Why Writers Need to Tune Out Distractions and Get Writing

Falling Into The Trap of Distraction

With every type of social media, gaming, news, television streaming, film streaming, and YouTube or TikTok videos at our fingertips, it’s no wonder so many people who would love to write say they don’t have time.

Many people would like to start a new hobby, whether it’s writing, painting, hiking, exercising, or baking, but they find themselves drawn to social media instead. We live vicariously through others who present a perfect life to the world. Someone I know said that we are spending our time watching videos of other people living their lives. I agree, and I would add that we are watching other people live their lives so that we don’t have to take responsibility for living our own lives.

When we look at social media we’re presented with visions of perfect-looking people with their perfect-looking lives, and we think, my cake won’t look like hers so why should I try? My painting won’t look like his, so why should I try? We become so caught up in the flawlessness presented by others that we feel less talented and less worthy.

Most people know, I hope, that content creators share curated versions of their lives. Content creators choose only the most beautiful scenes when the sun is setting just so behind the vista of forests or the cascade of mountains. Creators spend hours editing their videos to make the moment look like a work of art by fiddling with the color palette, choosing the right music, and fixing the right lighting over the bakery-ready sweets.

I watched a few videos from a nice family with two small children under seven who were always smiling, laughing, and playing nicely. They were lovely-looking videos. However…

Anyone with children knows that is not reality. The family doesn’t share when the children have tantrums or refuse to pick up their toys. Their house isn’t always tidy. The burned cakes somehow don’t make an appearance in the finished videos. Still, we’re mesmerized, leaving comments like “So jealous!” When our lives don’t look like that we feel as if somehow we’ve failed at life.

Sharing these curated lives can be harmful to both the content creators and the consumers. According to The JED Foundation’s Understanding Social Comparison on Social Media:

“…creating a false life on social media for the sake of likes/followers can make our shortcomings or struggles in real life seem all the more difficult and we lose sight of what’s real. Even brief exposure to social media can trigger social comparison, and self-evaluations were lower when people viewed profiles of healthy or successful people.”

The JED Foundation notes that the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO)—the worry that someone else is more successful than you—can negatively impact our mental health in a variety of ways:

1. increased depression

2. decreased overall well-being; according to the JED Foundation, “People who are heavy users of social media (upwards of 5 hours a day) have been shown to have a lower sense of self, suffer from depression and even have thoughts of suicide.”

3. poor body image

4. eating disorders

Of course, such issues have been around longer than the internet. When I was a teenager in the 1980s we saw beautiful movie stars and models in entertainment or fashion magazines, and if we didn’t look like them then we felt as if we weren’t enough. In the 1990s, women were expected to be so thin that their inner thighs weren’t supposed to touch. Seriously.

The idea of physical or lifestyle perfection isn’t new; however, since the internet is so darn handy, and since it’s wired in a way to make us addicted, it’s harder to escape the idea that we and our lives should be flawless.

Too Much Social Media Can Be Bad For You

The good news is that there’s nothing inherently bad about the internet. There are even studies that show how the internet can have some beneficial effects. The internet has opened a world of opportunities for many creatives, including myself. I couldn’t have created my own publishing company or started Copperfield Review without the internet. You wouldn’t be subjected to reading this without the internet. There is nothing wrong with watching a few videos or reading some blog posts (I’m pleased to say).

The problem comes in the form of addiction to social media where we become obsessed with the images presented to us. Suddenly, we develop the Grass is Always Greener syndrome. If I lived in the country, my life would be perfect. If I lived in the city, my life would be perfect. If I had that juicer, my life would be perfect. If I had that candle that smells like Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina, my life would be perfect.

Students and younger adults are particularly prone to mental health issues as a result of too much social media usage. According to Cai et al (2023) in Associations Between Problematic Internet Use and Mental Health Outcomes of Students: A Meta-analytic Review:

“The findings from this synthesis showed that problematic internet use was positively related to depressive symptoms, anxiety, loneliness, and other mental health outcomes, while negatively related to subjective well-being. In addition, the association between problematic internet use and depressive symptoms appeared to be relatively robust.”

