Start a thousand times
Distractions gonna distract
Getting work done without distractions is a constant battle, or so it seems. Most of the advice we get has to do with limiting or silencing those distractions, or creating some kind of bubble, physical or otherwise, around ourselves as often as possible for as long as possible. I’d wager that most of us stay that way for about 5 minutes!
I’ve written about reframing distractions as part of the process and why you can’t just blame your phone. In general I try not to panic about distractions: it makes more sense to me to accept that they’re going to happen and not beat ourselves up for it. It takes a lot of discipline to eliminate or resist distractions. The thing is, it takes a lot of discipline to come back from them, too.
Novelist and memoirist Dani Shapiro’s brilliant book of writing advice, Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life, captured this perfectly for me in a section called Beginning Again. Shapiro talks about the fact that every time we sit down with a project, we are, in some way, starting again: “We have never been exactly here, today.” She sees a parallel with meditation:
When I was first learning to meditate, this idea of beginning again was revelatory. It still is. The meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg speaks of catching the mind scampering off, like the little money that it is, into the past, the future, anywhere but here, and suggests that the real skill in meditation is simply noticing that the mind has wandered. So liberating, this idea that we can start over at any time, a thousand times a day if need be.
In writing the few short paragraphs above, I started again at least five times: I changed the playlist on my phone 3 times, got up to get some cookies, debated getting my laptop desk, and searched for the quote I’d taken a picture of on my phone. The paragraphs still got written. The key wasn’t in refusing to get up for cookies (then I wouldn’t have cookies!) but in being willing to start again, to come back to the screen and put a few more words down on the page.
Remembering that we have the ability and the perogative to begin again, as many times as we need to, is a good antidote to the black-and-white thinking we might sometimes fall into: I got distracted, I lost my train of thought, I wasted ten minutes, so I might as well give up. Or, I didn’t stay focused so that work session was a failure. Or, I can’t shut out distractions during this time so I might as well not do anything at all.
Distractions can be problematic. But even if you manage to shut out a lot of external beeps and boops and addictive social media refreshes, your own mind is going to scamper off. The fact that everyone struggles with meditation—usually done in a distraction-free environment—proves this. The point, once again, is not to achieve total focus for the prescribed period of time. It’s to bring yourself back, again and again and again. THAT is the practice.
And so it is in daily life, with whatever we’re trying to do. Whether you’re a writer like Shapiro or engaged in some other kind of creative practice, or trying to play with your kids, or making sense of a spreadsheet, you want to stay present as much as possible but you know you’re going to stare vacantly into the distance at pretty regular intervals. The question is not, can I stop my mind wandering? It is, can I bring myself back?
As Shapiro points out elsewhere in Still Writing, not all distractions are created equal. She recalls being a young writer who spent long minutes gazing out the window with a cigarette in her hand whenever she felt stuck. Without advocating a return for the days of rampant smoking, she points out that her solitary smoke breaks were very different than going on the internet to read the news or doomscroll through social media:
Stuck for a nanosecond? Why feel it? With the single click of a key we can remove ourselves and take a ride on a log flume instead.
By the time we return to our work—if, indeed, we return to our work at all—we will be further away from our deepest impulses rather than closer to them. Where were we? Oh, yes. We were stuck. We were feeling uncomfortable and lost. And where are we now? More stuck. More uncomfortable and lost. We have gained nothing in the way of waking-dream time. Our thoughts have not drifted but, rather, have ricocheted from one bright and shiny thing to another.
Why feel it? Why even notice the mind wandering when we can immediately occupy it with vaguely entertaining or completely traumatizing content?
As I start my working week this Monday, I’m not aiming for perfect focus. I know I can start again, a thousand times if necessary. I will, however, think about the nature of the distractions I experience, at least the ones I have some control over.
Watching the cat watching squirrels > watching the news.
Finding the right song > finding a new pair of shoes.
Getting cookies > reading tweets.
What I’m reading: All Fours, by Miranda July. I don’t know what to make of this book yet but in the meantime I can’t put it down.
What I’m watching: I watched the 2011 political/spy thriller Page Eight. Bill Nighy is so very watchable. So understated, so perfect.