#38 - Distracted
Bottled it, distracted, and reclaiming attention
You’re reading my second attempt at writing this. The first one failed.
All because I wasn’t practicing what I preach. I lost my attention.
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Bottled it
It’s 11:32am on Saturday, July 17th. I woke up this morning with one task: write this newsletter. I planned to spending the morning offline- a mini digital detox- so I could focus on the job at hand.
It got off to a good start. I was up, meditated, and out the door early. My phone remained in airplane mode at home. So far so good. I then spent a delightful hour walking round Hampstead Heath pondering potential topics to write about. I finally settled on something around “not taking yourself too seriously”.
Satisfied, I headed home to begin writing. That’s where it all went wrong.
I sat down to write with a clear mind. Fatally, I chose a chair next to my abandoned phone. All it took was a slight lapse in the writing and I had reached for my phone, and let the outside world in. The next 10 minutes were spent replying to Whatsapps before I went a step further and checked my email. Big mistake.
One email, sent at 6:12am this morning, was from a potential investor. I’m gearing up for our next raise and there’s some real interest this time around. I won’t go into the details but the email gave me a lot to ponder. And just like that my attention was gone.
Distracted
I tried to get back to the newsletter but all I could think about was how best to play it with this investor. My article about not taking yourself too seriously sat ironically idle.
I never recovered. The next couple of hours were spent batting back and forth emails with the investor before I finally dragged myself out of the haze. I’ve got a f**king newsletter to write. I thought.
With no chance of reclaiming the morning’s chain of thought I started from scratch. Really there was only one thing I could write about, the one thing on my mind. How I’d inexplicably let my attention be captured and the resulting failure.
So here we are. Back to now. If you’re reading this I got something out in the end, which is a relief. But it’s yet another reminder, to me, of the magic of spending time offline.
Reclaiming Attention
We’re not built for this modern world. Biologically, not much has changed since our days of hunting and gathering. Yet, what a contrast we live! When we reach for our phone in the morning, we’re suddenly exposed to hundreds or thousands of people, with billions more just a few clicks away. With all those people we are overwhelmed with things to think about. From comparing and judging, to wrestling with the problems the people, in our lives, bring to us.
Remarkably, that’s the state we live in these days. It’s mental. From minutes after we wake up to last thing at night our attention is pulled into our devices and scattered in a million directions.
It’s this lack of attention in the present moment that’s the root of our problems. We’re never really here. A scattered brain spawns the stress and anxiety that features so predominantly in life today.
The great news is that going offline is always an option. Something quite remarkable happens when we do. The brain settles down. It’s tricky at first, the first 24 hours we can become a bit more anxious as we feel like we’ve lost a limb. But the human brain is a remarkable thing, and slowly it returns to the state of calm that we were built to operate in.
I know how unrealistic time offline seems. I run a startup focused on this problem and yet am still in a constant struggle with it. But it is possible. Being online, all the time, is just not as necessary as it seems. And if done well, time offline really does make life easier.
There’s no way I’d be able to write this each week if I didn’t carve out pockets of time to myself. Something amazing happens when you regain control of your attention. I strongly recommend you try it.
My Week in Books📚
Amazon Unbound by Brad Stone
Wild. The sequel to The Everything Store- the Amazon story up to 2015. This is what came next.
I find Amazon and Bezos deeply fascinating. Controversial, sure. But fascinating nonetheless.
I’ll be updating the books I’ve read this year here. Any recommendations? Let me know!
What else?
Unplugged should have a page or two in the Telegraph today (Sunday, 18th July). Do pick up a copy if you’re at a loose end.
A Final Thought 💡
“Live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find eternity in each moment.”
- Henry David Thoreau