Last week the wireless mouse for my laptop stopped working. After much troubleshooting, to no avail, I thought I’d better go out and buy a new one. Then I realized that almost the only time I use the external mouse is when I play a computer game. And, almost the only time I play a computer game is when I am trying to distract myself from doing something else – usually business related or when I am worrying about something, and we all know how not productive that is!
That got me thinking about how many ways we can distract ourselves from the task at hand. And, sometimes it even looks like we are being productive. For instance, if you are in a job search and you spend hours every day applying for jobs online and you know that in your industry jobs are usually found through networking, it might be a distraction. It is a way for you to trick your mind into thinking you’re looking for a job. When actually your are keeping yourself from looking at what you really want because you aren’t quite sure how to go about figuring that out. Or, you feel like you “should” look for the same type of job you’ve had because some test in high school, which was decades ago said that you’d be an excellent X (you fill in the blank).
This doesn’t only apply to a job search. I’ll give you an example from my life today and it is in relationship to writing this post. I usually write it on Wednesday, so today was the day and I didn’t have any ideas. So, here is my string of distractions. I thought, “Oh geez (yes, I am originally from Wisconsin) it’s Father’s Day on Sunday and I haven’t gotten anything for my dad so I’d better go out shopping.” Then it was time for lunch and I read a few chapters of a book while I was eating. Then I sat down to write and tried a few things, but nothing popped. By then I realized I was tired because we had gone to a Cubs game last night (Yay, they won), but we didn’t get home until late. So… I had a short 15 minute power nap. Then back to the computer and in between asked two people what they’d like to think about this week, with no luck. And, here I am writing about distractions. Now, here’s the funny thing. I started writing about distractions on a pad of paper on Monday and then put it away – likely distracting myself with something else.
I guess the point I am trying to make is that we can spend a lot of time avoiding doing the next step, especially when we don’t have a clear idea about what the next step is. And, sometimes we don’t have a plan because we really don’t know what it is that we want to do next. And, part of knowing what you want to do is to allow yourself the time to do your inner work – meditate, explore, experiment, dream, create, and uncover some of the fears and self doubts that might be holding you back.
This week begin to notice how you distract yourself. What are you distracting yourself from? If you didn’t distract yourself what might you do? What might be a lesson you could learn from realizing that you are distracting yourself? Remember, our minds can be really sneaky and you might not recognize right away that you are distracting yourself. This week you can be a detective and search out those moments of distraction and let yourself learn something new.
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