THIS weapon of mass distraction is destroying your focus
The Hyperfocused Entrepreneur
June 5, 2023
Read time: 8 minutes
I’ve got a problem…
The moment I’m even remotely bored or have more than 3 seconds of uninterrupted time while out and about in the world, I’m reflexively reaching for my phone.
The smartphone is an incredible tool. No doubt about that.
It connects us to the world and a universe of knowledge, interaction, and potential productivity that’s actually a bit mind bending when you really stop to think about it.
But, that tool of potential productivity is double edged and more often than not (for myself, at least) I find that tool is more a Weapon of Mass Distraction than anything else.
Truly, there is nothing else in my life that has the ability to sidetrack my attention and put me on the path of shiny object syndrome faster than my phone.
Case in point, at this very moment, I am sitting in my office (in my writing chair) and I forgot to turn my phone onto Do Not Disturb mode.
And wouldn’t you know it, after spending the better part of an hour getting “in the zone” and working up the discipline necessary to start writing this article…
My phone is now sitting on my desk vibrating.
I have no idea why it’s vibrating.
Perhaps Jamie is texting me to say she loves me..
Perhaps my assistant is calling to say I’ve forgotten about an important meeting.
Perhaps it’s my business partner emailing over some important docs he needs signed within the next 5 minutes.
Then again…
It could just be spam…
But see, because I didn’t control my environment with intention, a part of my brain is now distracted and thinking about all the things my vibrating phone MIGHT represent.
And as a result, I’m not fully immersed and engaged in the work at hand (ie: this article).
If focus is the ability to resist distractions, then let’s stop playing the game of life on Hard Mode, and instead, let’s design our environment in a way that eliminates distractions from ever cropping up in the first place.
So, in this week’s love letter, I’m gonna break down how to turn our phones into Weapons of Mass Accomplishment (rather than Mass Distraction).
Creating a Dumb Phone for a Smart Life
Here’s the big problem with smart phones:
Everything about them is designed to stimulate our poor little brains into a state of frenzied overstimulation.
If you’re like me, often you open your phone thinking I just want to fire off a quick text, and next thing I know I’ve been sucked into the digital vortex
The moment you unlock your phone, you’re probably met by some gorgeous background, a dozen email, text, and DM notifications telling you about all the people who want a piece of your attention, and a bunch of brightly colored apps just BEGGING to be opened.
The first battle we HAVE to win in the war against our phone starts here, at the moment of Unlock.
And we do this by dumbing down our phone in 4 ways:
1. Grayscale
Our phones are capable of producing remarkably high resolutions that the human brain simply did not evolve ever experiencing in nature.
This means that our brains light up like Christmas trees right alongside all of those thousands of pixels flashing on our screens.
Now, on the one hand, this leads to awesome viewing experiences if you want to watch a movie on your phone or play video games.
But, the problem is we often get sucked into those movies or video games when we actually just unlocked our phone with the intention of doing actual work.
One of the reasons this happens is because your phone is ALWAYS blasting out high resolution images at you.
This stimulates a dopamine response in your brain. And the thing about dopamine and your brain is that your brain is like an addict… once it gets a taste of dopamine, it just wants more, more, more.
So next thing you know, you’re chasing the Dopamine White Rabbit from app to app without even realizing it.
Now the solution is actually quite simple, but I can almost guarantee that your initial reaction will be one of resistance, because it involves turning your phone PERMANENTLY to Grayscale.
The reason this is so effective (and why you’re probably going to resist it), is because it genuinely makes your phone less beautiful to look at.
Now, I get it… we spend thousands of dollars on our phones because they are so beautiful…
Why then would we turn off all the colors and navigate our phone in black-and-white when it makes for a FAR less enjoyable experience.
Well…
Because most of us simply get sucked into enjoying our phones rather than using our phones.
Truly, of all the hacks I’ve experimented with over the years trying to change my relationship with my phone, NONE have been more powerful than this one because it INSTANTLY makes my phone less interesting.
Don’t believe me? Just give it a shot.
Turn your phone to Grayscale for one week and then observe how much less time you spend on it.
For me, winning back that time and attention is priceless, which is why I’ve been on Grayscale for the past 6 months.
I don’t think I’ll ever go back.
2. Notifications
The other day I was chatting with my Marketing Manager and he casually leaned over to show me something on his phone.
Whatever he was going to show me, however, was completely lost as all I could see was the little red notification bubble over his Gmail which said he had 4,315 unread emails.
I kid you not, my cortisol level spiked through the roof and my heart-rate jumped 15 beats per minute.
The amount of anxiety I felt in that moment was astonishing.
I told my Marketing Manager about the severe physiological response I was experiencing and he just shrugged it off with a laugh and then said, “Oh yeah, I don’t even notice that anymore.”
My response…
Bullshit.
You might be numb to what’s happening in your body, but I guarantee you, you are having a physiological reaction when you see those notifications, and it’s not a positive one.
Those notifications create open cognitive loops, which is something we’ve talked about in previous articles so I’m not going to go super deep here.
But here’s the takeaway:
Notifications are impossible to ignore.
It takes mental bandwidth and willpower to see a notification and not address it.
Most of the time, these notifications aren’t even important, which means we’re leaking attention for something that doesn’t even matter.
The no-brainer solution is to turn off ALL notifications on your phone.
And I mean ALL notifications.
Social media: Off.
Emails: Off.
Text Messages: Off.
Missed Calls: Off.
Turn. Them. Off.
Notifications are nothing more than the external world’s attempt to make their agenda your distraction.
Don’t let the attention-terrorists win.
