Tried Deep Work? It’s time for Deep Distraction
Your attention is more sacred than you think.
It’s almost 9 p.m. on a weekday, and you’ve wound down for the day. It’s time for some Netflix and chilled Coke. You ignore the Slack notifications and choose your profile on the borrowed Netflix account. You cross the doom of deciding what to watch and resort to something you’ve already seen before. Familiarity, right? We tend to stick to familiar things - especially on a weekday.
By the time the Tudum hits, your attention is already diverted. Your phone is in your hands, devouring the next notification. Based on your age and occupation, it would be Twitter, Instagram, or WhatsApp. And if you’re the social maxi type, it’ll be all of the above. The intro credits have rolled in; you are already multi-distracted (multi-tasking when done in the distraction context). You’ve kept the subtitles on, but the only text you care about is the one you receive on WhatsApp. It feels good. Multiple sources of light are directed towards you. You switch between apps at this point, trying to follow the show based on the audio subtly masked by the trendy reel audio from your phone.
You laugh at the meme. It reminds you of a friend back in college. You look at your laptop. The scene is a serious one, like when Tom has Jerry cornered. You’re confused. The smile fizzles out. You try to keep the phone down, but the algorithmic feed pull doesn’t let you. The show must go on, right? It does. As you finally decide to reply to the Slack messages out of guilt. It’s a compensatory thing you try to do to set off your late start to the work day.
The Threesome
A show, social media, and Slack - the threesome most people will experience, especially on a weekday.
We take distractions casually. What if we don’t? A few years ago, I came across the concept of Deep Work by Cal Newport. Here’s how he defines it:
Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship.
What if we take the same approach to distractions?
When was the last time you saw something on your laptop and didn’t touch your phone for the entire duration? What if you immersed yourself in being distracted? Not splitting up your attention, being deep with your distraction.
No, the goal is not to cut down the time of distraction. The goal is to use the time effectively so at least you get the maximum fun out of it.
What would this look like in reality?
Not switching between apps. If you set aside time for Instagram, that time is for Instagram. You make that commitment.
No screen polygamy. One screen at a time.
Protect the distraction like you would protect your firstborn or, based on recent trends - your pet.
No notifications. Not allowed, sorry.
One Child Screen Policy
But wait, before we think about solving this issue, we must see how we arrived here. Consuming content radio, telephone, and television was a singleton activity. You do only that. It can be social, but the source of entertainment is singular. The affordability of more screens wrecked this concept. There’s no rule right that you can’t consume two sources of entertainment at a time. Maybe we can draw inspiration from China’s one-child policy. Create a one-screen policy - every individual can acquire/possess only one screen at a time.
Here’s a highly technical and well-researched graph on how relaxation tends to 0 after every additional screen post one screen.
Try drinking two different things at a time. Try eating two different things at a time. Try driving on both sides of the road at a time. You’ll suck the fun out of the activity and risk your life. We get this concept when it comes to physical things but lose it when it comes to digital items.
Here’s the caveat - It's easier to focus while being distracted than at work. It’s like someone telling you to kick the ball more intensely versus solving the math puzzle more intensely. What are you more likely to follow through with?
Maybe the first step to deep work is deep distractions. I’ve been trying to distract myself “deeply” over the last 12 days. Here’s what my experience has been like:
It feels wrong. To not pick up your phone and use your thumb. It feels like committing a crime. You’re breaking up with your phone, only temporarily, though. Your brain is used to that additional dopamine hit. The TUDUM doesn’t satisfy it. Your baseline needs to be reset. It takes a while.
You realize how dependent you are on your phone in moments like these. It’s like salivating for the pasta when your mouth is already stuffed with a pizza. Past the 3-day mark with some failures, you feel normal. The show seems more interesting, and you are consuming it as it was meant to be - no adulteration. You can now actually get distracted by the subtitles.
Yes, I know this idea sounds stupid. Why would you want to think so much when you want to relax? So, naturally, I decided to follow through on the stupid idea.
Lonely, I’m Mr.Lonely
At some level, all of this comes down to escapism. We want to escape our reality, increase the number of distractions, and increase the number of exit doors. We tend to justify this by saying - I’m relaxing, so why not make it more the merrier. In the end, both the laptop and phone are serving that purpose. That’s like saying I will simultaneously play basketball and football because they both utilize a ball. But you won’t, right? The rules are different. The balls are different. You can only do it one at a time.
