How to Make Steady Progress in the Distraction Age

It’s time to revamp “The Tortoise and the Hare.” 

Why? Because when the fable was written, the tortoise could realistically plod along without an interruption every 11 minutes and the hare could fall asleep under a tree without being pinged awake by his smartphone. Not so anymore. My apologies to Aesop.

In the age of instant access (to information as well as people), we need a new model for how to reach a goal reliably. These days, we are more likely to find our poor tortoise hiding in his shell posting to Instagram than moving toward the goal line (even though his phone lists his goal in three apps).

Enter a new contestant: the blue whale.

Bear with me. We live in a global community with many ways to work remotely. I’m fully confident a whale could enter and win a land race.

Blue whales grow to be giants. They know a thing or two about discipline. Nobody becomes the largest in their field, let alone the planet, without it. And they reach these gigantic proportions while committed to a steady diet of a tiny food source: krill.

While the hare makes a great, boastful burst toward who he wants to be (the winner) without counting the cost or the distance, and the tortoise pauses to look at every incoming distraction or hides in his shell moving nowhere, the blue whale has learned the wisdom of filters.

Ms. Blue Whale’s baleen, flexible plates attached to her upper jaw and fitted with bristles, allows krill to enter when she sucks water in, but not exit when she blows the water out. It’s like the best roach hotel ever. She then sweeps back all those little crustaceans with her tongue. Swallow and repeat. 

Ms. Blue Whale swims and eats these bite-sized morsels over and over until her heart is the size of your car, which brings me back to the topics of your heart, and your growth, and your artistic projects. What do you want those to look like in five years’ time? 

Would you like to become a spiritual and artistic giant, contributing to the flourishing of our planet?

Then you need to acknowledge two facts:

1. Humans don’t multitask; our brains vacillate between each task, decreasing our focus and accuracy.
 
2. It takes an average of 25 minutes to recover from a distraction and re-engage with your work and thought process. 

Did that number get your attention? Then here’s how to learn wisdom from the blue whale.

Pick the Right Filters
What will you let in and what will you keep out?

As a grad student, I banned myself from reading fiction, thinking it was a distraction from my studies. It’s true I have little self-control when it comes to stopping at the chapter end, but I wish I had set a different filter. Fiction wasn’t the problem; the indiscriminate choice of fiction was the problem. Choosing the right authors to read at the right time would have complemented my studies and moved me forward in my various fields faster.

• Take time to consider how you want to improve over the next three to five years. Then build in small, daily activities to your routine that help you gain that knowledge, skill, or habit. What do you need to practice, learn, or build? You’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish through a diet of recurrent bits in three to five years’ time.

Reduce Distractions
The blue whale has only two potential predators: orcas and humans. This means she rarely has to look at her predator alerts. Consider these ways to avoid multiple 25-minute re-engagement periods throughout your day:

• Block off non-negotiable weekly time for deep thought, creative work, and whatever else you see as essential to who you want to become.

• Use the “Do Not Disturb” and “Screen Time” modes on your computer and other devices regularly. Give yourself daily blocks of awake time without notifications, checking email, or even background noise, if that’s possible. Several apps, like RescueTime, can track your device usage and lock down programs and websites you have labeled “nonproductive” if you engage in them for too long during hours you set. The lockdown is temporary, but it forces you to move on to more productive tasks.

• Even better, print out any sources you need to write for reference, and go old school for a while with paper and pen. Need the name of something that would be at your fingertips on the internet? Put a “<TK>” (journalistic speak for “to come”) in the space where the name or detail or source should go and keep your thoughts moving. Look it up when your focus time block is over.   

Do Multitasking the Right Way
While we fool ourselves to think we can process two tasks or conversations at once, we can shape our activities so they have multiple purposes. For instance,

• Rather than flopping on the couch and watching whatever is on TV, use your DVR to record television programs you can enjoy while also analyzing what techniques they use to develop such great character, plot, or dialogue. Keep a notebook near the couch to write down ideas.

• Transform the time you spend browsing on YouTube, Pinterest, and other quick-fix media into intentional, deeper-thought time reading novels, articles, or other books that will give your writing career a deeper foundation.

• Meet friends for coffee in a bookstore cafe rather than a stand-alone, and leave time after your get-together to browse the shelves in your genre to check on what’s new, what’s shelved cover-out rather than spine-out, and which titles seemed to be stocked well.

• Refresh a foreign language from high school or college by reading through the Bible in that language—you’ll gain insight into both.

 
Growth requires disciplined foresight and movement toward the future. For the sake of all humankind, let’s aim to become gentle giants.