In “Is Too Much Internet Use Making Us Sick?” Kris Kresser, M.S. states that we have become more isolated as a result of too much internet usage: “The internet was designed to connect us with others. It has certainly done this, but it’s also true that the internet can be a cause of disconnection in our lives. For example, a common scene in the modern household is for all family members to be present, with each person staring into their own screen, co-existing without sharing the experience of life.”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at a restaurant with friends, our phones tucked away in our bags, while we’ve watched people at other tables on their phones, ignoring the friends or family beside them, who were also on their phones.

The other day I was at an outdoor mall with my mother. We ordered our coffees and sat at a table near the kiddie fountains where some small children splashed in the water. To be fair, most of the parents were fully present with their children, playing and splashing too. A few pulled out their phones, snapped a few pictures, and put their phones away.

As my mom and I enjoyed drinking our coffees and watching the children play, I noticed one mother as her small son ran through the fountains by himself while she texted away. She didn’t look up to see where he was. She didn’t seem to notice that he ran clear across the courtyard to the restaurants at the other end. Fortunately, he came back on his own, and, of course, his mom was still texting.

A while ago I went bowling, and there was a small boy, maybe about four, bowling by himself while his mother was engrossed in her phone. The mother was so distracted she didn’t realize that her boy grabbed a bowling ball and walked across three lanes toward the pins. He was very nearly hit when a bowler didn’t see him. The bowler fell over to stop himself from releasing the ball so he wouldn’t hurt the child. The mother, who finally looked up, grabbed her son’s hand and dragged him away, as if it were the child’s fault.

As a teacher, I know that our young people have addictions to their phones like you cannot believe. They are addicted to watching nonsense videos of girls dancing and talking to the camera and video games (Checkers seems to be the most popular at the moment). It’s hard to extol the merits of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein when students would rather be watching dancing videos. But if adults cannot do a better job controlling their phone usage, I have a hard time blaming the children.

Ideas To Pull Ourselves Away From the Noise

One of my favorite websites, Tiny Buddha, has a wonderful article, “Why We Compare Ourselves To Others On Social Media and How To Stop.”

The article shares this quote from Steve Furtick: “The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.”

According to Emily Holland of Tiny Buddha, “We all know the gut-wrenching feeling that arises when we see or hear something that immediately has us second-guessing our appearance, personality, or skill set. Unfortunately, social media provides us with numerous platforms that help to quickly trigger that unpleasant self-disdain. I found myself comparing all aspects of my life, both internal and external, to a person I had never met. She was a stranger in every sense of the word, and yet somehow, her profile page caused me to question my accomplishments, appearance, and even personality traits.”

Holland goes on to make the same point I made earlier in this post, that people are “constantly showcasing the best aspects of their life onto social media.”

So, then, how can we help ourselves tune out from all the distractions?

1. Reduce your time on social media.

Emily Holland shares this as one of her tips, and I agree with her. For years, social media was considered the end-all-be-all of our lives. Everything we ate, did, and visited was posted on social media.

It was the same for creatives. Writers were told by agents and publishers that they had to be on social media. Agents and publishers wouldn’t even consider writers who didn’t have a large social media presence.

Finally, it dawned on someone that the person with the most followers didn’t win. It doesn’t matter if one million people follow you if only 500 of them actually pay attention to your posts. Plus, so many followers are fake bots that the number itself is irrelevant.  

Chuck Wendig, who is fabulous, has an even more fabulous website called terribleminds.com. Wendig has this to say about social media:

“Social media is more or less collapsing. The internet in general is getting less reliable overall, in part due to misinformation, disinformation, and the waves of garbage and glurge barfed forth by various bots and algorithms. Once upon a time, Googling something was a reliable way to learn about it, but now you’ll likely find yourself on a raft floating on a sea of bad information. Social media has become the staging ground for all this shit (and also how, in part, it leeches into the groundwater of the rest of the internet), and as such, social media has started to fall apart like everything else.”

Social media isn’t the holy ground it once was, if it ever truly was, which I doubt.

I’ve never had alerts on my phone for any reason. I’ve deleted my Instagram and Twitter accounts. I log into Facebook once a week. A couple of weeks ago, Meta (the owner of Facebook) spammed me with five messages in an hour saying that it was going to delete my account—for impersonating myself, apparently. I realized, who cares? I don’t even like Facebook. Hardly anyone sees my posts since I refuse to pay to have my posts promoted to people who have already chosen to follow me.

