As time flies, as you get older, slowly but surely, more and more distractions creep into your life.
In my 20s, I had all the time in the world, no liabilities, and few responsibilities. I could arrive in the office, turn my noise-canceling ON, and dive into work for 12 hours if I felt like it. The result of such contracted focus is incredible progress, compounded over the early years of your career. So use the time well.
Today, in my 30s, it's very different.
A long-term relationship
A child
A house
Assets that need maintenance
Bills that need payment
A company that needs dedication and creativity
All these pieces that I decided to build my life around, that I love maintaining, emit distractions. Often distractions that need immediate attention. Disruptions, that prevent deep work.
A partner has a birthday soon? You better start planning for it.
Child needs to be picked up from pre-school early, because they may be sick. You better pack, drive home, pick a child seat into your work car, and drive.
House? Well, your grass looks kinda 💩 this year. You better start looking into that. And don't forget about that weird noise, that's coming from the heat pump, that sounds like a costly repair.
A stock earnings is to be reported tomorrow. Make sure to decide to hold, sell, or buy more. You want to be effective with your money, right?
The mortgage and the credit card are due tomorrow, you better shuffle the resources around.
Zillion ideas flowing through the company. You better prioritize them well, people are depending on you.
You probably skimmed through the paragraph, I'd do the same. It's a handful of things you choose to embrace, that you love, but they sap your attention and deep focus.
As you age, it's not gonna get better. At least as long as you want to have children and as long as you're ambitious and in a productive age.
Cheap "Learning"
My problem also is that I love to learn.
The internet is full of high-quality content and the platforms know it. Most of them are optimized to acquire your attention for as long as possible. One of the purposes is to go to great measures to prevent you from leaving.
Youtube is great. So many smart, crafty, and inspiring creators dedicate their lives to telling stories, teaching, explaining, and entertaining. The platform is just so good at bringing them viewers that it's worth it.
Also, when the video or story ends, you know what? The next one creeps in through the suggestions. At least as captivating as this one. Why not watch it, it's just a couple of minutes, right?
Same goes with Reddit, 𝕏, Instagram, LinkedIn ... whatever resonates with you.
Costly Learning Entertainment
Be honest with yourself.
Most of the "learning" videos you watch are just an excuse for entertainment.
Our brains are not wired to digest so much information so quickly. 99.9% of the information is just dropped within days, leaving you with nothing learned and time wasted.
Block the noise and work
I've read this quote somewhere, that.
The best mechanism to get 💩 done is locking yourself in an empty room with a table, chair, pencil, and a piece of paper.
No distractions. No options to browse. You're only with your thoughts and the task ahead of you.
Do you want to fiddle with your pencil? Pretty boring after 30 seconds, right?
My solution
At heart, I'm a software engineer.
My pen and paper are my Mac. My empty room is a computer environment without access to attention sappers. I can block them as easily as editing my /etc/hosts file.
Then there is nothing easier, than automating this with a CRON job in the desired time frame.
Since I started blocking YouTube, Reddit, Instagram, and even my favorite news sites in my dedicated work time, I'm 10x as productive. Not 1x, not 2x ... it feels like 10x.
Why?
Because I have no choice, but to work.
I encourage you to try the same. If you don't know how, you can check this Github repository, where I compiled a tiny node package, that does the job for you.