The human mind is so easily distracted.
What is interesting though is we choose our distractions most of the time.
Most of my distractions come through some kind of electronic device, and all of those devices require us to take a step or two to turn them on and veg out with them.
They do not turn on by themselves.
So these self-induced distractions are really under my control.
It is 100% on me to be scrolling through Instagram for an hour.
I have found a LOT of success personally to help myself through this by using action to overcome distraction.
When I have something to do that is responsibility related that I may not necessarily want to do…
For me usually I’d rather play a game on my phone, scroll through Instagram, or watch the next episode of “The Last Dance” Michael Jordan doc (which is on as I write this blog btw.)
Instead of immediately grabbing my phone, I do three things that fall on the productive side of things in my mind.
I do each thing for 60 seconds only so it is brief, yet effective enough to grab my brains attention.
It is amazing how this helps me refocus and just go do the thing I was supposed to do in the first place, and it only cost me three minutes instead of the WHOLE NIGHT!
For me I have been doing these three things:
- 60 seconds Plank Hold
- 60 seconds Hollow Hold
- 60 seconds Nasal Breathing
I chose these movements because of the following; the plank to work on my core and shoulder stability, the hollow hold to work on keeping tensions through my obliques, and nasal breathing to reduce my heart rate and calm my mind before I get back into the task at hand.
This has worked really well for me, not 100% all the time, but works a lot better than jumping on Facebook for a solid hour.
It doesn’t have to be these 3 movements.
Just something that pulls 100% of your attention to what you are doing.
This is the trick to jumpstarting your brain!