[00:01] Welcome to The Focus B Show, where Katie Stoddart high performance coach, interviews experts around the world in performance and mindfulness. Now here's your host. Katie.
[00:34] Welcome to a brand new episode of the Focus B show. I am very excited to talk today about managing distractions, but more particularly about the role of emotions when it comes to distractions. Most of the time we believe that we are distracted because of something external. Whether this is a notification of an email, whether it is someone knocking at our door, whether it is the bell ringing, the phone ringing. We believe that distractions are external. In fact, most of the time, I think I'd say probably 90% of the time, the distractions are internal. What does this mean? This means that they come from emotions such as boredom, anxiety, frustration, loneliness, and from this we end up being distracted. We need to look at how we define distraction. NIR EAL explains it beautifully when his book Indistractable, when he says that distraction is the opposite of traction. Therefore, distraction actually means not doing what you want to be doing. So if you want to be focusing on your report, if the intention was to do a report or write your book or write an article or do a call and you end up on social media, then social media is a distraction. On the other hand, if you were supposed to spend time on social media and that you end up doing something else, then the something else is the distraction. So distraction can only really be defined by looking at its opposite. And the main key difference here is the intention behind it. When your intention is clear and you're doing something that's not what you intended to do, it's a form of distraction. So how can we avoid being distracted? Or how can we develop this super ability to be indistractable? This comes primarily, not only, but primarily from managing our own internal state. This is why so many people struggle, because they think the solution is out there in the external world. They think it's in notification blockers. They think it's having clear boundaries of when people can call them. But if you're feeling unhappy, unsatisfied, and you're still seeking distractions externally, you will always find them. If you block your email and Google and this, that, and the other, you will always find a solution to manage your pain, your inner pain and emotions in an external way. Therefore, blocking it is a temporary sort of solution, but it doesn't really work. What really works is working on the emotions. And this is more difficult, which is why people prefer to choose notification blockers than managing internal state. So how do we do this in practice? Let's say that you're working on your report, that you need to deliver by the next day, and suddenly you feel this urge, this need to check social media or your emails. When this happens, the simplest way in our mind is to do what you want to be doing. So go on social media and stuff and then come back. This is what we believe is easier in our mind. We think let me just satisfy this urge and then I can come back and work. As you've probably noticed, I definitely have. This doesn't work because then we go down the rabbit hole and there's no way coming out of it. Or if we do it's 2 hours later and we've been distracted, or even half an hour later. A great concept that again Nirayal mentions is the ten minute rule and he's read a lot of research on these different topics and this is one of the best solutions I have come across ever in this field. The concept is that when we feel distracted, instead of giving into the urge or instead of saying no, I will never do this, and fight it with our willpower, we give ourselves ten minutes. We say if within ten minutes I still want to do it, I can go on it. What does this do? This does a really interesting thing in our brain where we don't feel the need for so much willpower because we're resisting so hard. But also it gives us a bit of a time lapse to actually think why do we have this urge? And that's where really the magic happens because that's when you'll start to see the emotions. Is it boredom? Are you just not enjoying what you're doing? How can you make it more exciting or challenging? Is it frustration? It's not working. Maybe you need to take a break. Thumb fresh air, think it through, write with the notepad is it loneliness? And you feel that you will reconnect when you reach out to other people on social media or online. Looking at what the emotion is can then help you to deal with the emotion. So in that moment, in those brief ten minutes, you can either go back to the tasks that you were doing or you can process that emotion. There are different ways you can do this. One of them is through taking a break, which I highly promote. So just going outside, getting some fresh air, drinking some water, switching off from the screens, sometimes that on its own is enough to process the emotion. Other times you might need to journal about it. If it's something quite big that's coming up or you feel it's repeating itself during the day, maybe a fear failure that comes up, maybe overwhelm, because overwhelm can also be a reason why we distract ourselves. We have so much on our plate that we need that dopamine boost from something else. Journaling helps a lot. Meditation can also be useful. This is useful during the day, but also to begin your day. This will raise your own awareness and help you to understand why you're having these emotions and where they're coming from. What we don't want to do is judge ourselves for feeling this way. It's okay to feel lonely. It's okay to feel bored. It's okay to feel frustrated. It's not a matter of if it's good or bad. It's a matter of processing it so that then you can continue your work or your life or your day. And maybe you might need a bit longer than a ten minute break. And by getting into the habit of processing these emotions as they come through, you will find that you don't feel the urge to do something else as much. It all begins with having the awareness of when you want to go to that distraction, having the awareness of when you feel the need to let me just check something else. Once you have that awareness and you process the emotion, sometimes it might just be a small emotion. You might just be a bit stuck in your code or report or writing, and just acknowledging that might be enough. Oh, yes, it's because I'm feeling stuck. Let me get a glass of water. Come back. Ah, that's what I needed to do. Done. No need for distractions. Once you've learned to manage this internal realm of emotions, then the distractions aren't so much of an issue. Because it all begins internally. And the queue is often something that we haven't processed or digested. And as all habits are queue routine reward. The cue is something like I'm feeling anxious. The routine is Check social media. The reward is I feel relieved or connected. But that can also lead to I feel guilty, I haven't done enough work. Another cue routine. Let me check my email. Another reward. Oh, at least I feel a bit productive, but still guilty and not productive. And it leads to these cycles of unproductivity because we haven't processed the initial emotion that got in the way. This also happens a lot with procrastination. If you're a massive procrastinator out there, you will identify similar thought patterns. So instead of feeling guilt, instead of it lowering your self esteem and self respect, pause. Think, what is going on? Why am I procrastinating? And take a small step. So it all comes back to managing your emotions, raising your awareness of these emotions. And then suddenly the distractions aren't such a big obstacle. I hope this has been useful for you. Please leave a review or a comment, rate it on Apple podcasts and let me know your thoughts on this episode if it helps you to manage your emotions and to be less distracted. A wonderful book by Niral that I've mentioned indistractable. I will put the links in the show notes and also, obviously I specialize in Focus, so I discuss these things a lot. And yes, thank you so much for listening and talk to you the next time. Thank you. Bye.
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