focus is a lost Art: how to take back your attention and achieve your goals
Focus is a lost art in a world full of distractions.
Everything and everyone is fighting for your attention.
After getting on the internet for so long and being an avid user, it didn’t take me long to realize that social media is the new drug.
When I looked at my mobile phone usage statistics at the end of every day and saw Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and WhatsApp topping the chart I knew something had to change.
I was anxious about the results I was seeing because I noticed that I had little control over my time and attention.
Are you okay with sitting by being a slave to distractions that leave you with drained pockets, strained eyes, low level of energy due to lack of proper sleep and the gradual destruction of anything meaningful in your life?
Everyone is out to steal your attention.
This in itself isn’t bad. It’s necessary. You aren’t going to sit on an island and pay attention to nothing. The problem lies in your capacity for critical thought.
According to seedscientific, the internet generates around 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day. This includes everything from Facebook photos to data collected by the Curiosity Rover on Mars.
It is estimated that the amount of data generated daily will increase from 97 zettabytes in 2022 to 181 zettabytes in 2025.
That is a staggering figure to wrap my head around.
Your brain processes an average of 74GB in information per day.
That is the storage capacity of a standard smartphone.
This is the life of the modern human.
You don’t have clarity on how to achieve your ideal future.
You feel that life is meaningless and bland. Your days are filled with responsibilities that aren’t important to you.
You want to change your life but you cannot make quality decisions that will change the outcome you get everyday.
A man who lacks the discipline to improve his social skills usually lacks the discipline to exercise his creative skills.
And due to his lack of success, it manifests over and over again, creating a negative feedback loop.
This is the majority of men aged 16-30 years old. The future men to improve this world.
The world has many problems.
But they aren’t going to be solved until you get your sh*t together.
And it all starts with solving your attention problem.
Some work requires a lot of deep thinking and focus.
How can you work in a distracted environment where everyone is scrolling on their phone and switching tasks from social media to work to something else to doing what their impulses say.
This is supposed to be a rhetorical question. But by now I am sure you have your answer in your own head. Stay away from distractions. Focus.
The future belongs to the focused.
You can’t be on social media 24/7 and expect to see results in your life. You should not allow the cancerous virus eat into your head and steal away valuable time.
There are plenty of other things you can be working on at the same time.
You can still go to the gym.
You can still learn a skill.
You can still focus on yourself.
The internet and social media is a tool. Use it as such - like a tool.
You wouldn’t use a hammer and keep it on you all day would you?
Know what you want, get what you need, provide back to the community, and then log off social media and experience nature.
The internet has many good stuff to offer you. I learnt how to built digital products just from the internet.
Thank you Internet, you changed my life. Thank you God.
There are many good uses of the internet. Stop mindless scrolling.
If you are going to stay connected online do it intentionally.
But you cannot keep wasting time consuming online without taking action.
That gets you nowhere.
Take back control of your life so you can find meaning, reinvent yourself, and create your ideal future.
Become an independent thinker so you have the mental skill to navigate even the darkest moments of life.
Take advantage of new opportunities because skills not learned in school are the source of income not found in employment.
Maintain mental clarity so you don’t fall into a trench of negativity and continue attacking your goals.
Most people are completely oblivious to where their attention is at any given time.
You can’t learn to direct your attention until you’re aware of your attention in the first place.
If what you are giving your attention to doesn’t
But rather
Focus your attention on the important stuff.
If you’re serious about changing your life, you’ll find a way - if not, you’ll find an excuse.
What does it mean to spend your time well?
I’ve been thinking about how to spend my time well.
I used to feel like little bits of my time kind of slip away from me, and when that happens, it feels like parts of my life are slipping away.
Specifically, it feels like little bits of my time get slipped away to various things like this Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), Tiktok.
You pull down to refresh on Facebook or X. But the thing is that 60 seconds later, you’ll pull down to refresh again. This doesn’t make any sense.
The cost of your distraction from social media is that every time you get interrupted, it takes you about 23 minutes, on average, to refocus your attention.
This actually trains bad habits. The more distractions you get from your mobile devices, it’s conditioning and training you to interrupt yourself.
Instead of having constant mindless interruptions, you can create conscious interruptions.
At least I have tried this and it’s helped me get almost half of my time back so that I can focus on the most important stuff.
I have made sure my mobile device is set to focused mode each day at 7pm. This is how I block time to read and write.
Recommended steps:
Put restricted timing on each social media app through Digital Wellbeing option in your phone settings.
Put your screen on greyscale after 10pm to give your eyes rest before sleep.
Block time for social media to connect and contribute meaningful feedback and then log off.
Prioritize reading over scrolling.
Quit legacy media. It is an attention slot machine.
The social media algorithm is trained to give you back what you consume. Start consuming useful information and your feed will start looking like a library of useful data.
People you follow online are the information you consume. Pay attention to the people you follow on social media. That dictates the quality of the feed you read and the information you take in.
I used to feel bad about not have exciting selfies and photoshoots to post about.
Until I paid close attention.
I realized I’m excited about:
Give yourself permission to enjoy the small things as your big things.
Hope that helps.
Talk soon!
CEO at Cvgods
1 年Welldone Patrick, this is really good. We should collaborate.