Maybe it’s an escapism to feel less alone. We tend to be surrounded by less and less by real people. The bombardment of screens might make us feel safe in a context where we are surrounded by things that should be people.
A screen grab from NBC’s video on loneliness:
But let’s go deeper. Does size matter?
In this case, it certainly does. You’re less likely to be on your phone in a movie theatre. The context is still the same - you can access the two screens. Is it because of the social stigma? That people might judge us. Or is it because of the additional effort that has gone into watching the movie that we feel we need to be focused to get a return on our investment? We want an immersive experience.
We are wired for immersive experiences. We’ll choose the friend who listens more - giving the vibe of being immersed versus the friend who always talks. There’s a reason IMAX and rollercoaster exists. We think these immersive experiences can only be recreated through external factors (large screens, Dolby sound). But what if this was a lie? What if this was entirely in our control? Being focused while being distracted.
It Takes Two To Tango
Another place where we do two things at a time but that doesn’t seem intrusive—listening to music while working out. Should we stop that? One is physical. So that’s the rule then: you could be getting stimulated from more than one source, but at least 1 of it should be physical.
How do we test this?
Try working out without music. Well, I did.
Within the first five minutes, I felt like a fish out of water. I didn’t know how to process the sounds around me. At some level, I didn’t even know these sounds existed. It was like someone had removed the training wheels from my bicycle. The experience changes completely. I thought about things. Things I wouldn’t ideally think about, I made decisions. I have heard people say, “Working out with music is cheating.” - Well, I disagree with this. There are days when I am not in the mindset, and if it weren’t for the music, I wouldn’t be working out. So is it possible that there is an actual benefit to this two things at a time phenomenon? If doing two things at once, at least one is positive (anything that pushes you towards what you want to achieve), the two at a time is a net positive. It’s the marginal cost you pay for doing things.
When I moved to the cardio machine, without music, things escalated. I needed Drake playing in my ears with the treadmill. It was related to the part of being stationary. Being in one place and moving on the same path, my mind needed to be diverted. I needed something to take my mind off it. With lifting weights, it’s more dynamic. There’s moving around and change in weights. You can get lost in that.
This was fairly easy when I went for a walk outside. It was just so much easier to be in my thoughts. And mind you, there was auditory stimulation, the horns, the vendors yelling. But even in the middle of that, I could think. They didn’t disturb me. I didn’t need noise-cancelling headphones.
Okay, now I get it. It’s like noise cancellation.
We use noise cancellation to increase our focus - we reduce the noise around us so we can focus. And we are doing precisely the opposite of it when we want to be distracted. We increase the noise.
If there’s a change needed for this, it needs to come at a higher level. It needs to be a blanket policy that applies to all, non-negotiable. It’s dictatorial. But that’s the only way out. Expecting every individual to understand this on their own is not possible. They are at a disadvantage. China is doing something on this level.
My Precious
We state something unconsciously when we try to do multiple things at a time.
We have less time and more things to do.
The less time we have is precious.
Truth is, yes, we have more things to do. But do we need to do them? We like to do multiple things that do not get us ahead, but we do it for the heck of it.
And the second point is that we attach value to our precious time. It stems from self-importance. Doing two things at a time helps us feel more important.
It may be normal to multitask with two screens on an average day. But what if you are having a bad day? When you are slightly anxious and need something to calm yourself down. We tend to think that taking two pills instead of 1 will help, or better yet, 3. It’s to numb ourselves with sensory overload. But maybe the actual thing that will help us is to be in the recommended dosage level.
Doing only one thing at a time is a lost art. We can’t return to it. Our dopamine baselines are too damn elevated.
As I try to recollect all the other things I do during the day, there’s rarely anything other than sleeping that is solitary—reading the paper while having breakfast, listening to a podcast while traveling to work, or talking to a friend while driving. There’s a clear trend I see.
I am trying to jack up my mind with more information and, simultaneously, take away any opportunity for thinking. There’s a reason meditation is so relevant right now - it’s not the meditation part that’s suddenly improved 10x. It’s everything around it that has fallen.
If I ask myself why I watch a show or check my phone - it’s to feel relaxed. But it’s not the relaxation I am yearning for. It’s peace. As Naval Ravikant puts it - We say peace of mind, but we really want peace from mind—the feeling of silence.
Focusing on things singularly seems like the answer in this myriad forest of distractions. It feels wrong at first, even unnatural. It’s funny how the natural can seem bizarre just by practice.