Distractions vs the distracted

It’s information overload in modern society. Whether you’re aware of it or not, your attention is currency and each scroll comes with a focus tariff. Nothing is free: your mindlessness is in fact costing you a lot of attention.

The most common solution is to remove distractions. It’s also the easiest. A “wellness retreat” is good both in theory and in practice, whatever form it may be: an out-of-town-or-country vacation (oh, when that was still possible!), a social media “detox”, a spiritual recollection, etc. Most of the time, one comes out of such with a sense of renewal—recharged and ready to get back to normal life, better than ever! Until normal life gets too much again and another retreat feels necessary. But before taking another, a question: can distractions be ever completely removed anyway?

Perhaps instead of working on removing them, we can look at those distractions and ask why they are there in the first place. Why are you distracted? Why by that specific distraction? What are you being distracted from?

And most importantly, where do you ought spend your attention instead?

Befriend your distractions and let them help you focus better.