Hello Earthlings!
I’m sure you’re sick of hearing about another widespread illness infecting us all but there’s one more that we’ve been openly welcoming for decades…DISTRACTION.
Everything and everyone compete for the finite supply of attention in our minds. The failure is not in the technologies we use but in how we choose and allow these technologies to permeate our living moments. Consequently, the new norm of our distraction negatively affects the ability to work deeply and produce real value to the world. This value can be in the form of a new specialized skill, a certification, a publication, developing a new idea. Just think of anyone successful – they are probably experts of filtering out distraction. Cal Newport’s book, Deep Work, is about engaging in meaningful, valuable work and flushing out shallow work. Newport argues that we will be able to thrive in the new economy if we can hone this highly coveted skill. Deep Work is defined as:
Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.
Last year I was Instagram-free for two months, as a challenge. My decreased screen time allowed me to pursue other projects (running a half-marathon, publishing 20 articles, weekly reading etc.) In Deep Work, I came across Newport’s Craftsman Approach to Tool Selection which helps you decide whether a network tool’s benefits exceed the downsides. The first step is to define the criteria for success/happiness in your work. Then, discard network tools where the negative impacts outweighs the positive.
I completed the exercise to decide if I should keep Facebook.
Decision Criteria:
- Quality conversations with people I care about
- Producing thoughtful writing pieces
- Read voraciously
- Share work with peers/world
Positives of Facebook:
- See updates of mostly high school peers
- See previews for popular reality TV shows or viral videos (Buzzfeed cooking)
- Be a part of online communities (Subtle Asian Dating)
- Be able to message friends through Messenger
- Another avenue to share writing pieces
Negatives of Facebook
- Go-to distraction when bored or without Instagram
- Waste time scrolling and not doing meaningful work
- Obsessively creeping profiles of people that I don’t care about
The upsides of Facebook were loosely related to my values while the downsides could drastically reduce the quality, efficiency, or even possibility of delivering on my goals. Newport makes the argument that all networks bring benefits, otherwise we would not join them. Ultimately, we should be careful to choose the networks that best support our success criteria.
Furthermore, Newport’s reference to Csikszentmihaliyi’s idea of ‘flow’ posits that our best moments of work are when our cognitive limits are stretched on something that is important to us. This implies that humans are not necessarily most blissful and/or purposeful when we’re putting in less effort, but rather the opposite. The caveat is that flow requires long periods of deep work, and if we have not cultivated that skill, we will not be able to pick the fruits of our labour.
In the end, we are not looking to be productive 24/7; we are human after all (and deep work according to Newport, tops out at around 4 hours every day). The whole exercise is to understand what is important to you and how you must be relentless in monitoring worldly distractions that are insignificant and unimportant. “Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not”, Newport says.
P.S. An update on my social media hiatus. I deactivated Facebook since January 18th (No urges to go back so far). Instagram has been deactivated since December 19th but the benefits of showcasing my photography/videography (access to larger follower base, platform to post content, keep in touch with potential models etc.) outweigh the negatives. I will reactivate my photo/video account soon😊