The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 149 - Distraction

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, listeners. Before we get to this week's episode, Pete and I are so excited to let you know that we are co-facilitating Akimbo's upcoming Real Skills conference. It's August 19th, from 3-5pm Eastern. If you are inclined to meet amazing changemakers from all across the globe, I hope you'll join us. Head on over to thelongandtheshortpodcast.com/realskills for all the juicy details.

Pete: We would love, love, love to see you there. Also, while we've got you, we would love it if you took a moment to take a screenshot of the podcast and share it with a friend, or post it on social media, or jump onto Apple podcasts and leave us a review. It helps us find more amazing listeners, just like you. For now, please enjoy this week's episode.

Jen: Hello, Peter Shepherd.

Pete: Hello, Jennifer Waldman. What an intro.

Jen: I had my mind blown today.

Pete: Yes.

Jen: And I need to talk about it. Because I was listening to a podcast, and the guest who was being interviewed, Nir Eyal, asked the host the following question: What is the opposite of distraction?

Pete: This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: Would you care to venture a guess, Pete? What is the opposite of distraction?

Pete: Okay, so a word jumped into my mind like within microseconds of you finishing that question. And that was: Focus.

Jen: That's what I thought he was going to say too. But the actual like literal, dictionary, root words...opposite of distraction. You're going to go, "Oh my gosh, why didn't I think of that," when I say it.

Pete: Okay.

Jen: Is: Traction.

Pete: Huh.

Jen: Traction. Dis-traction.

Pete: Oh my god. I'm not okay, I'm done. We need to stop.

Jen: Right? My mind was blown.

Pete: It's right there. It's so obvious.

Jen: It's right there. Okay.

Pete: Right.

Jen: So, I've got to give props where props are due. Nir Eyal is the author of Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: Okay. So when you're thinking about it in this context, that the opposite of distraction is traction...and I don't know about you, but lately, I've been working with a lot of my clients on gaining traction as things are opening up. We only want to do things that gain traction. It helped me to reframe distraction as not only the things that pull you away from your work or cause you to procrastinate or avoid or whatever, but distraction is also all of the things on the to-do list that you think are related to the thing you're trying to do that actually will not gain you traction. It reminds me of the 80/20 rule, that 20% of your efforts are actually creating 80% of your outputs. And it has made me think about everything on my calendar, on my to-do list in a totally new way.

Pete: Yeah, it's sort of annoying. Like I think prior to four minutes ago, I thought about distraction as things like my phone, or social media, or a text message, or things that I feel like I know (or we know) can wait because they're always there. They're not necessarily urgent. So yeah, I don't know. For some reason I was thinking of like, "Oh, a butterfly," or like, "Oh, I've got to check my phone," or like, you know, "Oh, I better just randomly check Instagram for no reason whatsoever."

Jen: Well, those would qualify.

Pete: Right, which they would. However, what else would qualify, based on what you just told me, are things that I would definitely say (prior to five and a half minutes ago) were meaningful projects or important things I need to take care of that I wouldn't necessarily associate with, you know, dinging flashing notifications on my phone. For some reason, I always think of that when I think of distraction.

Jen: Yes. I did, too. And now I see how stealthy distraction can be, because it doesn't always come with an annoying notification ding. Sometimes it's masquerading as something that is trying to grab your attention as important, where it's really just a distraction.

Pete: The Trojan Horse of distraction. Alright. Okay. So, what do we do with that?

Jen: Well, I've got to unpack one other piece of this puzzle, which really (woof) sent me into a spiral. So, the thing he said is that we have distraction triggers. We are triggered to distraction. And those triggers are uncomfortable emotions. So, we allow ourselves to choose distraction when something is making us emotionally uncomfortable.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And so the spiral I went down is trying to replay like the last week of my life, and all the things I have chosen that could qualify as distraction, and like what was the uncomfortable emotional trigger that I was trying to avoid? And I realize it's like...recalling our old episode, The Fear Onion. Like almost all of it, for me, is wrapped up in fear. Almost all of the discomfort that I will choose a distraction over is to avoid feeling afraid of something. So like in our Fear Onion episode, way back in the day, I shared that one of my greatest fears is being wrong.

Pete: Mmm. Yeah. I remember. I remember that.

Jen: And in a recent episode where we were talking about go faster, I was telling you that I can get distracted by having to weigh every single detail of every single option. Well, what is the uncomfortable emotional thing that I'm trying to avoid then? The fear of being wrong. I'm distracted by my fear of being wrong. And oh my goodness, it just feels...it feels so epic. I'm probably going to need months to unpack this. But it has changed my life to know that traction and distraction are connected.

