If distraction is something you can struggle with, you are not alone. It seems like a lot of people are distracted.
Not many people view themselves as personally responsible for the level or frequency of their distraction. The explanations, rationalizations, and justifications for distraction are commonly assigned to external things: tasks, technology, and other people are frequent targets.
Almost as a conciliatory admission, people will add a sliver of responsibility like, “I just lost focus.”
Please allow me to share the truth with love.
This might be difficult to hear and take a while to fully internalize, but until you accept 100% personal responsibility for your level of distraction, you will not improve it.
If you are distracted, it’s because you choose distraction. That is a fundamental mindset critical to conquering distraction for good. It’s not the environment. It’s your choices. And those are still in your control.
Don’t fall into the mental trap of believing your distraction is created by external factors. It isn’t. Don’t fall into the mental trap of believing that without external noise, you would be less distracted. You wouldn’t. It’s not cell phones. It’s not computers. It’s not TVs. It’s not other people.
Distraction comes from within your mind. It is a product of choices. Some of you will want to disagree with that, but we will not make excuses here. A myriad of challenges exist for people, both within themselves and within their environments. I have mine just like you have yours. That does not relieve us of our responsibility for our distraction.
The world will not get less noisy, intrusive, and appealing. It will continue to get easier and easier to choose something other than the priority, other than the work you need to do, other than the exact issue you know you need to address. If you want to conquer distraction, it must happen from the inside-out through responsibility and choices because the external world is only going to give you more options for excuses.
Remember: Things don’t get your attention. You give your attention to things. When you give attention to non-priorities, you choose distraction. The distraction isn’t responsible for that choice. You are responsible for that choice.
Answer the call. Do the work.
Share your thoughts