games to engage with and play. The choice belongs to us, but it is a strategic and conscious decision. It is a hard decision — it involves deciding what not to do. Paring back. Removing. Jettisoning what is not working, what is not adding to your life.
But removing things and not doing them is different from adding things to do them. I developed some strange feelings. I felt really uncomfortable. Was I doing enough? By leaving things out — will I be missing out? Am I letting myself down? An awkward tension, which developed into uncertainty and a lack of clarity. However, after exploring and trying to make sense of what I was feeling, I came across the article below and the associated paper in Nature:
The power I gained from reading these was in knowing that I was not alone, and these are normal feelings. Looking around the world, you can see people try to add and not subtract. Complexity grows and it becomes overwhelming and confusing. Simpler products and solutions are much easier to understand and use, adding more value to our lives than complicated ones. Complexity makes things take more time to learn and to do it consumes precious energy, attention and focus.
There are many benefits of simplicity and removing complexity, and here are a few articles that discuss them from different angles:
https://hbr.org/2007/12/simplicity-minded-management
https://www.curveballsolutions.com/articles/the-value-of-simplicity-in-business/
https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/why-simplicity-is-crucial-in-business/452018
As we have a fixed amount of time during the day and, we can only hold attention on one thing at a time, the more noise we listen to, the more it eats up our time and attention. It splits our focus into smaller and smaller units, minimising the amount we have for the work at hand. It can also encroach on many of the things we are doing, and eat away at time that would be wisely spent elsewhere. It becomes a significant leach on your time and focus, without doing any good,
We can complain bitterly about this, but we have only ourselves to blame. The reason is we can switch-off. Unplug. Disconnect. The phone can be turned off. The email program can be shut down. Do we have to be available to people 24 hours a day? Do we have to respond immediately? Can we hold availability back and respond at a more reasonable time; more reasonable compared to what we are doing? Do you need to respond to people’s messages, even if they are not adding any real value?
So, it is within ourselves to make a choice on how available, and to whom we want to be. It is our choice on making the cutbacks that we want to make. Also, it is being done for a reason.
You are creating space — you are not ignoring them
Everyone needs sleep. It helps us to function normally. This is similar to doing work. It requires concentration, which means a lack of distraction. As the noise creeps up, being unavailable gives more space to doing the work. Like a firebreak, it stops the noise travelling across into our lives. Most importantly, everyone is excluded. Therefore, there is no favouritism and, the is nothing specific about them.
Your phone is off means that no one can contact you — not just them. It means you are responding to nobody’s texts, messages, emails during this time. You are totally incommunicado. In doing so, you create some space, but the fact that everyone is excluded means it is not personal. They are not being ignored; everyone is so it cannot be personal..
Having a period of time each day to plug back in allows you to answer emails, texts, messages etc. Here you can catch up and have a time period when you are available. You are getting back to them — hence you are showing them respect. But, having time blocks for this shows you can manage your time. It shows you are busy and unavailable; it increases the perceived value of your time — as you clearly are not always available.
Nonsense messages get sifted out; time wasters get lost in the noise. You only have to reply to one message in a conversation, not all of the messages. People understand that you are busy. Having clear blocks of time when you reply makes them feel appreciated — because you are replying — but also shows there are boundaries on your time. These boundaries are for everyone and not just them. It brings respect.
With more time available, you have more space to work. Also, without the random noise of social media and the attention-grabbing nonsense, you have less time exposed to these messages. Less time exposed to the airbrushed faked images. Hence, there are less opportunities for comparisons, and a real emotional break.
Personally, this really helps having the space from the fakeness. The break from the attention grabbers. I feel space brings a certain perspective on the world and, one that is far more personal, and personally meaningful. Without the external pressures I can think, explore and just learn. The subtraction brings with it less anxiety and less pressure. My interpretation is that I have more time, and the time is managed by myself and not by others. This sense of control, and not feeling rushed is what gives a more relaxed and less pressure feeling. It is this feeling that makes it all worthwhile and gives the approach more meaning.
