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HR managers to identify the top culprits of workplace distractions. The most common answers aren’t surprising: smartphones (55 percent), the internet (41 percent), gossip (37 percent), social media (37 percent), coworkers dropping by (27 percent), smoking or snack breaks (27 percent), email (26 percent), meetings (24 percent), and noisy coworkers (20 percent).
Other studies are more conservative in their findings but still note a significant link between higher social media use and decreased marriage quality.
Consider that we have a law that prohibits you from operating a motor vehicle while staring at your phone.
“My sixty-five-year-old parents are more distracted by their iPads than my five-year-old son. I honestly think I’m going to put restrictions on their devices while they’re at my house for the next week.”
There was a day when you didn’t know the answer to something and you simply didn’t know. Millennials have grown up with the mantra: “Well, we don’t have to not know!” And this awareness that somewhere out there the answer or that one bit of information can be found has created an unprecedented level of distraction.
If you remember the experience of pulling over to a gas station and frantically looking for a quarter to use a pay phone, you’re not a Millennial.
What’s interesting is comparing the number of people who say their smartphone is a problem with the number of people who say they’re actively doing something about it. Both are growing at staggering rates.
No, the actual phone or device is not the root of our problem. It’s only the conduit to other things—programs and games and images that stimulate our minds and bodies and shape our thoughts and desires. All this simply exacerbates feelings of discontent and increases our longing to feed our unsatisfied desires and provide for unmet needs.
“The people who are closest to a thing are often the most wary of it. Technologists know how phones really work, and many have decided they don’t want their own children anywhere near them.”
Like most do-it-yourself home improvement projects, distractions will make the things you want to do in life take longer and cost more than you might realize.
I’ve narrowed them down to three price tags you’ll need to pay, if not now, then at some point in the future: 1. The opportunity cost of the unknown. 2. The lack of traction caused by the distraction. 3. The failure to live your best life.
It alludes to the unknown nature of the things your distractions are distracting you from. When economists and sociologists talk about opportunity costs, they are speaking of the benefits you miss out on by choosing one thing over another.
That time, that energy, that moment where you are present—it’s sacrificed and lost. An opportunity is lost with every distraction we feed.
When traction is lost, things that are in motion will spin out of control. They have nothing to grab hold of, nothing to allow for forward momentum.
Countless people are busy and fill their days with loads of activities, only to collapse in bed at night exhausted. And they wonder, Did I accomplish anything meaningful today? Distraction-filled days lead to traction-less lives.
First, they make us promises. Yes, some distractions annoy and bother us, but most of the time we are able to ignore or decline them in favor of what we want.
Second, they deliver on their promises. And unlike the classic Ja Rule and Ashanti song, they are both always there when you call and always on time.
The promise behind many of the distractions in our lives is simple: If you pay attention to me, I promise you’ll stop thinking about whatever you were thinking about.
They don’t make you better. They don’t lead you somewhere intentionally. They’re quick fixes, short-term solutions for momentary escapes from this life.
The simple definition of a distraction is “something that prevents someone from giving full attention to something else.”
Here are some examples of what I mean by a positive distraction: • A thirst for learning that keeps talk radio on all the time. • A desire to be healthy and fit that keeps you fascinated with your health. • A drive to achieve that keeps you working hard.
Anything can be a distraction if it keeps us from the things we most need in order to be healthy and purposeful in every dimension of life.
Here are three things that are almost always true about the white noise in our lives: 1. It’s masking something. 2. It’s constant. 3. It’s imperceptible.
The quietest room in the world is at Orfield Labs in Minneapolis, and it’s so quiet that the only things you’ll hear are your organs doing their thing—your heart beating, your lungs breathing. If you stay long enough in this anechoic chamber, it’s possible the depth of silence might cause you to start hallucinating. The longest amount of time anyone has spent in the room is forty-five minutes. This form of solitary confinement is powerful enough to break the strongest of men,
He wants the masking effect of the music to help him stop thinking about the deeper questions he wants to avoid: “Oh my, too deep, please stop thinking, I liked it better when my car had sound.”
It is about the “noise” in your life—the things you are doing to mask your deeper desires and emotions.
For some, you’ll be more likely to check social media, find a season to binge on Netflix, or, worse, turn to more dangerous forms of noise.
When we feel overwhelmed, afraid, depressed, or discouraged, we turn up the dial on our white noise. Not only does it help us avoid the outward distractions, it mutes the inner voice telling us how we’re doing.
I’ve noticed that alumni of Georgia Tech don’t ask, “When did you graduate?” They say, “When did you get out?”
When something we don’t like is screaming inside us, we always find something outside—an external distraction—and turn it up.
Can we agree that the distraction of white noise is causing a problem? I sure hope so. And if so, maybe you’re asking, “Well, what are the implications of being overly distracted and consistently failing to pay attention to those important things inside us that are screaming for our attention?”
Is it good to know how you feel? Of course! But does that mean our emotions should control our lives?
Instead, our world is filled with adults brimming with confidence and crippled by insecurity.
“Self-affirmation—apart from self-evaluation—is the beginning of self-deception and the end of self-development.”
If we affirm ourselves without evaluating ourselves honestly and in depth, we end up smuggling our unprocessed emotions into the future. Anytime we fail to process our emotions, they fester.
Either you’ll learn to handle your emotions or your emotions will end up handling you.
Either you’ll learn to handle your emotions or your emotions will end up handling you.
The longer those emotions lie unattended to, the more devastating their consequences.
Before we can lead with passion, we need to turn the noise down. We need to find space and quiet to learn how to listen—to hear what’s being said inside us, where there is pain, where there are fears, where there are dreams and hopes that we’ve never said out loud.
Let me make it as simple as possible. Here are three steps to turning down the noise in your life: 1. Name your noise. 2. Experiment with your noise. 3. Listen to what’s there.
the most common answers are the same: • Work • Television • Radio • News • Podcasts • Exercise • Alcohol • Eating • Shopping
What is masking the voice inside your head? What is silencing your inner voice?
At the start of each month, she practices a discipline in which she chooses something and temporarily stops doing it for that month. She pauses, observes the things she is currently doing, decides whether she can stop doing something, and then changes that variable. She cuts it out. She quits it. She’s experimenting with the noise.
So what about you? What can you experiment with? Are we friends enough for me to ask you a few questions? 1. What feels like it has become a habit for you? 2. What would others say has become a distraction for you? 3. When you’re stressed, anxious, fearful, or apathetic, where do you go—what do you do—to escape those feelings?
Dr. Howard Hendricks, who used to say all the time, “Experience alone isn’t helpful. Evaluated experience is what’s helpful.”
First, I learned that I do have the power to say no.
Second, I realized social media was exhausting me.
I hadn’t consciously grasped the subtle pressure I had felt to post about my life and keep up with the appearance of activity until I wasn’t doing it every day.
Third, I realized that social media was not the problem. Sure, it’s a problem, but it’s not the problem.
Pick something—some white noise that you are using to mask the distractions in your life, internally and externally. Turn it down. Then listen to what’s there.
