The fine art of staying focused

My son and I work on adjacent tables in the study room at our home. His attention span is, to put it delicately, gossamer-like. Five minutes into a study session, it snaps. His hand then slithers across and picks up my mobile phone. I glare at him and retrieve it. Ten minutes later, he makes another attempt. If I am typing frantically to beat a deadline, he gets a free run with the phone, until his mother, happening to pass by, catches him and repossesses the offending article. At night, he has been known to steal out of bed, tiptoe into the study, and watch movies on my laptop. Countless other stimuli succeed in drawing him away from his books — his mother conversing with the household help, a deliveryman ringing the doorbell, Netflix playing on TV, and so on. 

If a similar scenario plays out in your home, or you yourself struggle to focus on the task at hand, then
is the book you should turn to for help. It will provide some solace to learn that distractions are not unique to our times. Every generation has in its turn worried about the impact of the latest innovation. People have, in the past, fretted about television, video games, cable channels, and ridiculous as it may appear now, even about the printing press when it was first invented (they worried about its deleterious impact on the oral tradition prevailing then). Today, of course, they worry about the damage that internet-powered mobile phones and other snazzy gadgets could inflict on their children’s ability to focus on studies. 

Early in the book, the author says that the objects causing distraction are not always the real problem. Often, the trouble lies with the person himself. Those experiencing painful and difficult times tend to be especially susceptible to distractions. He cites the example of a Yale professor who became addicted to her Striiv Smart Pedometer and spent a humongous amount of time working out so she could garner points and beat her competitors. Her obsessive exercising began to take a toll on her work and her well-being. The root cause, the author reveals, was not the pedometer but her marriage that was falling apart. All that huffing and puffing was her way of seeking refuge from her pain. Only by addressing this troublesome aspect of her life was she able to wean herself off her addiction, or at least gain a measure of control over it.

Reimagining the task at hand is one way you can make your work more interesting, and avoid getting distracted. Every day you could strive to do your job better or faster. Gather as much knowledge as you can about your field of work. As one gains mastery, even seemingly mundane subjects begin to come alive. The author says he tries to reimagine his job of writing books as one of searching for novel solutions to mankind’s age-old problems. That is his way of investing his work with greater significance, and thereby staying motivated. 

In another chapter, the author urges readers to introspect about the values they hold dear. What kind of a person do they wish to be? Do they want to be a good worker, father/mother, or a good friend? Do timeboxing (which basically means that a person needs to allocate chunks of time in his weekly schedule) for tasks that will help bring you closer to becoming the person you want to be. Merely desiring something in a vague sort of way will not suffice. If you want to be a good father, for instance, you must schedule time each week for teaching your daughter or engaging in an activity with her. Such timeboxing also helps address the lack of balance in life, wherein one role, say, work, takes over completely, to the detriment of others. 

While the early parts of the book are devoted to handling internal triggers that can distract a person, in the latter part the author offers practical tools for keeping external distractions at bay. There are chapters on dealing with emails, group chats, mobile phone, and so on — tools that are useful but nibble away at our time and prevent us from being optimally productive. An entire segment is devoted to raising indistractable children, which parents, who are at their wits’ end regarding how to deal with their children’s inability to settle down and study, will find invaluable. Readers will also like the insights on behaviour and motivation strewn across the book.  

Ultimately, however, a person can become truly indistractable when he realises that anything worthwhile and enduring can be achieved only through hard work and unwavering focus.

Indistractable: How to control your attention and choose your life

Nir Eyal with Julie Li

Bloomsbury; 319 pages; Rs 550