I am a HUGE fan of Leo Babauta over at Zen Habits. Very clearly he lives his talk and I greatly appreciate his dedication to his life, understanding and improving it regularly. What I appreciate more is that he shares his philosophy. One of my greatest wishes would be to adhere to his guidelines far more closely.
In his entry on Friday, he wrote How to Reclaim Your Attention which got me thinking. Yes, warning, I'm thinking again! I was amazed at how many of his points rang true, and that my children hear, but I don't practice, regularly or at all.
According to Leo's formula, here is how to reclaim your attention:
1. Limit your friends. Not real-life friends, but social network and blogging and forum friends. Not that these can’t be good relationships, but having too many makes them meaningless. And each friend will take up a little bit of your attention — when you read their updates, click on their links, reply to their messages, look at their photos, and so on. The more you have, the more attention they’ll require. Limit them to just the essential.
This is one I practice, regularly. I found this to be an interesting comment, especially since it is the one that opens Leo's list, surely by design. I have limited my friends (both in "real life" and on line) so that I can focus more on the meaningful relationships around me. I've limited my message board participation as it's true, the more people you know, the less meaningful the relationships. In "real life" I have no doubt that I can be considered rude by some since I do not engage, but the reality is that I am simply being silent, listening and discerning whether or not I'm interested in further engagement. In certain situations I've been silent for months! Oh, and I can be very blunt. Always honest. But sometimes blunt and honest is not the best way to win over people :) This point is one of the constant battles with my children. It came easily to me to limit myself, my kids want to participate in the "more friends" contest on social networking sites. Claire and Cole are super social, so I've limited them to 150 friends and 200 in total (the other 50 are relatives of which we have oodles!). I'm at 300 in total and I have many more years of life and knowing people, though, I do feel a purge coming on! For a wonderful commentary on being on-line and judgment of choices read: here.
2. Limit your feeds. Blog subscriptions, newsletters, other updates and news subscriptions and so on. Limit them to a handful of essentials, and let the rest go. The more you have, the more attention they require.
Ooh, I struggle with this one! Another one "limited" to 300. I quickly scan through all of them every day. Usually I wake to 80+ feeds to read and at the end of the day there are about 60+ feeds. That's a lot of reading, but since I'm just scanning, I only stop and read those that really capture my attention. I struggle with deciding which is essential since some are essential just at different times.
3. Limit your communication time. Going into your email inbox? Just give yourself 10 minutes to read, reply, delete, and get out. Going to do Twitter? Give yourself 5 minutes. Seriously, set up a timer. Don’t let these things take up all your attention.
There are many different philosophies about this, but I've limited it so much that the only one that demands my immediate attention is our family e-mail which is the one that comes to my blackberry and only a handful of people have. I give myself 15 minutes to reply to the comments here on the blog. I really do not use Twitter and am considering closing my account. I've just discovered Tumblr and Formspring.me which take almost none of my time.
4. Give up on news. It’s a never-ending cycle. And if you’ve paid attention to the news as long as I have (I’m a former journalist), you know it’s all the same, year after year. Unless your job depends on it, the news is usually a waste of your attention. Let go of the need to stay updated. Even if your job does depend on it, keep it limited.
I'm a news junkie! This will be hard, but he's right.
5. Be brief. Write brief emails, tweets, updates, blog posts. With some exceptions, of course. But make brief your de facto. Read more.
I do try to do this but I can be a bit ... verbose. At least I do make an effort to be entertaining!
6. Give your attention to the important. This is the crucial part: choose what you give your attention to, and do this choosing carefully. What is important to you? Writing? Photography? Design? Coding? Creating a new business that helps others? Your kids? Figure this out, and give this the majority of your attention.
This is something I really have to embrace. Sometimes I'm paralysed by a combination of things: too many choices and abject fear of failure. I know in my head that the only failure is doing nothing. Now I just have to grab on and go.
7. Become conscious of your distractions. Once you’ve decided to focus your attention on the important, become more aware of distractions as they come up. Make note of them, and as you get the urge to be distracted, learn to pause, breathe, and return to the important.
Epic FAIL. So bad at this I can't even tell you what the distractions are. Oh yes, I can. They even have names: Claire, Cole, Chloe and Caden. I just have to learn to be more focused on the important things when they are not around to demand my time! Oh, and I suppose I could turn off the TV, just do the laundry and *gasp* shut down the computer, eh?
8. Surround yourself with the positive. If you want your life to be positive, let the positive have your attention. This applies to blogs, people, projects, and more.
This I have done. I don't read the angry mom blogs no matter how popular they are; but, I love the I am woman hear me roar blogs and those who walk their talk and bring me joy. Unfortunately the majority of my time is spent going from one kid activity to the next and often my friends are not the parents of my children's teammates, schoolmates or other participants. Though, I have to say, when you are able to connect with one or two it is pure bliss! My projects, with the exception of housework, all bring me joy at most and at very least a sense of accomplishment. I'm doing my utter best to fill my life with positivity. To that end, I shall plug the Happiness Project, again. Wow. Both by book and by blog, I'm now Gretchen Rubin's biggest fan ... ever!
So, it looks like I've managed to reclaim three out of these eight distractions. Still plenty to work on! I appreciate my flaws because it makes me human, I just wish there weren't so many of them!
