Keep Your Eye on the Ball
“Time is the Great Equalizer. No one can create it and no one has enhanced access to it over anyone else. ”
The Christmas season is in full effect. I know many people don’t observe it in the religious sense but if you live in America you are affected by it. It’s a time for rest (see my previous entry about that), hopefully a time to spend with family, a time to contemplate the accomplishments of the year and the next year’s possibilities. I’m a big believer that you can’t have it all. If you are reaching for one thing it means you are unable to hold on to something else. As I’ve stated previously, I don’t believe in immediate balance, I believe in lifelong balance. If you want to retire eventually you have to work hard when you are able. If you are resting it means that you are not working. This means that some of us regardless of the season are staying focused and goal-oriented.
The Holiday season for many of us, however, is a time of rest and there is nothing wrong with that, but I’d like to discuss something that routinely occurs during the holiday season (at least for me). It’s something that routinely robs us of our greatness…Distractions.
I began thinking about this because of the Holiday season. Lights, traveling, family, winter, mindless consumerism, the usual things that make us feel like the year is coming to a close. In reflecting these are all things that I’ve allowed to get me off my square about my goals and usually kill my momentum. I’ll be musing on some of this in a later entry but what often happens is that rather than pushing through the end of the year, many of us coast (or sometimes even crash) into the new year. What I mean is that we stop grinding as hard. We see the finish line in sight and instead of sprinting towards it, we shift into a lower gear. We relax, we take our eye off the ball. In my experience that happens because the holiday is such a fun time and it’s so easy to take it easy. You’re around family, you’re having a good time, you’re usually off work for an extended period. It’s a time when people normally get lax.
Some of the things I used to get lax about:
Diet and Exercise - I ain’t thinking about working out and eating right. My Momma made her mac & cheese and my cousin fried a turkey. It’s time to grub and spend some time with family members I don’t see every day. Plus all my childhood friends are in town so it’s a must that we kick it (preferably at a bar or lounge), so you know that means liquor and possibly hangovers. Most believe in having a Merry Christmas, my natural tendency is to have a drink and be Merry Christmas. Post-holiday, I’m feeling like shxt for not being disciplined and typically overreact to the weight gain by doing a week-long crash diet and going waaaay too hard in the gym.
You can find Rob where the food at during the Holidays
Spending - These gifts aint going to buy themselves. If you’re a grown man you already know you can’t pull up to the December Holiday gathering with nothing but lint in your pockets. Typically I would overspend in the past. I had a budget but you know how it is when them deals come calling. That fear of missing out sets in and you start spending on things you don’t need and your family may not necessarily want and you’re only justification is “it was on sale”. Plus I like shopping for myself especially when it’s a deal and something I already wanted. Post-holiday my accounts and credit cards are looking highly disturbed, I’m feeling like shxt for not being disciplined and I have to shift next month’s budget to get myself out of the financial hole I dug for myself.
Rob when those Black Friday Sales start going off.
Mental Routine - I’m not going to lie, when I’m around people I care about that I don’t see often I have a tendency to live in the moment and enjoy my people. The first thing that gets dropped is usually my mental routine of journaling and meditating. It doesn’t usually have a noticeable effect until after I get back to the grind of the 9 to 5. That’s when I see the difference. I’m not as sharp, not as focused, not as detailed.
Me at work after a week or two of not being consistent with my mental routine
Maybe you’re somebody who doesn’t have any issues during the holidays. That’s awesome. I’m just now getting to a place where I don’t allow the holidays to get me off the rails the way they used to. However, I am someone that still deals with the distractions of life. Most of us have life distractions, they just increase for me during the holidays.
Where Distractions Can Come From
In my experience, distractions at this time of year come from being around loved ones that aren’t on your wavelength or aware of your life plan/life structure. This is normal and isn’t usually malicious. For example, you may have a friend that wants to go to a fancy restaurant to eat (separate tabs). Your friend has Japanese A5 wagyu pockets so it makes sense, but your pocketbook is more for a Wendy’s 5 for 5. The social pressure of the holidays and that friend/family time may get you distracted from your original fiscal plan, so you spend because you got it but probably shouldn’t have. Another one that happens much more often is eating. Especially in my community. If you’re trying to stay to a caloric standard it can be difficult. A known law of nature is that all of the best-tasting foods have the highest caloric density. Don’t leave a comment about calorically sparse alternatives because they are not the same, this is something I refuse to argue about. If you don’t believe me look at Cheesecake and Seafood alfredo pasta as living examples of this. Being around family usually involves food, and that usually involves good food, which usually involves fat and carbs…you see where I’m going with this? Om nom nom one week off turns into a friend 5 pounds of weight gained. That 5 pounds usually takes at least 2 weeks to burn off the right way, sometimes more.
The bottom line is that it’s usually the people that you surround yourself with that will be your biggest distractions. They will help or hinder you and it’s important you’re aware of their contributions to your life and vice versa, and it’s why no man wins alone. Often your support system doesn’t intentionally distract you it’s just a difference in lifestyles and goals. However, it’s not just your friends and family that can be a distraction. It can often come from your own lifestyle. You can be your biggest distraction. The phone and social media are big ones. The smartphone is arguably the single highest tool for productivity pound for pound in the history of human existence. Statistically, most of the time spent on smartphones is on entertainment, not even phone calls, instead of social media, internet browsing, and cell phone gaming. The danger in cell phones as a distraction is that they are always around. Most people are tethered to their phones in some form or fashion and they can be difficult to break away from. That 5-minute break can turn into a 20-minute browsing session and while that 15-minute difference may seem small, imagine you do that 4 times a day. Now imagine at the end of a week someone gave you almost an entire workday of extra time to knock out your goals instead of throwing it away on entertainment that was unnecessary for your peace of mind. Over the course of a year that’s hundreds of extra hours we could’ve spent being productive instead of being distracted.
