Hey everyone, especially all the new subscribers this week - it’s pleasure to have you. Every Sunday, this newsletter will arrive in your inbox with 3 new links to articles/videos/podcasts that I’ve either produced myself or been inspired by over the past 7 days - hopefully with some kind of coherent theme. All human thoughts are welcome - feel free to comment below or send me a direct message. Enjoy!
I wrote about distraction a few weeks ago, and related thoughts about boredom, social media, and slow joy. I’ve continued to think about it since. This short and insightful article by the ever-insightful “Imperfectionist”, Oliver Burkeman, has much in common with what Bertrand Russell had to say about boredom and distraction. Burkeman notes that you reach for distraction not just because the thing distracting you is shiny, but also because the thing you’re currently doing is uncomfortable. He says:
“This is why most anti-distraction hacks – web-blocking apps, noise-canceling headphones, personal rules – never seem to work very well. They involve denying yourself access to the places you usually go for relief from emotional unpleasantness. But they don’t address the unpleasantness itself. They’re not entirely useless. But if you can’t bear the fact that a given activity causes discomfort, shutting down Twitter won’t solve that problem. You’ll just find something else to do (stare out of the window, go and get a snack) to avoid the unpleasantness instead.”
This chimes with Russell’s idea that boredom - in contrast to the immediate excitement/stimulation of distraction - is often a necessary part of meaningful activity. Burkeman stresses that being mildly uncomfortable, like boredom, “might simply be the price of doing things you care about.”
But why are people so prone to distraction at even the mildest of discomforts? Personally, I find my mind wondering if I’m just not sure what to write in a given paragraph (which, over many unwritten paragraphs, adds up to a lot of distraction!). It’s taken me many years of writing for a living to realise that I simply can’t work well while the wifi is switched on or if my phone is nearby. And even then it’s difficult. I still find myself making ad-hoc excuses to avoid the moments of mild discomfort associated with not knowing exactly what I’m writing and how to write it.
I wrote this article to capture one of the main reasons why mild discomfort leads so quickly to distraction. The answer has to do with opportunity costs. If you’re not sure how to do something, and you think you might fail at it, it makes sense to simply give up or get distracted by something else. Without guaranteed results, you’re much more likely to take mild discomfort as a sign to do something that will provide you a guaranteed result, even if that’s just the temporary rewards provided by social media.
But you don’t have to think this way. Being distracted or giving up only seem like better options when all you care about is achieving results. But outcomes aren’t the only thing that matter in life. Even failure can be a valuable experience if you can learn from it. Switching your focus from results to learning is what makes every moment matter. Everything you do - even if don’t know exactly what to do or how to do it - is an opportunity for learning. With this mindset, distractions are much less tempting.
This idea - that people are more prone to distraction when they’re overly focused on results - suggests a broader understanding of distraction. It’s not just your phone and social media that distracts you. It’s also those “shoulds” and to-do lists in your head - the norms and expectations you have around what your life should look like. If you’re not guaranteed to achieve these results, it makes sense to distract yourself from what you’re currently doing with alternative goals, plans, and resolutions.
The problem is you might be doing just fine. The alternative goals may be no better than the ones you already have. It’s possible that what you need to do is focus more on what you’re currently doing - making incremental improvements on a day-to-day basis - than obsessing over whether you’ll eventually achieve the list of things inside your head. Stick at something and learn from it, wherever it goes.
In this article, I argue that this is the main thing people get wrong about happiness - that it comes from achieving results, the long list of desired outcomes inside your head. But this just isn’t how it works. It’s about the process, not the outcome. The journey, not the destination. Learning, not results. That’s why distraction makes you so unhappy in the long term. With its immediate results, it promises you happiness. But, in reality, distraction takes you away from the messy and uncertain activities that form the continuous backbone of a joyful life.
Have a good week!