The Only Source of Distraction Creators Should Worry About

According to the author of “Flow,” it’s not your smartphone.

Photo by Victor Serban on Unsplash. Modified by author.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi published Flow in 1990. And fair enough, there were no smartphones back then.

So at first, I thought all those Lifehack articles and Inc Magazine listicles about “getting in the zone” were just adapting the message to our distraction-pestered era. “Shut the door,” “close all tabs,” “turn flight mode.” They all sounded like useful workarounds.

But the 90s was a fairly busy decade too.

You had to feed your Tamagotchi every 2 hours, tune in to watch Friends (none of that streaming service convenience) and keep up with Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears’ relationship drama — just to name a few.

And yet, when I went back to check the original source, I noticed that Mihaly never talked about “blocking distractions.” He didn’t even think they were that big of a deal.

According to Mihaly, the most common source of distraction is self-consciousness

Having an autotelic self implies the ability to sustain involvement. Self-consciousness, which is the most common source of distraction, is not a problem for such a person. (Flow, p. 211)

Self-consciousness. That is, not external distractions, but internal ones. Not your smartphone, but your brain.

Which is the only device you use daily that doesn’t have a “Do Not Disturb” switch. You can shut all windows, set every device on silent mode, put on your noise-cancelling headphones — and you’ll still hear your thoughts.

What would Tim Denning do back in the 90s?

He’d probably tell you to put away your Nintendo 64, hide you Now That’s What I Call Music! discography, and surrender your VHS tape of Home Alone to a trusted friend so you can get in the zone.

But none of those well-intended tips would’ve suppressed self-consciousness. So how are we supposed to deal with a source of distractions that we can’t block?

The way to deal with self-consciousness is by being “oblivious to it”

Or in Mihaly’s words:

The mark of a person who is in control of consciousness is the ability to be oblivious to distractions. (Flow, p. 31)

The difference between “being oblivious” and merely “blocking” distractions is not just a semantic one.

Blocking a distraction means preventing it from entering your field of awareness. But if you are oblivious to a distraction, you will ignore it even if it does.

You can experience what “being oblivious” feels like by doing the selective attention test.

The premise is simple: at the beginning of the experiment, a researcher tells you to “count how many times the players wearing white pass the basketball.” After you’re done, the researcher will tell you the correct answer, and then ask one more question.

“But did you see the gorilla?”

Before you can celebrate your eye-count coordination for getting it right, they rewind the video and show you how a gorilla walked by across the screen while you were counting passes.

Despite its great powers, attention cannot notice or hold in focus more information than can be processed simultaneously. (Flow, p. 31)

You can’t block a 180-pound gorilla pounding his chest right in front of you. If you miss the gorilla, it was because your attention’s limited capacity was already saturated with counting passes.

That’s how “being oblivious” feels like, and it’s the key to suppress self-consciousness.

You get distracted when your attention has gaps

Imagine as if every instant your senses pick up the most relevant, tiny pocket of information from the outside world and present it to you.

That is what you “pay attention to.”

Paying attention might look like an interrupted thread, but it’s more like a burning candle: the flame appears to be the same, but you’re actually looking at different drops of wax combusting every instant.

By not being fully engaged with a task, you leave “gaps” in that thread of attention, opening the opportunity for a different, not-so-relevant pocket of information to get through.

Like a buzzing phone or, in the complete absence of external distractions, a random thought roaming in your head.

This is how you get rid of self-consciousness

1) Have a clear goal

In order to experience flow, it helps to have clear goals not because it is achieving the goals that is necessarily important, but because without a goal it is difficult to concentrate and avoid distractions. (Finding Flow, p. 137)

In the selective attention test, the first thing you’re told is the goal: “count how many times the players wearing white pass the basketball.”

Goals make immediately clear what type of information you should be paying attention to. White shirts passing basketballs? Relevant. A guy in a gorilla costume? Not relevant.

Have a clear goal in mind and your attention will take you there.

2) Pick challenges that match your skills

One cannot enjoy doing the same thing at the same level for long. We grow either bored or frustrated; and then the desire to enjoy ourselves again pushes us to stretch our skills. (Flow, p. 75)

You’ve seen the chart. If the challenge is too easy, self-consciousness will emerge to tell you that you’re bored. If it’s too hard, self-consciousness will creep in to tell you that you’re frustrated.

Stay in your lane. Do like Buddha and “walk the middle path.” Be one of those pirouetting gymnasts that twist and turn but always land straight on the balance beam.

The thing is, if you keep doing something, you’re bound to improve. So that middle path is constantly moving. You need to increase the challenge whenever you feel like doing things without breaking a sweat — but not go the extra mile into the “I suck at this” territory.

3) Make it intrinsically rewarding

If extrinsic goals — such as beating the opponent, wanting to impress an audience, or obtaining a big professional contract — are what one is concerned about, then competition is likely to become a distraction. (Flow, p.73)

It’s entirely possible that someday you give a handshake to the president of your country, as friends and idols wrap you in accolades whilst your high school crush realizes, in that instant, that you’re the one.

But those can’t be the reasons why you show up to work.

“The zone” is a place to be fully engaged with the task at hand. And for that to be even remotely possible, you have to enjoy doing it. Fantasizing about the external premiums that might come with success is the very nature of self-consciousness.

So save the daydreaming for when you’re doing the dishes. That’s the best spot to rehearse your acceptance speech anyway.

4) Embrace solitude

If solitude is seen as a condition to be avoided at all costs instead of as a challenge, the person will panic and resort to distractions. (Flow, p. 175)

I am a hermit artist, so I have no problem with this. Leave me alone in an ample room with Wi-Fi and I’ll be chill as a capybara floating on a pond.

Solitude is the only state that suits our minds for deep, focused work. In fact, when you’re in flow state, your sense of self disappears altogether.

It’s the absolute absence of self-consciousness. So technically, there’ll be nobody there, not even you. Just a high-performing entity getting the job done.

Putting your phone away is still a good idea

But the distraction-blocking advice can only go so far.

You can’t block a crying baby or an emergency call. You can’t block life. But you can train yourself to be fully engaged with a task, even when surrounded by buzzing phones and sneaky gorillas.

So, to sum up, get rid of self-consciousness by:

1. Having a clear goal.
2. Choosing challenges that match your skills.
3. Making the task intrinsically rewarding.
4. Embracing loneliness.

For every other distraction, from Tamagotchis to social media, you can just shut the door, close all tabs, and turn flight mode. They’re not that big of a deal anyway.