Are you easily distracted by your phone? Having trouble staying focused? Does time pass you by and nothing gets done? Don’t panic. This has become a common theme for many people in our modern times.
The smartphone was revolutionary back in the late 2000’s. It changed the landscape of how we communicated with each other. Fast forward 10-15 years later and we have become dependent on it like an addiction. We need our daily fix of celebrity gossip and drama. It has become a part of our everyday lives, whether we like to admit it or not.
I, too, suffer from nomophobia. Sometimes, I can’t help but look at my phone for no apparent reason. It calls out to me, like a freshly baked pie sitting on the window sill. I make the assumption that it will only be for a few seconds, until an hour or two passes by. It doesn’t feel like a long time, but my Apple Screen Time tells me otherwise.
Why does this happen?
Nowadays, we are distracted by an overwhelming amount of content in just a few clicks. It’s very tempting to scroll through your social media feed when you are laying in bed. The news of a global pandemic, war and the Kardashians (all equally as bad) has captured the attention of millions in recent years. We can’t help but be a little curious about all the pandemonium going on in the world.
According to a Pew Research Center (2021) survey, 86% of U.S. adults get their news from a smartphone, desktop or tablet. This transition from traditional media to the digital space has caused a huge disruption in the industry. Unsurprisingly, about half (52%) of Americans prefer to get their news from a digital platform.
How can we learn to stay focused?
We need to separate ourselves away from all the distractions. Allow me to introduce Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian-American psychologist who pioneered the field of positive psychology in the 1960’s. He recognized a way people can tap into their “power of focus” to concentrate for long periods of time with minimal effort. He called the psychological concept “flow state.” It is when you are consumed in the moment and you just vibe into the experience. It is known to be the deepest form of concentration.
Mihaly studied artists and athletes who engaged in mentally/physically uncomfortable, exhausting and even dangerous activities.
“The purpose of flow is to keep on flowing, not looking for a peak or utopia but staying in the flow. It is not a moving up but a continuous flowing; you move up to keep the flow going,” said a rock climber. (Hari, 2021, p. 55)
A common misconception is that most people assume they will establish flow by easing into it. Unfortunately, it is not that simple. (I’ve already tried it.) There are three elements that we need to consider in order to achieve it.
3 Steps to Ignite Flow
- Choose a specific goal. You can only achieve flow when you are mono-tasking. It requires your full attention towards that one objective. It’s impossible to attain flow when you are juggling several tasks at once.
- You have to do something that has meaning to you. It’s easier to pay attention to something and get into rhythm when you care about it.
- It’ll help if you do something that pushes your abilities. If your goal is too easy then your focus will tend to shift away. If it is too hard, then you’ll start to feel stressed out. There needs to be a balance between your skill set and the level of difficulty to achieve flow.
Once you establish these elements you will start to see your creativity come to life. Be wary, flow is extremely fragile and easy to disrupt.
Johann Hari. Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – and How to Think Deeply Again. New York, Crown, 2021.
Shearer, Elisa. “More than Eight-In-Ten Americans Get News from Digital Devices.” Pew Research Center, 12 Jan. 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/01/12/more-than-eight-in-ten-americans-get-news-from-digital-devices/
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