Few people are as busy as those seeking to distract themselves from what really needs to be done
It’s easy to imagine that you are busy when all you are truthfully doing is attending to various social calls — especially when those activities can be indulged in without moving from your desk and computer. E-mails, instant messaging, and social web sites like Twitter all demand time and attention, and no other type of attention will do in our ‘instant world’ save the immediate kind.
For some time, I’ve made it my practice never to answer e-mails right away, unless they are so obviously urgent that nothing else will do. I’m not intending to be rude to those who contact me — quite the reverse — since my immediate response would have to be superficial and poorly considered. What I would have written right away and what I eventually write a day or so later are rarely even similar. The intervening period has allowed my mind time to take in what the other person wrote to me, mull it around, and produce something in return that is more worth reading.
Many writers on time management and productivity will urge you to check your e-mails and similar messages only at set times, rather than spending all day jumping to see what has arrived when the computer makes whatever noise signals a fresh e-mail. Few go the extra step and urge you not to reply until at least 24 hours have passed. But if refusing to break off whatever you are doing to read an e-mail when it arrives saves you from needless distraction, waiting a while to respond will often prevent you from writing what you may regret only a little while later.
‘Motion without labor’
What started my mind along these lines was an essay by Bill Thompson in the British magazine The New Statesman. In it, Thompson compares those who become addicted to social web sites to Dr. Samuel Johnson’s 1759 satire on those who indulge in ‘motion without labor’ — who ‘never appear more ridiculous than in the distress which they imagine themselves to feel from some accidental interruption of those empty pursuits’.
Dr. Johnson wrote:
“There is no kind of idleness, by which we are so easily seduced, as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business; and, by making the loiterer imagine that he has something to do which must not be neglected, keeps him in perpetual agitation, and hurries him rapidly from place to place.”
It’s hard to better that as description of far too many people today. As Thompson says:
But it does seem that there are disturbing parallels between the world Johnson describes and our use of the new generation of social tools, and perhaps a danger that so much time will be spent bustling around the internet that the serious time needed to think, and study, and create, will be diminished.
‘Motion without labor’ — stripped of the 18th century language, this means activities that take up time, yet have little to do with the real task. That’s a category which surely includes most reading and writing of e-mails, the vast proportion of the time spent on instant messaging and text messaging, and almost every moment spent on Twitter, Facebook and the like — despite the claims that social media are, in reality, marketing tools.
The deification of social contact
What causes the majority of problems in human existence is lack of proportion. Gambling may be a waste of money, but it does relatively little harm until it gets out of hand and takes over a life. The same goes for drinking, partying, eating, having sex and virtually all the other activities that make life pleasant and so draw the anger of those with a puritanical cast of mind.
At work too, lack of proportion is a major source of mischief. Many demands from on high are boring to complete and doubtful in their usefulness, but they don’t really become pernicious until they slide out of proportion. The occasional Powerpoint presentation may even be interesting. The fifth or tenth in a few days so numbs the mind that nothing can penetrate, interesting or not. Even management foibles and silliness can be almost lovable in small doses.
We all need some social contact. It’s part of what people tend to value about a good working atmosphere. Still, like the other false gods of current management (numbers, spreadsheets, and being ‘practical’), inflated out of proportion it becomes a monster. Meetings swell in number, eating up the time needed to think, and study, and create — even to get anything done. Attempts to find a little solitude are frustrated by cubicle-based working spaces and the cult of bosses having a door — if they even have one — that is always open (The door may be open, but the boss’s mind almost certainly isn’t).
Voluntary distraction
I am the first to admit than many sources of distraction during the working day are involuntary and so cannot be avoided. But are they the majority? I don’t believe so. Two other categories of distractions share that distinction: those that come from poor habits (like disorganization, addiction to continual communications, and the like) and those that are sought out deliberately to avoid having to do some piece of work.
If this seems hard, think about the times that you have preferred an activity of little real importance to tackling some task you dislike or fear. How often have you chosen to put off the start of a difficult task by ‘displacement activities’ like using Facebook or Twitter, checking your e-mails (again!), or returning phone calls that could easily wait for 24 hours or more?
Slowing down is less about speed than acting deliberately and mindfully. Instead of avoiding reality by rushing from activity to activity, almost regardless of what they are, try slowing down enough to think carefully about what you are doing and why.
Do that for a week and you’ll be surprised how many distractions disappear, how much useful work gets done and how much ‘free’ time you find you still have for the vital tasks of thinking, studying and creating.
Technorati Tags: busyness, being distracted, time management, wasting time, overwork, work/life balance, procrastination, putting things off
June 9th, 2008 at 7:32 am
I am not sure if mulling is even understood by most. The fast-paced give and take — the more humor or friendly put-downs the better — seems to be replacing the mulling mindset.
