Cutting yourself off from distractions is the first step any internet savvy and loving individual must be aware to take yourself further. In order to meet my goal, I’ve decided to go on a social media and news restricted diet. I adore both, but they tend to soak up a huge amount of my free time and thus the only times I’ll be really using both will be to strategically further my plan to get in the black and get my life back on track. In my mind there’s nothing wrong with the term “engagement” as a metric to track how websites perform. It’s legitimate and makes sense. But depending on your goal, that term should be labelled “distraction” because your attention can only be placed in one area at one particular time.

How can you start cutting yourself off from distractions?

Start monitoring where you spend the majority of your time and from there determine what’s your best system. Some people can eliminate them altogether, for others it’s slowly phasing out or rationing. Keep a record of when you spend time on distractions and for how long. Eventually, hopefully, you’ll be taken aback by the time you’ve spent elsewhere and concentrate it upon where you should.

Place bets with friends, or give yourself ultimatums and deadlines. Use whatever you can to convince yourself. Remove things you enjoy, just follow something that will shock you into changing your own behaviour.

Addictive personalities

As you grow older you start to truly discover who you really are. And when you’re honest with yourself about your flaws and your faults you can start to address them. It’s often hard to see them at first, but as you grow you discover them. I’m aware of mine, especially with regards to distractions. I fall into them with ease often and so my personality tends to be an all or nothing at all approach. I do indulge every so often to satisfy the craving, but it tends to affirm what I thought about it being a problem – whatever the distraction is isn’t as great as the goal I have.

How to focus

You must determine your own rhythms and habits. Is isolation from distractions the key, or are you able to control your habits?

Airplane mode and solitude are great. Control and discipline. The understanding of what you can or cannot do to help a situation. If you’re worried about someone or something happening, are you the best go to or are the authorities? Can you provide the help needed?

Things must change in order to improve. Sometimes you have to disconnect from things you enjoy in order to further your aspirations.

The one guarantee in life is that things will not just get easier. People will get sick, nothing will be predictable. That’s why you have to put yourself in as good a position as possible, tell the people you love that you love them and view this life as a challenge that can be met.

If you actually starve yourself from the time distractions that social media provides, you’ll realize you’ve really not missed out on much. Whatever your focus, have that remain at the forefront of your mind and your goals. Most news isn’t something that will propel you forwards. While it’s important to remain informed, it’s more important to remain on the path to maintain your sights on what will take you and those you care about into a better position.

Distractions hold you back and end up a rabbit hole.

Cutting yourself off from distractions isn’t only a social media based maxim. It also extends to the wonderful world’s of YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video etc. Anything that soaks up more time than you can afford.

News media (both television and print) can also further send you down the path of concentrating your time on less important things.

Daily quote:

“The only safe thing is to take a chance.” Mike Nichols

*** Like most things online it’s hard to say whether these quotes originate with the person they’re attributed to. Regardless, they’re a tool to hopefully inspire you and so does it matter as much as the point the words convey?

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