Learning To Focus In A World Of Distraction

Dear friends,

Welcome to this meditation which is designed to help you wind your way through our world with its ever-present opportunities for distraction.

So our first task is to come to a state of mind where we can be free of distraction.

Hopefully you will have a space in your home which you have set aside for a daily practice of meditation,

And hopefully you will find many aids to meditation here on Insight Timer.

So settle into your place,

Settle onto your chair or cushion or whatever suits.

Some people find it helpful to close their eyes for this practice.

If you are one of them,

Then go ahead and close your eyes now.

The important thing is that you are sitting comfortably.

You may have distractions in the form of work to be done.

You may have distractions in the form of work which has been done,

And you wonder if it has been done correctly.

Things like this can flash through our minds and upset our peace of mind.

Move all these things to one side just for now and relax,

As we allow ourselves a one-minute pause to bring ourselves into a state of present-moment awareness.

Welcome back.

Now that you have settled down,

The remainder of this meditation will be in two parts.

First we'll take a look at the problem of distraction.

Then after another pause for reflection,

We will go on to consider possible solutions.

I'm sure we have all noticed how difficult it is to remain focused these days.

The problem might be that we are suffering from information overload.

Smartphones,

Tablets and wearable technology,

They're wonderful.

But these devices allow us to be constantly connected in a way that wasn't possible in earlier times.

We receive notifications,

Messages,

Beeps,

Reminders of one kind or another,

All of them amounting to a steady stream of interruptions.

And it has been well documented that social media systems are engineered in order to maximise user engagement.

The algorithms prioritise content that keeps us scrolling and this makes it difficult for us to disengage.

The internet itself provides us with access to an unprecedented and overwhelming amount of information.

We have the information of the world at our fingertips.

This is wonderful,

But it requires management on our part.

Just think of the sheer volume of news,

The articles of interest,

The videos,

The updates.

There is no limit to the possible calls upon our attention.

This along with our natural tendency to try to keep on top of things leads us into a state of decision fatigue.

Our attention becomes fragmented,

Decisions,

Decisions.

I think we all suffer from the fear of missing out,

FOMO as it is called.

This has become something of an addiction.

We have to check and check again in case we miss out on something.

Habit drives us to check our devices with a mindless degree of frequency.

Why do we do this?

The answer is simple.

When we check for notifications,

When we receive notifications and we receive social media likes and responses,

A shot of dopamine is released into the brain.

This creates a feedback loop that encourages us to check again and again and we keep checking our devices over and over again in the hope of receiving the next shot.

How many times did you check your phone yesterday?

I've lost count of the times I checked mine.

This is such a hard habit to break,

Such an auto response to try to limit.

The phone is there,

You pick it up,

You check.

Even our work-life balance has been made harder to maintain when so many of us have the possibility of working from home.

Working from home seems such a great idea and in many ways it is.

No morning and evening commutes.

Just think of the time saved,

Think of the energy saved,

The lessening of our impact on the environment.

But now we find work notifications interfering with what should be our downtime.

It requires a good degree of self-discipline to call it a day,

To switch to personal time mode at what should be the end of the working day.

We live in a wonderful world.

Most of us would probably not go back to the past even if we had a choice.

But the modern world offers us so many options,

Too many options.

What will we see?

What will we listen to?

What books to read?

What will we buy?

And are we making the right choice when we buy something?

We find ourselves in this swirl of never-ending decision-making.

And that constant decision-making can lead to indecision and distraction.

Every notification we receive,

Every email,

Every news update,

These require a choice.

Will we engage with this or will we not?

Does this require our attention?

Do we need to take note?

Do we need to pass this on to someone else?

The list of possibilities goes on and on,

All adding to our decision-making overload.

I think it's time now for another one-minute pause before we turn to consider possible solutions.

Welcome back again.

The good news is that we don't have to live like this.

It would help if we can dedicate a few minutes at the start of each day to practice a little mindfulness meditation.

This will set us up for the day,

A positive mindful start.

Here on Insight Timer,

There are so many aids to meditation.