Focus
When considering the question of why play the game, it invokes another question, then what game should I play? Subtractions allows us to remove things; from ideas to tasks. If we decide what we are going to do, then focus implicitly acts much like subtraction, it naturally poses, what are we not going to do? We need to address both to have focus.
The main importance of this is that to create space to do something, that space needs to be maintained by not doing things that can encroach on that space. Discussion above was shutting off phones etc., to remove timewasting distractions. But these are easy distractions to identify. Because life is complicated not all things are easily identified and removed. People matter, relationships matter — they require effort and time. They cannot be removed entirely, and things will happen, and these can encroach.
Often life is messy and thus, there is no perfect path and few easy decisions. In my opinion, self-help often presents a perfect picture in a perfect world, where everything is truly rational and easily understood. In reality there are tensions and conflicts, which have to be managed. There is the element of luck and uncertainty. There are many challenges and immediate problems that require attention.
For these we need to do the best we can. However, having goals allows us to focus our efforts where we can on what we want to achieve. Often things take longer than expected, but having some space and ideas on what we are doing allows for some forward progress. Having space, give some opportunity to work at things when we can, and make some progress. Identifying what we are not willing to do and fighting to not do it, also opens some space. We cannot have everything, but we can have some space in which to work.
Then we must ask what is most important to our goals. We need to jettison other things. We cannot just accumulate things to do, as that would swamp the available time. So, what is the most important thing to do? Then maybe this should be focussed on. Maybe it should have the exclusive use of that time. Subtract everything else and fit that into our time. Make it clear and make it available.
To do this, it helps to know what time we have available. Calendars are usually the best thing. We can look at the time we spend and move certain things around. How much time do you spend on TV and games? Are they helping you? Could you take that time and put it towards your goals? Any time is better than no time, and putting that in the calendar helps protect it. Sharing your calendar and showing yourself as unavailable also helps protect the time.
The next thing is to write out the list of what you could do with that time. Think through your most important goals and what is the most important things you can do. Then focus at most on the top three and jettison everything else. Just keep at most three things. These need to fit into your available time. This is the importance of subtraction. Doing a few things well provides more progress than many things badly.
Focus is doing what is most important for your goals. It is about filtering everything else out. It simply is not enough to remove distractions, this helps significantly, but it is far more. There needs to be a conscious focus on a particular direction. This needs to be done at the expense of most other things. Only the most important elements are going to contribute to progress in this direction. Therefore, the exclusion of everything else will make your progress much faster. However, as human beings with messy real lives, there will always be tensions and challenges. But these should just slow down our progress somewhat. Without excluding things and focussing only on a few of the most important things are progress will get derailed.
Finally, we need to remind ourselves of our choices. Essentially subtraction is making a choice on what we are doing. It is decisive. We need to be reminded of these choices. Easy to see, a constant reminder, being able to see those choices and to see them regularly is necessary to keep them front of mind. Writing them down. Putting them in a very visible place. Referring to and seeing them often. I use a whiteboard with big writing. It is that constant reminder which embeds it in our practice. Our lives. Retaining the focus, and constantly being reminded of where my focus and attention should be. When things rely only on my memory, they slide. They lose the top of mind.
It is the top of mind, the constant attention to what is important that allows progress to happen. This is where focus lies, and the strength of making and having the discipline to maintain the choice we make.
Conclusion
With all the noise, unplugging and having some space can help us regain focus and progress in our lives. It can open up more time for focussed work and more useful concentration. However, this is not enough. Focus is about making choices, and this involves subtracting everything that is not most important to achieving our goals. We live in a complicated and messy world, and clearly cannot have such a perfect division of our time and attention. But we must do the best we can, navigating the complexities and tensions of everyday life. Where we have the time, we must resume our focus only on the most important things at the exclusion of everything else.
