These days, I’m experiencing a different kind of borrowed time-by working online, I’m not having to drive or travel to see clients. Now what? What would you do differently? This is a way of acknowledging how short and how precious our lives are, while helping us uncover what’s most important, right now. Next, imagine for a moment, that you have died and now have a chance to return to this life. One fortune read, “You are going to die.” If you let this fact sink in-that life is short and we all die-it can act as a powerful motivating force to help maintain focus and priorities. I saw a cartoon in a New Yorker magazine in which two people were finishing their dinners at a Chinese restaurant and had just opened their fortune cookies. Often, we get distracted by our overwhelming lists of priorities and to-dos when what we need is to break them down into doable actions. Next to each item, list the next step that is needed to complete it. This can include projects, aspirations, or even the groceries. Grab some paper or open your favorite note taking app, and make a note of the items on your mental to-do list. Next time you find your mind wandering, try engaging these 3 practices to focus your attention: Creating time and space, where we are relaxed and open, not needing to accomplish anything, can be energizing and creative. This is different than ruminating about the past, worrying about the future, or just being simply distracted from what you are doing, thinking, and feeling.
Of course, there is also a good kind of mind wandering. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.”Ī Harvard study, which has now been widely cited, found that our minds are not paying attention to what is right in front of us 47% percent of the time, and that mind wandering is correlated with unhappiness. For example, in a much-discussed article in The Atlantic (“ Is Google Making Us Stupid?”), Nicholas Carr, one of the leading thinkers on information technology, writes: “What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Many neuroscientists, psychologists, and technology pundits believe that the distractions of our communication technology are actually rewiring the brain’s capacity to concentrate for any amount of time on one topic.
Distractions and interruptions are such a part of modern life that we don’t often realize how hard it is to concentrate.
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