Apart from the timer itself,

With its great variety of bells,

You'll find here a huge selection of meditations,

Long and short meditations.

Listening to any of these can bring us to a place of meditation in those times when we find ourselves unable or reluctant to simply sit to meditate without any external aids.

This starting off in a concentrated way in the morning is important.

It will help train our minds to focus on the present moment.

This will set out our intention for the day and it will improve our ability to manage distraction.

Another point is that in a non-work situation,

We don't have to be always connected.

We can set specific times for checking emails,

Social media,

Messages.

We can use the Do Not Disturb or Focus functions.

These modes are on our devices ready for us to use so that we can minimize interruptions.

And there are organizational systems that can help us as well.

You may have come across the Pomodoro technique.

This involves working in focused intervals,

Usually 25 minutes of uninterrupted work.

This sport of work is followed by a short break,

Say 5 minutes,

Before the next 25 minutes where we devote unbroken attention to the task in hand.

The Pomodoro technique helps us to maintain concentration and by aiding the effective doing of our work,

It helps us prevent burnout.

And it is really effective because any of us can easily concentrate on a particular task for a simple 25 minutes.

There are other ideas as well that we might try.

We can set aside time for important tasks that require focus,

Maybe one morning or one evening in the week depending on our schedule.

During that allocated time,

We deliberately eliminate distractions by finding a quiet workplace and by turning off notifications.

During that time,

We will not allow ourselves to be distracted by attending just to the easy and to the humdrum.

Another idea.

Someone suggested practicing what is called digital minimalization.

How is this done?

You delete apps that you find the main source of distraction and you keep only those apps that are really useful.

Now if we find it challenging to delete what we know to be time-wasting apps,

At least we can move them out of sight,

Away from our homepage,

So that we have to go to a little more trouble finding and opening them.

And back to the all-important matter of starting the day.

We can start our day by setting clear intentions or goals.

It stands to reason that if we haven't set a goal,

We will be distracted and deflected by everything that comes along.

Instead of multitasking,

As is such a common practice,

We can help get things done by focusing on one task at a time,

Completing one task before moving on to the next.

That can improve our productivity and it will help reduce mental fatigue.

There's also the important point of stopping briefly between tasks.

We don't do that often enough.

So rather than moving on from one task to the next without any break whatsoever,

Take a short break,

One or two deep breaths,

Realize where you are and then come back to work.

You might ask,

What about keeping up to date?

What about the news?

It can be difficult to do this,

But we need to limit our exposure to news.

Of course we need to keep ourselves informed about what is going on in the world.

Informed yes,

But we don't need to check the news continuously.

Checking in once or at most twice a day will keep us informed as much as most of us need to be.

Finally day is done and it's time for rest.

We do not bring a mobile device with us to bed.

We all need to make time for adequate rest and sleep.

If we are tired,

We will find that we cannot concentrate on anything and we'll be more easily distracted by every useless thing that happens to come into our field of view.

I'd like to end our meditation with some words from the wonderful Mary Oliver.

Mary has some easily remembered advice when it comes to this matter of concentration and avoiding distractions.

She says,

Say you have bought a ticket on an airplane and you intend to fly from New York to San Francisco.

What do you ask of the pilot when you climb aboard and take your seat next to the little window which you cannot open,

But through which you see the dizzying heights to which you are lifted from the secure and friendly earth?

Most assuredly,

She says,

You want the pilot to be his regular and ordinary self.

You want him to approach and undertake his work with no more than a calm pleasure.

You want nothing fancy,

Nothing new.

You ask him to do routinely what he knows how to do,

Fly an airplane.

You hope he will not daydream.

You hope he will not drift into some interesting meander of thought.

You want this flight to be ordinary,

Not extraordinary.

So too with the surgeon and the ambulance driver and the captain of the ship.

Let all of them work as ordinarily they do,

In confident familiarity with whatever the work requires and no more.

Their ordinariness is the surety of the world.

Their ordinariness makes the world go round.

Words from Mary Oliver.

And so it can be with us if we work to avoid distraction and practice the art of concentration.

Namaste.