I once worked with a man from Zimbabwe who explained in his culture, such rapid-fire conversations were how children communicated. Children have a need and just blurt it out. Children want something, and they ask straight away. He said adult conversation, however, could not be put into bullet points, but was a social interaction involving the lives, emotions, situations of the whole village intertwined with story telling to fill in the any gaps. If someone asks, “How are you?” the discussion could involve telling of the past week or month, about all your social moments of note, and how it all brought you to this moment and to how you are feeling. He told me when a person came upon two adults having a conversation, the general rule was to wait and listen for 20-30 minutes to fully understand the interaction and then speak.
I appreciated this man’s view, and I also had to laugh. It took him 45 minutes to explain it to me. The conversation on his culture’s dating and marriage rituals took over an hour. Can’t fit that on Twitter or Plurk, can ya?
June 9th, 2008 at 7:51 am
A few thoughts, Adrian.
Bring raised in a “media age”, many folks have become addicted for hyped and immediate stimulation…resulting in a brain that is under-developed and one in which hyperactivity (moving from stimulus to stimulus…blackberry, to facebook, to TV, to twitter, to email, back to blackberry, etc., incessantly, impulsively and addictively…) making focused attention for many impossible…the inability to reflect and think more deeply is not something they can do in a sustained way, or would even choose to do.
For these folks, their brains need change almost every minute or so to sustain focus; concentration and attention are often very challenging and sometimes often well-nigh impossible. These folks are addicted…ask them to do without such devices for a week (much less an hour or so) and the honest ones will admit they can’t. They’re addicted.
Since they have conditioned themselves and been conditioned for more and more stimulation, their low brain areas require this consistent stimulation and their cerebral cortex (the thinking part of the brain) is underutilized. They are one walking hyper “text messaging unit” as opposed to truly “thinking” individuals. Ask these folks to take time out for themselves, or thgink reflect and relax, they’ll go to another “fix” – another “stimulus”, as opposed to, for example, stopping to rest, breathing deeply, going for a walk, meditating, closing their eyes for a minute or two…such is their conditioning and addiction
The other side of this is folks’ unconscious need to “belong” and the degree to which they feel like a “nobody” if they are not socially engaged in one of these endeavors (facebook, etc). This is also an addiction as many of these folks are not comfortable in their own skins, in their own silence - so they always need to be engaged, however superficially (e.g., garnering thousands of “friends”) to maintain their addictive and often unconscious need to belong.
The bottom line is how many folks are engaged in such “activity” (doing for the sake of doing, to keep busy as they are uncomfortable in their own company and their addictive thirst for stimulus) and “action” (true and real purpose-driven work or action that has some higher purpose and deeper meaning). For these folks, it’s more often the former, and seldom the latter.
June 9th, 2008 at 8:02 am
Thanks, SpaceAgeSage. A great comment and a wonderful example.
I guess that, as so often in our society, we have traded depth and richness for speed. We are no longer willing, it seems,to spend the time to get to know people or understand their situation before coming to a conclusion about them.
I do not believe anyone can know anything about me worth knowing in the space of the typical elevator speech; nor that others are truly so busy that they cannot spare the time needed to think, appreciate the life around them, and have a proper relationship with other people.
I take my stand with the poet who wrote: “What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare . . . ?” Certainly not a life much worth living.
Keep reading, my friend.
June 9th, 2008 at 8:10 am
Thanks to you too, Peter. A wise and perceptive comment, as always.
I knew an academic psychologist once (he’s now a full, tenured professor at one of Britain’s most prestigious universities) who told me that extreme extroverts, in his view, have such a meager inner life that they constantly crave external stimulation to provide them with just about all their needs for interest, excitement and emotional stimulus.
It made sense to me then, just as your comment makes perfect sense to me now. The only difference is that our society seems to be systematically training people to act like the most extreme of extroverts and for one simple reason: to make more money for those businesses based on satisfying their constant craving for more and faster stimuli.
What this must be doing to our long-term mental health I am not qualified to forecast, but my guess is that it cannot be anything good.
Keep reading, my friend.
June 9th, 2008 at 8:25 am
Adrian, you say, “What this must be doing to our long-term mental health I am not qualified to forecast, but my guess is that it cannot be anything good.”
When I assess the “health” of our (or any) country, I never look at the GDP or like assessments. I always look at the national mental health statistics….stress, heart-attacks, suicides, abuse, addictions, obesity, mental illness…and the like….not a pretty picture…alarming in fact…for me…signs of a culture that has little time for “reflection”…too caught up in the immediacy of do-ing, trying to be somebody, keepng up with the folks next door and equating net-worth with self-worth. It’ll all shake out…probably sooner rather than later….sort of a Universal tug on our collective sleeve saying “wake up.”
On your point re: extroverts, many introverts are now on-line extroverts.