Pete: Yeah. It also feels like something that we're going to need to remind ourselves of on the daily/weekly.

Jen: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Pete: That...again, that sounds so obvious. But I think it's certainly surprising to me to hear, and it makes total sense. The moment we choose distraction is the moment we feel uncomfortable.

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Pete: So we seek comfort in the things that we know how to interact with, whether that be email, or social media, or a Slack message. We know what to do to that. (We open it, we view it, we decide to respond.) Versus the unknown, or the discomfort of something that's going to give us traction. And I guess we've referenced that in the past about emotional labor. We feel the emotional labor. We feel that ping of fear, or doubt, or insecurity. And I think you're right. For me, it's always fear. And then we go, "Maybe I'll just check another email."

Jen: Right?

Pete: Maybe you don't, because you and your email is a whole different thing. But like, "Maybe I'll message Jen and see how she's going." That's probably one that I do all the time.

Jen: Yeah, I'm guilty of that too. Fear of Peter not needing me. So, the flip side of this that really excites me is the idea that working through those moments of discomfort has such a high payoff. That it's like, "Ooh, I'm feeling uncomfortable about this. What is on the other side?" Traction. Progress. Movement toward my goals. Movement toward my vision. So, somehow this sort of like punch-in-the-gut of recognizing what is at the root of distraction has also helped me realize what the benefit is of working through those uncomfortable moments. So that feels like a bonus.

Pete: Yeah, I totally agree. I feel like it's almost like traction leads to momentum.

Jen: Mm-hmm. Yes.

Pete: I mean, I think about the literal sense. I'm thinking about like a grippy tire on a truck or a car or something, for some reason. And like if you were spinning in mud or in wet grass or something as a car was spinning, you're trying to get traction and you're trying to get traction, and you're not going anywhere. And then all of a sudden, it catches and you get traction. And then you start to move, and then you start to gain momentum. So if we're seeking momentum in the work we're doing...which I think most of our listeners would attest that they are.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: "I want momentum in my projects." It's like the precursor to momentum is traction, and then the precursor to traction is doing the hard part.

Jen: So, this is making me think of two things. One is, there's a great book actually called Traction, which is all about being an entrepreneur and how to establish an infrastructure within your business that allows you to gain traction. And I'm thinking back to reading that book and going like, "Yeah. This is definitely about tackling certain fears, and moving away from distraction." So, that was interesting to me. But the second thing is, right now I'm in the middle of my summer coaching program. And without knowing, really, that this is what I was doing...now with this new lens, I'm having this aha moment. I've been having people send me what they think their tasks are, what they think their to-dos are, and then I've just been cutting things from the list and sending it back to them, going like, "This isn't going to help you move the needle. This isn't going to help you move the needle." Like, "Focus on this instead." Now I have to ask them, "What are we hiding from by putting that on there? Like how is that keeping you safe, rather than challenging you to work through some of this harder stuff in order to get where you want to go?" So, that's a whole new angle. But I like the idea of having a partner, or someone with whom you can collaborate to point those things out to you, that like, "That might not be giving you the traction that you desire."

Pete: Yeah. Exactly. I feel like that ties into many of our episodes, recently. The episode on go faster, we were talking about how it can be easier to go faster when you have someone else that you're collaborating with holding you accountable to the thing that you stand for, which helps you go faster. So, I feel like it's very closely related to that. And the other thing it makes me think of is, I think way back in the day, I might have shared this very tactical way that I think about a to-do list. And I think it ties into that really great question that you just asked, which is, "What's going to help you move the needle?" And I've stolen this from an article somewhere (I'll dig it up and put it in the Box O' Goodies), the 1-3-5 way of prioritizing your to-do list. Which, basically, you split a piece of paper or a sticky note up into one grid at the top, three little grids in the middle, and then you can have up to five dot points down the bottom. But the point is...essentially, it comes down to, "If you could only achieve or do one thing today from your to-do list and be satisfied that that was a productive day or a day that you could be proud of, what would that one thing be?" So, it's kind of trying to start each day with that question. But I actually really like your question of, "If I could do only one thing to move the needle on this project, what would that one thing be?" The idea is only when you finish that one thing can you then look at the other three things, in the three. And then only once you've completed those, can you look at the thing in the five. And in my experience, I basically never make it to the five. It's always...it's always the one, and sometimes the three.

