Focus - Leo Babauta [7]
It's not until much later that we feel the consequences, if we even admit them to ourselves. It's months or years later, much after we're addicted, that we realize we're spending all our time online, that our personal lives have been taken over, that we have lost our ability to find quiet and focus, that our creative time and energies have been eroded by these addictions.
So while I can list all kinds of ways to disconnect, if you're addicted even to a small degree, it won't be a small feat to disconnect and stay disconnected.
How do we beat this addiction, then?
The same way you beat any addiction: by breaking the cycle of positive feedback, and by replacing the old habit with a new one.
And while beating addictions is really a subject to be tackled in another book, let's briefly outline some quick strategies you can use to beat this addiction:
Figure out your triggers. What things trigger your habits? It's usually something you do each day, something that leads directly to your addicted behavior. List these out.
Find a new, positive habit to replace the old habit for each trigger. For example, with quitting smoking, I needed a new habit for stress relief (running), a new thing to do after meetings (write out my notes), a new thing to do with coffee in the morning (reading), and so on.
Try changing each trigger, one at a time. So if you go to check your blogs first thing in the morning, make it a new habit to not open your browser, and instead open a simple text editor and start writing.
Create positive feedback for the new habit. If the new habit is something you don't enjoy, you'll quit before long. But if it's something enjoyable, that gives you positive feedback, that's good. Praise from others is also a good positive feedback -- there are many, and you'll want to engineer your habit change so that you get almost instant positive feedback.
Create instant negative feedback for the old habit. Instead of having negative feedback be long-term for going online, you want some negative feedback instantly: make it a rule that you have to call someone and tell them you failed if you go online after a certain trigger, for example. There are lots of kinds of negative feedback -- maybe you'll have to log and blog your failures, or something like that.
Repeat the positive feedback cycle as often as possible for the new habit. Soon, after a few weeks, it'll become a new habit and the old one will be (mostly) licked. Repeat for the next trigger.
Starting small, with just one trigger at a time, is a good way to be successful.
5: focus rituals
"My only ritual is to just sit down and write, write every day."
– Augusten Burroughs
Focus and creating are about more than just disconnecting. You can be connected and focus too, if you get into the habit of blocking out everything else and bringing your focus back to what's important.
One of the best ways of doing that is with what I like to call "Focus Rituals".
A ritual is a set of actions you repeat habitually -- you might have a pre-bed ritual or a religious ritual or a just-started-up-my-computer ritual. One of the powerful things about rituals is that we often give them a special importance: they can be almost spiritual (and sometimes actually spiritual, depending on the ritual). And when they become special, we are more mindful of them -- we don't just rush through them mindlessly.
Mindfully observing a ritual is important, especially when it comes to focus, because often we get distracted without realizing it. The distractions work because we're not paying attention. So when we pay attention to a ritual, it's much more conducive to focus, and then to creativity. Mindful attention to a ritual also helps keep it from become too rote or meaningless.
It's important to give importance to each ritual, so that you'll truly allow yourself to focus and not forget about the ritual when it's not convenient. For example, you might start each ritual with a couple of