Speaking of Focus…
If focus is the ability to resist distractions, then the quickest (and easiest) way to boost our focus is by eliminating distractions before they ever arise.
Which we do through intentional Environment Design.
In this article, we’re learning how to defuse the Weapon of Mass Distraction that is our phone, but in reality, there are countless other areas of our life ripe with potential distractions.
If you want to learn how to turn your office, computer, and home into a FORTRESS OF FOCUS, then check out the Hyperfocus Masterclass.
This Masterclass includes all the systems, habits, and frameworks that have enabled me to turn my ADHD into a superpower.
Come join over 1,700 other students who’ve gone through the program and unlocked higher levels of productivity and focus.
What are you waiting for?
3. App Audit
This might be a controversial take, but I believe your phone should only be used as a tool in pursuit of your goals.
It should not be used as a distraction, as an escape, or as entertainment.
You might disagree with that, and that’s totally fine…
But if you’re not currently where you want to be in life and you have ambitious goals that you’re striving for, then you’ll eventually have to face the harsh reality that you cannot CONSUME your way to a life of fulfillment…
Fulfillment can only be CREATED.
And your phone, for better or worse, is primarily designed as a tool of Consumption.
Whether that’s scrolling endlessly on social THImedia, playing Flappy Bird until your fingers bleed, or watching a never-ending parade of YouTube videos… your phone is a Perpetual Consumption Machine.
Breaking the cycle and taking control of your phone begins by selecting the apps you use with intention.
For myself, this means no games and no social media on my primary phone.
Now, I use social media A LOT for work so it’s actually quite important that I have ways of using these apps.
The solution that’s worked extraordinarily well for me over the past few months is to have a designated Social Media Phone in addition to my Primary Phone.
4. The Social Media Phone
My Primary Phone is the one I carry with me everywhere. I use it for texting, emails, navigation, note-taking, or Google searches.
My Social Media Phone is exactly what it sounds like… It’s a $400 phone that has all my social apps on it.
Now, there are two things that make my Social Media Phone especially useful.
First, I rarely carry it ANYWHERE with me.
Second, this phone doesn’t have data, which means the only way I can use it is when it’s connected to WiFi or if I set up a mobile hot spot with my Primary Phone.
This means that really the only way I can use this phone is with intention.
I don’t ever find myself standing in line at the coffee shop or stopped at a red light and reflexively reaching for my phone for a quick scroll.
If I’m out to dinner and my partner goes to the bathroom, I’m not immediately reaching for my phone like some sort of social media junkie.
And perhaps the way this phone has proven most useful in my life is that I never take it into the bedroom.
So I never find myself in bed scrolling social media before falling asleep (or immediately upon waking).
I cannot overstate how powerful the social media phone has been in my life.
5. Homescreen Simplification
Here’s something I’ve found to be fairly accurate over the years:
A Messy Desk = A Messy Mind
Now, I’m saying this as a person with severe ADHD who, when left to his own devices, is prone to using the entire floor of my office as a hamper.
And good luck ever convincing me that I don’t know EXACTLY where something is amidst all the piles of paper and notebooks and what-not strewn across my desk.
But the harsh truth I’ve had to wrestle with over the years is the fact that my default organization systems are not very good.
One of the things that’s really helped me on my journey of turning ADHD into a superpower is the realization that I need to start building my organization systems with intention.
A big part of that intentional organization system revolves around my desk and my office, which I’ve designed in a very carefully considered way.
My productivity, as a result, saw a significant improvement.
Despite these obvious gains, it took me a really long time to apply this same intentionality to designing the organization system I now use for my phone.
It used to be that I had dozens of apps in various folders on my homescreen. These folders were labeled things like Productivity, Finance, Health, Social Media, Utility, and they signified the different categories of apps inside those folders.
Not a bad system, all told, but the real problem is I only use like 9 apps on a recurring basis.
I might use the other 62 apps every now and then, but there really wasn’t much benefit to having them take up such vital real estate on my homescreen, and in fact, a strong argument could be made that they were actually impeding my productivity.
So, about a year ago I made a pretty drastic change to my homescreen.
Now, it looks like this:
Interesting Note: When you take a screenshot on your phone, the resulting image is no longer in Grayscale.
When I unlock my phone, I only see two things:
- The Latch App (which I use to get into my apartment)
- A Folder (which is home to 9 apps I frequently use)
“Hold up,” I hear you saying. “Why not just put those apps on the homescreen?”
Well, for me, I’ve found I often just open my phone as a reflex to boredom and when I land on a blank homepage, it’s almost like a pattern interrupt that causes me to stop and reflect on what am I actually trying to accomplish in that moment.
This is a form of Intention Maintenance, which if you’ve been around these parts for a while, you know is critical to avoiding getting sucked into mindless activities.
And at the end of the day, I actually don’t believe there’s a wrong way to use your phone as long as you’re doing so with INTENTION.
But the struggle is real, because our phones are designed to put us into auto-pilot mode which simply won’t do because as Aristotle rightly pointed out:
“The unexamined life isn’t worth living.”
So, if you want to get more out of your life, and start moving with speed towards achieving your greatness, then put down the phone and get back to work.
Until next week…
Stay Hyperfocused, My Friend
AV
From YouTube This Week:
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Want to go even deeper?
1. Ever felt like Sisyphus, pushing that boulder of focus uphill? ADHD, distractions, procrastination- all fighting to knock you back. 💥
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2. If you’re in relentless pursuit of doing less, but better, than check out my podcast, Amplified Impact, for a quick-hitting daily dose of motivation and inspiration.