Entertainment is probably the biggest distraction of them all and in first-world society, it is the most easily accessible, justified, and reinforced. There are multiple multi-billion dollar industries that revolve around entertainment. They usually cross-pollinate with each other as well. From sports to music to video games to television and movies to social media they are all designed to keep your attention and entertain as effectively as possible. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with entertainment. I think it is healthy and necessary for everyone to have sources of mindless innocent pleasure and entertainment that allow that person to truly rest their mind and body. However, the average person (in my opinion) has a larger emphasis on entertainment than is probably necessary for their goals and that entertainment is probably serving more to distract from the goal (negative) than helping to recharge and inspire them (positive).
What Distractions Can Do
The biggest effect of distractions is that they are time stealers. Because most people lack a detailed level of self-awareness, they aren’t aware of how much time distractions are robbing them of. In the example I used in the previous section most people throw away hundreds of extra hours on things that are of no consequence. Things like browsing social media, arguing on forums, watching entertainment that doesn’t help you grow in any way, reviewing the latest gossip both locally and nationally. Those are hours that you could’ve put toward getting healthier, growing your income, growing a skillset, starting a business, improving your relationship with a family member or friend, healing from an emotionally traumatic incident, or whatever your goals are. There is one thing that is required of literally EVERYTHING in this world, and that is time. It is a finite resource and nothing can be achieved without it. How we spend it is a testament to who we are. Distractions rob you of your time, they force you to push back a delivery date on a goal because the time went to something instead of being spent on the goal.
Distractions also rob you of something else, your focus. While time is a finite resource, focus is a competitive advantage. Focus increases self-awareness which increases effectiveness. It allows you to see your weaknesses and effectiveness during and after the task. Focus allows you to see if adjustments are necessary. Crowd noise plays a negative role at sports events for the opposing team but seems to have the opposite effect of boosting and empowering the home team. Part of this is because it can disrupt communication but the other part is the noise can disrupt the focus of players that aren’t used to the distraction. When you get distracted your instincts start to kick in. It’s part of the reason that training in any career field is so important. The more you train in an environment that is close to the real situation the more likely you are to deliver in the real situation when there are distractions or breakdowns.
Finally, distractions can rob you of your self-confidence. When your time and focus are off your confidence to deliver in critical moments can be lower. If you had a big presentation to make to management that was going to affect your career, but you were under-prepared (time), and were thinking about something else during the presentation (focus) it’s not likely to be successful. Most people are not so good at something that they can deliver above the average standard (with time and focus) without putting in the time and focusing themselves. Usually, those people are can are uncommonly gifted among career leaders, and even then they learn fairly early that if they do put in the time and develop focus that they will be among the greatest to ever compete or participate in that activity.
So focus aint this dramatic but it can feel like it.
How I handle it
Thing numero uno with this and almost everything else in life is that you have to be honest with yourself. If you know you’re someone that can be distracted easily figure out what those distractions are and do what you can to mitigate the effects those distractions have or remove them as much as is possible. For example, I am a decent multi-tasker but like most people who do multi-task, my ability to effectively execute all the tasks I’m managing decreases. I know myself well enough that for some tasks it’s better not to multi-task or to have a high level of control on what the distraction is. If I need to read something for critical comprehension I am likely to pause to quiet any audio that involves a voice, instrumentals work fine but I find any voices beyond the one in my head doing the reading to be distracting. At the same time if I’m on social media I don’t have any issues reading that while watching TV. If I’m working on something for a client I prefer to have someone streaming on twitch (go check out the Social Introvert on BYNK Radio’s Twitch Stream he’s hilarious) while I work on it. Even with this blog, I usually have a specific type of instrumental music or the BYNK Radio station on in the background. It distracts a specific part of my brain just enough so that I can clearly structure what I’m trying to say. Everyone is different when it comes to that and a little distraction isn’t bad if it’s distracting the thing that distracts you the most. It’s like putting on some Nick Jr. so the kid in your mind will sit down and chill out while you work. However, if you don’t know yourself well enough you’ll be doing things that exacerbate the problem like giving the kid in your mind donuts and kool-aid and promising him a trip to Disney world then driving 6 hours mentally with no restroom breaks. All you’re doing to get is a noisy (and messy) backseat.
If you have a fitness goal and you were heading into the holiday knowing the food temptation was going to present itself, there are several ways you could’ve handled it.
Build the distraction into the plan
Stay away from the distraction
In the first instance, you work your butt off a little bit harder and decrease that caloric intake in preparation to overeat later. In the second you stay strong and stay away from the food traps. There are several ways to do that, you can stay away from the house during the holidays, but that isn’t really going to go over well, or you can eat ahead of time, or bring your own food. Is it as good as Mom’s mac & cheese? Nah, not really but that sacrifice will be worth it. The point is that if you know the distractions ahead of time you should plan for them ahead of time. Build something that will address your needs not the needs of others. You’re the one that has to follow your plan, it should be something that works for you.
I am coming to the conclusion that I will likely never be able to fully block out the distractions and as I’ve detailed that’s not necessarily a bad thing when left in check. Like most things that cause issues, you have to acknowledge the distraction, categorize the distraction correctly in your hierarchy of importance (if it is something that you should even attend to), plan if you can, stay disciplined if you can’t, and forgive yourself in a way that’s healthy if you break.
I hope everyone is having a happy and healthy holiday season.