On allowing for distraction
This is a written excerpt of Rest & Recreation, a companion to Routines & Ruts conversations podcast. Each week, host Madeleine Dore shares reflections from previous interviews and interesting reads to offer you a moment of R&R. Listen on Apple iTunes, Spotify and others.
Words by Madeleine Dore
Maybe the last few days, weeks, months have disappeared in a distracted haze—switching between Twitter, the news, sipping endless cups of tea, folding laundry when you’re meant to be working, maybe staring blankly at the ceiling.
Perhaps during this distracted, uncertain, overwhelming time, there’s also been things you need to do—a demanding work project, an assignment, a difficult conversation with a friend, a chore. So how do we muster the attention for even just a moment?
Attention is a currency, yet it’s so rare that we give or receive it fully.
““If we paid constant attention, stretched ourselves fully, we’d no doubt find ourselves snapping back like an elastic band. Maybe that’s what burnout or fatigue is a symptom of—we are stretching our attention and ourselves too far.””
The etymology of the word attention comes from attend, which is to stretch towards—it’s an extension of ourselves when we give someone or something our full attention. That’s a wonderful thing to offer and receive, but perhaps not something we are capable of maintaining endlessly.
If we paid constant attention, stretched ourselves fully, we’d no doubt find ourselves snapping back like an elastic band. Maybe that’s what burnout or fatigue is a symptom of—we are stretching ourselves too far.
At the moment, many of us may be feeling extended by paying close attention to the injustices of the world. It might even feel like our life is the distraction, and the news is what deserves our attention.
In his recent newsletter, The Imperfectionist, writer Oliver Burkeman spoke about the tendency he has observed in himself and others of living inside the news—more and more people are shifting their psychological centre of gravity to the news cycle to a point it becomes somehow realer to them than the concrete world of their work, family and friends or the main drama of their daily lives.
Of course, global events do impact our daily lives—we should be paying attention. So Oliver’s advice isn’t to simply stop reading the news, but rather aiming to reduce your emotional investment in the world of the news, to reinvest in your own. As he writes:
“To stay sane, you need at least one foot planted firmly in your world: the world of your job and neighbourhood, that letter you need to mail, the pasta you're cooking for dinner, the novel you're reading with your book group, and that guy on your street who never cleans up after his dog – the world where you can have an effect, even if I've admittedly yet to have one with the dog guy.”
So how do we keep one foot planted firmly in our own ordinary, day to day life? How do we find that balance between paying attention, and protecting ourselves from distraction? How do we create some semblance of a shield from the internal and external interruptions? And how do we be a bit kinder to ourselves in the process?
I don’t have all the answers, but here are a few different ways I’ve approached cultivating my attention or shifting it to find myself back to my own life, my own day, my own actions that might make a difference to something small.
1. Set limits
We’re not designed to listen all the time, to pay attention all the time, to extend and stretch all the time. So to set limits, some people I know have allocated themselves specific times to check the news, say in their most productive part of the day. Others set reminders for when they can check their email or go on Twitter.
Personally, I’m a bit all or nothing, so having set pockets for checking the news or social media isn’t something I’ve ever really been able to adhere to. If you’re similar, perhaps it’s about switching off completely.
When I completed The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron last year after picking it up and putting it down for over five years, I did follow the the reading deprivation exercise. The idea is to keep inflow of information and other people’s words to a minimum for an entire week—no news, no books, no social media, no long gossiping conversations, no podcasts, no binging on television—to create space for an outflow.
As Julia Cameron writes:
“Reading deprivation is a very powerful tool - and a very frightening one. Even thinking about it can bring up enormous rage. For most blocked creatives, reading is an addiction. We globe up the words of others rather than digest our own thoughts and feelings, rather than cook up something of our own.”
2. Break tasks into bite-sized pieces
If your focus is fleeting, do what you can in a small spurt of time. Set a timer and simply work on taking one tiny step. Small actions offer agency but also help us lower expectations and accept that it’s okay if things take longer. Even as we keep flitting between things, if we chip away it will eventually get done too.
3. Create a change of scene with the senses
What can be difficult about distractions during this time is the sense of no escape, either figuratively or literally for those who are in lockdown. As a stopgap, use the senses—light a candle for scent, make a cup of tea for taste, listen to a playlist for sound, put on a comfy pair of socks for a physical marker for stepping into the zone.
4. Do another thing
If you can’t find focus, step into a distraction you enjoy, rather than being stuck in a ceaseless feeling of aimless distraction. Go for a walk, binge-watch a show, cook something, listen to a podcast, answer emails, rearrange a draw. Be there fully in the thing you are doing, rather than feeling guilty about the thing you're not doing.
5. Phone a friend
Chances are, someone else you know is feeling distracted right now. Call them or hop on a video chat, share what you need to work on for accountability, and then put on a 45-minute timer and stay on the line to do the thing.
6. Finally, perhaps allow for it
Distraction can be useful for sparking creativity as ideas or connections come to us when our mind wanders, or we are doing something else entirely. Sometimes your brain is leading you to something. Trust it. Give yourself permission right now. Allow for distraction instead of trying to squeeze focus out of your day.
As Julio Cortázar wrote in Around the Day in Eight Worlds:
“All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate.”