In Praise of Distraction

How I do prolificity

Clearly I stamped my digital footprint with a message: I am interested in productivity. 

I say this because my social media and email are now filled with tips about becoming more productive, more focused, better, better, better.  Don’t get me wrong, I do believe in better, I do. I think that “better” is a very fun game to play.  But productive is … unclear. And focus is simply not accurate at all.

I am, by all accounts, distracted most of the time.

Photo by Hiki App on Unsplash

“Deep thinking” as described in most research¹ is not what I do, unless we see deep thinking without a time component.  If we see deep thinking as something we do for a little while before our attention shifts to a new thing, well then sign me up.  I think deeply on one thing until my attention leads me to something else.  And then I think deeply on that. This has yielded a body of work, some of which unfolds daily here.

I do contain my time.

One needn’t look long and far to find literature in favor of boxing time, but it is often for a singular purpose.  Focusing on one thing for an extended period of time, they say, will increase the likelihood that it gets done and it gets done well. 

Sure. 

The research looks good, so I am not in a position to refute it.  But that is not how I do it.  I can offer an alternative. If being productive is following through on a plan to create high quality content quickly, then I nominate myself to be called productive. But I am not focused.  Nope.  I am not, as I declared above, a “deep thinker”. 

I am productive by way of being distracted. 

I’ll give you an example. Here is are the last three minutes:

I have time boxed an hour to write several articles/posts/newsletters for Substack.

I am doing this all at once, flipping from post to post.

I am also watching the stock for tonight’s dinner. 

And for the last minute I returned to briefly tinker with a creative brief for a new Martin and Sylvia series. 

I just got an email from a buddy who’s movie is now streaming. One of the themes of the movie is loneliness.

And then I went outside to monitor the dogs in the snow while they went to the bathroom.

While they were outside I remembered something someone said about the cold and how it grows a part of the brain that develops willpower. 

The connection between cold and loneliness is what I needed for one of the stories, and now I’ll also include it in this newsletter on distraction.

My friend just texted and told me she was working through a sense of isolation.  This made me curious. Why all this about loneliness and isolation?

I wonder if what I’m feeling is isolation but then I realize I haven’t had a good walk in a few days. 

I’m now going to take the dogs on a walk.  I’ll be back. 

Slush

Photo by Alice Donovan Rouse on Unsplash

I’m back from the walk and “slush” is the message (and what will close this post.) 

Slush may not seem magical but it is very real.  It is dense and in-between, like most things.  It is the actual experience of winter and the front end of spring. Slush is where the good stuff is.  Light fluffy snow is unworldly and filled with wonder, and we need that.  But when it comes to productivity, we need slush. Slush is all the things gooped into one, it is true community and connection - and to see it clearly … 

You need to be distracted. 

Also, I finished on time.

1. Brase GL. The nature of thinking, shallow and deep. Front Psychol. 2014 May 15;5:435. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00435. PMID: 24860542; PMCID: PMC4030158.