The Challenge of Blocking Out Distractions
One of the greatest challenges of the modern world is being able to focus. Without a doubt the world is full of distractions, which may prevent you from starting a productive day, staying healthy and fit, or enjoying the calm and quiet in the midst of a chaotic world.
Being able to focus will give you peace of mind, as you take on the world at your own pace. It will help you simplify things and focus only on the things that will have a significant impact on your life.
Once you learn to focus, you will begin to value the smaller things in life just a little bit more. This means that you’ll become more effective in handling things that life throws at you. You’ll begin to spend your time on the things that matter and recognize the things that cause you stress and waste your time.
By identifying the things that matter and valuing simplicity, you’ll be surprised to learn that you’re doing a lot for your life. Changing things for the better all starts with baby steps, from quitting smoking and eating healthy to being productive and being courageous in reaching for your goals. You need to take on one change at a time, focus on it, TAKE ACTION and achieve it.
Distractions of All Kinds
We are in the Age of Information, but it can be easily called the Age of Distraction too.
The world has always been full of activities and distractions, however it has never been as continuous as it is now. Aside from busy phones, we have to compete with email, social media notifications, open browser tabs, and text messages, just to name a few. Even though access to information is beneficial, it also divides your attention among several things, forcing you to multitask to deal with everything.
At work, you’re are flooded with emails, requiring an immediate response, the phone at your desk rings nonstop, and you constantly glance at reading materials from gadgets and paper sources.
When you get home, you’ll have to scan through 500 channels on TV, with 500,000 million ads screaming for your attention. The computer is on, where additional work is waiting, social networks are busy with notifications, people are texting or calling, and kids or partners are seeking your attention.
Although it’s a good thing that the Internet is growing and that everyone seems connected, everyone also seems to be running out of “free time” (if that’s even a thing) too fast.
Engaging in online activities seems to have become addictive because of the instant positive feedback that it brings. It makes you feel good to receive an email, get Facebook likes, or see post shares. But these things only end up eating a lot of your time.
Being connected also seems to be naturally growing as a part of our lifestyle. You have to be connected anytime, anywhere, at home, in the car, at work, and on the train. But everyone needs to control this new sense of connection to avoid excessive distractions.
Work is hard. Distractions are plentiful. And time is short. -Adam Hochschild
To test your tendency to be distracted, how many times did you stop reading this post to do other things? To check an email or text? To give in to a visual or audio distraction? To talk to other people?
In a world free of distractions, you would have answered “zero” to all these questions, but in reality, the world is full of distractions. So, with that in mind identify the things that distract you the most and minimize your time with these things.
