Stirring Point

Can you recall a time when your focus was clear and the distractions of the day were minimal? Was there a lightness attached to your sense of purpose? What kept the negative diversions at bay?

Distractions have a way of robbing our days of meaning. Our minds fixate on menial ideas, and before long, we’re sucked from our clarity and thrust into a haze. 

Some distractions are necessary and, frankly, cathartic. A spiraling mind quickly leads to exhaustion and finding reprieve is a useful tactic to slow the spin. Other times, distractions are like bottomless pits. As we fall further, the climb back to focus becomes increasingly more difficult.

There are things we implicitly know are important. Family, beliefs, health, and hobbies are all prime examples of concepts that deserve our focus. They carry archetypes we aspire to achieve with our behavior, and we’re hopeful we’ll somehow match the effort they deserve. With health, our plans for exercise and diet aim for consistency. With family, we wish to be better children, parents, or siblings. But we often fail in these modest charges, derailed by distractions of almost laughable insignificance. Focusing is hard; becoming distracted is easy. Gossip, mindless scrolling, watching another binge-worthy episode—these things require almost no effort. Calling a family member or writing a letter may take the same amount of time as scrolling Instagram or scanning clickbait headlines. Which activity is more important? Again, not every moment must be saturated with meaning, but the world around us favors distractions. Every marketer, ad agency and corporation that wants what’s in our wallets is vying for our attention. And here we are, offering it to them hand over fist.

As much as we implicitly know what’s important, we equally know when we are wasting time. As the quantity of distractions around us grows, the balancing scales are starting to tip. Maintaining focus has never been harder. Algorithms recalibrate by the millisecond in order to find clever ways to keep our attention. Each time we get distracted, another sliver of focus gets shaved from our noble plans.

This very moment is a great time to cease all distractions and to think for a moment about what deserves your focus. A gentle adjustment may tip the scale in a more meaningful direction, and that may clear the path for greater clarity. There’s no reason to wait until tomorrow, as the scale is ultimately yours to control.