Who knows? Maybe the spam messages were from a bot trying to steal my information. I deleted the messages, so we’ll see if my account is still there.

I check my email once a day. Other than that, they can wait. If Steven Spielberg emails me wanting to make movies of my books, he’ll have to wait too.

If you’re more involved in social media than I am, give yourself a limited amount of time each day in which to scroll through your feeds and add content. If you’re mindlessly scrolling just to see if there’s something new that wasn’t there ten minutes ago, find something more constructive to do with your time.

You could be extreme and turn off your Wi-Fi connection on your device, which is what I do. Granted, it only takes five seconds to turn it back on, but at least I’m forced to think about whether or not I actually need the internet to complete my task.

Sometimes I do need the internet. When I’m researching historical fiction or scholarly writing, I need access to libraries, databases, and other research sites. But I discovered that I was mindlessly clicking on my Amazon KDP author page several times a day as if my book sales changed dramatically in 10 minutes. Keeping the Wi-Fi turned off stops that mindless scrolling.

2. Redirect your focus on the things that really matter. For writers, that is writing.

Redirecting your focus on the things that really matter is another one of Emily Holland’s tips, and again, I agree 100%.

Since I’m not worried about social media, I have time to art journal, bake, cook, color, do yoga, and create a little patio garden oasis for myself. It’s small, but it’s mine, and I have a nice place to sit and listen to the birds and admire the trees. I’ve also started a meditation practice, which is long overdue.

Decreasing the amount of time spent on social media means that you have more time to create. If you’re a writer, that means you have time to write.

As an editor, it amazes me how many people say they want to write but claim they don’t have time. When I ask them what they do with their free hours, they realize how much time they watch YouTube, play video games, and scroll through social media. Slowing down those activities could give them some time to write every day. A little bit every day adds up.

I Have Suffered From Comparisonitis Too

I feel so strongly about this topic because I have suffered from comparisonitis, like so many others.

Primarily, my comparisonitis grew out of my concerns for my writing career. I checked my book sales several times a day. When I was active on social media, I constantly checked my followers, likes, and shares.

I checked other authors’ book sales and fretted about why I didn’t sell as many books. I have sold more than my fair share of books. When the Loving Husband Trilogy was at the height of its popularity, I was doing well. Still, no matter how many copies I sold it was never enough. Instead of being proud of my accomplishments, I continued to compare myself to others and felt like a failure. I constantly searched for the magic formula that would allow me to sell even more books (let me save you time—there is no magic formula).

It’s precisely because I have suffered from this comparisonitis that I was determined to wean myself from it. I didn’t like the idea of my brain being rewired by phone designers. I was tired of constant scrolling that only wasted time. Once I became more mindful of how I was using social media, I stopped comparing myself to anyone else. Suddenly, overnight it seemed, my life became more peaceful. I’m more content with where I am, here and now.

Being Mindful Of Our Social Media Usage

We don’t need to stay away from the internet. However, we should be mindful of how we use it. Content that challenges us to consider the world differently, content that improves our lives (I’ve found many wonderful Buddhist teachers who share lessons in mindfulness that have helped me), and content that assists us with our hobbies (I love learning about art journaling, crocheting, cooking, and baking) can be wonderful.

But then, and here’s the important part, we have to take what we learn and put it into practice. As I learn about mindfulness, I set aside time every day to meditate. When I learn a new crochet stitch, I use it in my next project. When I see a cool art journal page, I create something similar in my own art journal. I’ve discovered a number of recipes that I’ve used many times.

Watching someone bake just for the sake of watching someone bake doesn’t improve my life. Okay, with the exception of The Great British Bake Off. I watch Bake Off just for the sake of watching Bake Off.

It’s important to remember that content creators tell beautiful stories, but that’s all they are—stories. We can admire the beautiful photography and videography, and we can admire the nature scenes and the perfect-looking scones. But we cannot forget to live our own lives, as imperfect and vulnerable as we are in our messy humanness.

Looking outside of ourselves for answers will never work. Besides, the answers are already inside us if we’re brave enough to look. We need to be the best we can be in this moment and ask no more of ourselves.

We need to be mindful of how we spend our time. And if we’re writers then we need to make time for writing.