Jen: Yeah. Okay. So that's how The Productivity Planner is set up, which is a product that's created by the same people who made The Five-Minute Journal, which we both love. Well, it's funny you talk about that because one of the things I've discovered about things that I have on my to-do list that I never do is that if I don't get to them by a certain point, I should just eliminate them. I shouldn't even seek to complete them. Because what I've learned about those things is that doing them doesn't make a difference, and not doing them doesn't make a difference.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: They just don't make a difference. They are a distraction.

Pete: Mmm. Okay. The other thing this is making me realize is something I've been grappling with in the last week, for example. Which is, what happens when you get the one thing done by 7am? So, this has happened to me recently. I've been running some workshops with folks in the US and in Canada, which, for me, starts at usually about 5am. And often the workshops are about two hours. So literally this morning, I'd finished my one thing at 7am. That was my one big thing, that if I finished today and I wanted to say I was proud of how I showed up today or what what I did today, it would be really focus and put energy into that workshop. And I did that. Awesome. And then the thing that I've found (because this has happened multiple days in a row) is the story I tell myself between 7am until 5pm or 6pm, or the things that I think I need to be doing or could be doing or should be doing between the 7am and the 5pm. Like, how do I fill that time?

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Pete: And I've caught myself being, I would say, like nothing but distracted. Essentially, based on this conversation. That's pretty much all I've been doing, is like shuffling papers, and, "Oh, I'll send Jen a message," and, "Oh, I guess I'll send an email to someone I haven't checked in for a while." And like, I'm doing things that are sort of important. Like, I don't want to completely dismiss them. But they certainly don't help me do the thing that I've already done, because I've already done it. So it's like, I don't know, this is weird conflict I'm having in my head about all of this at the moment.

Jen: I am laughing so hard right now, because what you just described is something that we have a joke about in my family. We call it "checking the ropes." Because my husband was in a production of a play that took place on a ship. And in a scene, his character had nothing to do. And he asked the director, "What should I do?" And the director said, "Check the ropes." So Mark spent the whole scene walking to a rope and shaking it, and then walking to another rope and shaking it. And it's just become this running gag in our family, that you're "checking the ropes" if you're trying to look like you're doing something, but you're actually doing nothing.

Pete: Oh my god. I feel so called out. I've literally been checking the ropes every day for like the last week.

Jen: Oh. You know, it made me want to ask you a question...this is a strategy that I use on my calendar. I've been using it for years. Honestly, when I came up with this, I didn't know other people did this. And funnily enough, it might have been on the same podcast that I felt affirmed to hear someone else talking about time blocking. So I use time blocking as a strategy in my calendar, where I will set aside times for certain kinds of work but I don't actually know what work I'm going to do during that time. So I have time in my calendar called To-Do Time. I have time in my calendar called Business Time. I have time in my calendar called Magic Time, where I just do things creative. Even if I don't know what I'm working on, I know that only creative projects will come into Magic Time. And I'm just curious if you've ever used that method.

Pete: You know what? I've not. I've never thought to group tasks like that. I think I've definitely blocked specific tasks. You know, like sometimes I'll put a block in my calendar to be, you know, something like, "Send proposal by end of day," or, you know, "Submit this by the end of whatever." But not like as a group of Magic Time, which is creative projects. Or, I don't know, Writing Time, which is writing in whatever capacity, whether that's a blog, whether that's a book, whether that's an email to a friend. I've not actually done those categories. I really like that.

Jen: Yeah. I mean, we could do a whole other episode on time blocking because I have found it to be a game-changer. I've probably been organizing my calendar that way, maybe, I don't know, seven-ish years at this point. And it's hugely helpful. Because it keeps me from being distracted. When I'm in Magic Time, there's no social media, there's no Google, there's no YouTube. There is writing or creating something. I might listen to some music because it's going to spark something in me, but I'm definitely focused on my own creative output.

Pete: Mm-hmm. That's good, Waldman. I'm going to use that, for sure.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: Okay. What about you? Where do you go with all of this? This distraction, this traction? How do we not be distracted? How do we create more traction that generates momentum? What do you make of all this?

Jen: I'm trying to boil it down to the simplest point. And this is the big takeaway for me. (And listeners, if you have a different takeaway than this, we would love to hear from you. Because I'm so shaken by the concept.) For me, when I am giving in to distraction, I have to pause and say to myself, "Jen, what are you afraid of right now? Work through it."

Pete: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.