Ask Colin: How To Focus

I seriously just can’t focus on anything, and I feel like it’s keeping me from learning all the things I want to learn and doing what I want to do and being as connected as I want to be with my friends and family.

What can I do to be more in the moment, and how can I focus more on the things that I really care about instead of all this stupid stuff on the internet?

Sincerely,

Already Distracted Again Man

Hey ADAM-

You’re not alone in feeling this way. Regardless of age group, a substantial number of people (especially people in wealthier countries where high-end phones and high-speed internet are abundant, but this is definitely not limited to such places) feel that they’re spending too much time on their devices in a way that negatively impacts their lives.

This has led to a flurry of thinkpieces about why the end of the world is nigh, and how younger generations in particular are growing up psychologically stunted (if a lot better off in pretty much every other way), which in turn has increased the call for solutions to a problem that, first, isn’t a single problem, second, may not be a problem at all, and third, may not have a solution—or a single, always applicable solution, at least.

Without knowing the specifics of your situation, I can’t offer any granular tactical advice about the individual distractions you’re coping with, but broadly, many of us are spending more of our time with more passive forms of entertainment—as opposed to interactive, immersive types—and the purveyors of these entertainments have gotten very good at keeping us engaged with their content, whether we’re talking about Netflix, Facebook, TikTok, or video game companies.

Each of these media types, by the way, are not inherently bad, and in the right quantities and at the right time can actually be a true value-add to our lives.

Video games can force us to think strategically, solve puzzles, can help us engage emotionally with situations we might not ever encounter in real-life, and can allow us to socialize with friends in an interesting, collaborative and/or competitive environment.

Social media can allow us to connect with people from around the world, share information within an intellectually democratic environment, and can help us stay in touch with existing friends and family.

And streaming services like Netflix can help us find and experience works of art and works of entertainment from a variety of creators with an array of backgrounds, creating work portraying an abundance of different perspectives. We can learn from this work, empathize with what’s happening on screen, and enjoy that engagement solo, or with real-life friends and family.

There are incentives for creators and the platforms through which we receive their content, however, to keep us there, slurping up more and more of what they’re purveying.

Sometimes these incentives are purely competitive: if we spend more time on Netflix, we will be more likely to build habits around watching their content, and thus, more likely to keep paying our Netflix membership fees while also being less likely to drop them for one of their competitors.

Sometimes these incentives are built into their business model: the longer Facebook can keep you engaged with their portfolio of apps and services, the more ads they can serve you, and the more money they make.

There are hundreds of thousands of very smart people working around the clock, around the world, coming up with ways to keep us glued to our screens because of these incentives. And none of these people, in isolation, are bad or evil: it’s just that, unfortunately often, their efforts add up to something sociopathic in its unending desire to milk us for more revenue, whatever the individual or subsequent societal costs.

Hence, the situation in which we find ourselves, where we have access to an embarrassment of incredible and incredibly addictive entertainment options, which can and very often do keep us from investing proper time, attention, and resources in other things—things that might ultimately be more important to us, but which have trouble competing with the staggering amount of marketing dollars and impressive user interface manipulations to which we’re exposed all day, every day.

Part of this issue, then, is the result of smart and pricey investments being made by these corporate entities that are acting in accordance with the incentives that determine whether they flourish or die. Which is understandable.

Another part of the issue, though, is that if we, as individuals, don’t build habits around being self-sustaining, it’s likely that we’ll get stuck in patterns defined by these entertainment-generating entities, and will be overall less capable of keeping ourselves entertained.

It doesn’t matter that there might be deeper levels of engagement, happiness, and fulfillment in building strong relationships and making things and learning things; if we never get around to doing such things, and instead opt for the simple sugars of externally provided entertainments, that comparison will never get made.

It also takes an immense amount of work to experience eudaemonic pleasure, compared to the more easily accessible hedonic sort. And the whole time we’re pursuing the former, we’re exposed to, and probably enjoying, the latter. Which can reinforce habits that nudge us toward simpler and more easily accessed enjoyments, rather than the deeper and more complex, but also trickier to accomplish variety.

It’s possible to extract ourselves from the distraction cycle, but it’s not easy.

Even if you spend a great deal of time trying to avoid these focus-depleters, it’s likely you’ll still succumb from time to time. Which isn’t the end of the world, as again, there is value in these distracting things. It’s just that—like fast food or a candy bar—they’re best if imbibed intentionally and not every day. A periodic candy bar can be a joy, but having candy bars for every meal will lead to a great many unfortunate consequences.

My suggestion, if you’re keen to get more done, focus more on the people and activities and work that means the most to you, and feel less distracted all the time, is to give yourself the opportunity to really consider what’s truly important to you: what it is you’d like to accomplish, how you’d like your day to be shaped, where you’d like to go next.

That will provide you with a magnetic North of sorts, which will then allow you to calibrate your life in a particular direction.

Habits are easier to build if you know where you’d like to end up, and if you can figure out what that more optimal lifestyle looks like, you can then decide which elements of your life serve that goal, and which are in the way and may require removal, replacement, or tweaking.

From there, it’s a matter of willpower and structure, in some cases just gritting your teeth and muscling your way into new routines and rituals, and in some cases creating frictions between you and the habits that don’t serve you. Putting your TV in the closet so that any time you want to watch something on it or play a video game, you’ll need to carry it out, plug it all back in, and then put it away after, for instance, may seem like a silly leap to take, but it’s remarkable how well such frictions can sway our behaviors, with time.

Small frictions between you and hedonic activities become even more powerful when you pair them with the removal of frictions that stand between you and the things that you’d like to do more of.

If you want to write more, for instance, keep your writing area set up and ready for you to sit back down and get to work, or stop writing midway through a sentence that you already know how to finish, when you’re done, so that when you sit down at your laptop, tomorrow, you know exactly how to start.

It can help to create little rules for yourself, as well, as to how you use your devices in different circumstances.

Consider keeping your smartphone in your pocket or bag when talking to someone else in person, consider turning off all of your notifications whenever possible, and consider deleting as many apps from your phone as dare, very much including the ones that distract you most.

Deleting apps can create frictions that disincentive their casual use: if you have to reinstall Instagram and log back in every time you want to use it, you’ll be far less likely to thoughtlessly scroll through photos when you might otherwise be talking with friends or reading a book. Removing your devices’ ability to summon you with a little bleep or vibration, robotically telling you when to pick up the phone or look away from what you’re doing, allows you to decide how and when to use these tools, rather than them setting your schedule, based on metrics that are optimized for their business model, rather than your lifestyle.

You might also consider looking into mindfulness, which, at its core, is all about being more aware of the present. It can serve as a type of meditation, though it’s often less associated with the spiritual side of meditating, and more about building up one’s focus-muscles, appreciating things, and becoming more thoughtful.

There are mixed feelings in both the meditation and medical worlds about mindfulness, but it’s a concept that’s relatively simple to understand and practice, and it’s a good place to start if you’re keen to exercise your ability to be more focused and in the moment.





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