This morning when I was checking Lojong (my meditation app), I realized that I’m just a few short days away from six months of uninterrupted daily meditation! The biggest benefits of my consistent, long term meditation practice include ending my long time marijuana addiction, getting control of my gray area drinking, and stealing back my stolen focus.
Zero+ ; Sixer ; M: 178 ; C: 139 ; P/U: Rest ; W: 5 mi
Stealing Back My Stolen Focus
While I’m certain my not smoking pot for nearly five months is a factor here, daily meditation has turbo charged my ability to focus. In fact, my new found hyper-focus is presenting me with a big challenge.
And that challenge is, a very positive one. You see, I’m rapidly able to achieve a ‘flow state’ and once in flow, I literally block any and everything peripheral out of my mind. These include:
- Text messages
- Emails
- Phone calls
- Teams alerts
- Meeting calendar reminders
- Ambient noise
- Anything that is not a ‘hard’ interruption. For example, my wife charging into my office and demanding, “Why haven’t you answered my text?!?!?!”
My focus is so intense, I now have to set an alarm to remind myself that I have a meeting or to check my email. Otherwise, I’ll blow right on past.
I’m currently reading Stolen Focus by Johann Hari. The insights provided in his excellent book are giving me a greater appreciation for my newly discovered ability to focus AND focus so intensely. As I get deeper into the issues Johann Hari investigates in Stolen Focus, I feel almost like I’m developing some sort of superpower. I know that sounds strange, but that’s how I feel. Johann Hari just might agree.
I used to consider myself to be a master multitasker. That was until I learned that there’s no such thing. In fact, according to Cleveland Clinic:
Studies show that when our brain is constantly switching gears to bounce back and forth between tasks – especially when those tasks are complex and require our active attention – we become less efficient and more likely to make a mistake… The more we multitask, the less we actually accomplish.
– Cynthia Kubu, PhD, The Cleveland Clinic
Rapid Serial Tasking
Now I schedule my days and work hard to do what I call rapid serial tasking. This is focusing on one task at a time and completing it before moving on to the next thing. This approach is so effective, that I can complete a 40 hour work week in fewer than 10 hours a week. (Not counting meetings and Zoom calls, which are largely a ginormously unproductive time sink).
My co-workers, peers, and my boss marvel not only at how much I get done, but how quickly. The quality of my work is noticed, complemented, and appreciated. This was never the case when I was a self declared multitasker working 3x as many hours or more.
Everything gets faster, better, and easier when you accept that multitasking is a myth. Focus on doing one thing at a time, and do it well. You’ll be shocked at how much this improves your life and how much time you free up. I was. Where do you think I find the time to write this blog, do my morning routine, and play guitar?
The Death of Social Media
After watching The Social Dilemma during Covid, I decided to pull the plug on my use of social media. What little social media I still look at (only Facebook very occasionally and LinkedIn for professional reasons) is strictly limited.
For example, I have zero social media apps installed on my smartphone device. That way they can never interrupt me (or track me). There are no beeps or buzzes to hook my attention. When I do decide to look at Facebook, it’s on my laptop and on my terms.
Though these days, Facebook has been relegated to a sort of address book. I use it to message people whose phone numbers and emails I’ve lost along the way. Although I may look at photos for a few minutes while I’m logged in, I’m generally turned off by the crazy amount of ads that clutter my feed. Usually I bail after a short time. Plus, I visit the platform so infrequently, the algorithm doesn’t know what to serve me. As a result, the experience feels irrelevant and disengaging. That’s probably a good thing.
So, while I’ll admit social media is far from dead, it is dead to me. And both my focus and happiness have benefited tremendously!
Reconnecting With My Focus
The Social Dilemma got me thinking about things like surveillance capitalism and the resulting attention theft engineered into the apps we download. But it wasn’t until I embarked upon daily meditation that I began to fully appreciate my new found ability to focus.
Through the examination of my thoughts, urges, habits, emotions, desires, recurring thoughts (The Judge), addictions, successes, and failures, I’ve freed my mind and unleashed my creativity. Using mindfulness techniques like RAIN, I’ve quit marijuana, freed myself from negative thought patterns, and honed my focus.
I had an interesting vision as I meditated this morning. I saw an old timey cartoon hammer. In its hand, it held a stiff little human being. And it was using this human to hammer in a nail. How crazy is that?
Think about how preposterous this image is. Afterall, the hammer is the tool. People use hammers, not the other way around. But in my vision, it was the opposite. I quickly realized that my vision was an analogue for how smartphones are successfully hacking our collective attention for their own purposes.
Our phones have turned us into their tools. They manipulate us for and to whatever ends the ‘man behind the curtain’ deems fit. Don’t think this is you? Think again.
It’s Deja Vu All Over Again, Only Worse
Back in the day, tobacco companies used clever and manipulative marketing techniques to convince people to try cigarettes. They knew full well that once you started smoking, the nicotine would take care of the rest.
All the marketing had to do was hook your attention long enough to get you to buy a couple of packs. After that, addiction would reel you in. And the tobacco companies were able to get away with this for many years. Until people started dying.
Once the dangers of smoking became fully understood, things changed. Cigarette packs carried warning labels. Age restrictions were enacted into law. Anti-smoking ads became more ubiquitous than smoking ads. As a result, we see a lot fewer smokers today than we did when I was a kid. Shoot, when I was a kid, you were considered odd if you didn’t smoke. Kinda like being sober today in some respects.
These old Marlboro Man and Camel Joe ads seem tame by comparison to today’s overtly engineered attention economy. But what’s so bad about stolen focus anyway?
Stealing Your Attention
They say in tech circles, that when the product is free, you’re the product. In this case, what tech companies are selling is your attention. First they steal it from you without your realizing it. Then they sell it to the highest bidder. You’re attention has become a commodity!
What’s so insidious about the way they accomplish this, is that the techniques employed take advantage of the very same neurological structures that drive addiction in the reward centers of your brain.
Just like with tobacco, we’re now starting to see people lose their lives as the result of social media use. Cyberbullying has resulted in suicides and the drive for that killer selfie has actually killed some people.
It’s hard to know if governments will regulate tech companies like they regulate tobacco and alcohol companies, but there’s growing evidence that they might.
Ironically, my own sobriety journey and the stealing back my stolen focus all began on my Android phone with the Lojong meditation app. So, that is evidence of technology not being inherently evil. Rather, it demonstrates using technology (as a tool) for its highest purpose: betterment of self and the greater world.
Through mindfulness and meditation, we create the space to notice and ask questions. For me, it started with: “am I drinking too much?” That evolved to: “how am I investing my time?” And now: “How can I make the biggest impact?”
For too many years, I was the hammer: alcohol’s hammer, marijuana’s hammer, social media’s hammer, society’s hammer. Then one day, I woke up with a headache. I was done being banged around, done being a tool.
When it comes to life, technology, and relationships, take time to create space. Ask yourself these questions: Who is the hammer? Who is doing the hammering? Who are you?
