In response to Louis Mosley’s post Time Confetti: How Our Attention Gets Shredded . I really like this conversation as it gets to the heart of living purposefully and intentionally. In this day and age, we are bombarded with constant stimuli and distractions that pull at our focus and attention.
I love how Louis discusses this further with Adam Grants concept of the fragmentation of our time breaking it into tiny, often unproductive pieces.
It is so easy to get sidetracked and lose focus on what truly matters. When I picture confetti, I see small, scattered pieces. Confetti, litters the ground. These are often celebratory, playful, but a whole lot messy. I often wonder who cleans up after these tiny bits and pieces are scattered everywhere. How much mess does time confetti cause in our own daily lives?
Today, I visited my parents. As we sat down for lunch, just a few minutes into the meal, the doorbell rang. The mechanic had arrived to check their car. They stepped outside to speak with him, I heard my mom say she felt dizzy. She lingered there for a moment but eventually got up to sit down and finish her meal. After finishing up with the mechanic, my dad walked back into the house and said, “Oh, I completely forgot I hadn’t finished my meal.”
How often does something like this happen to us? We get interrupted, and suddenly we’ve forgotten to complete something as essential as eating.
As Louis points out: “When people are interrupted, it typically takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds to return to their work, and most people will do two intervening tasks before going back to the original project.” It took my dad over 18 minutes to get back to his meal and in that time, he had completely forgotten he hadn’t finished eating.
A lot of our day carries a sense of busy-ness. Some of it is self-created. The word busy-ness brought to mind this quote: “Beware the barrenness of a busy life.“ Our days can be packed with movement, tasks, and endless to do lists. I used to love checking things off my list as it made me feel accomplished, like the day had value because I was busy. But deep down, I often felt scattered and drained.
These tiny distractions, multitasking, constant interruptions distract us from being fully present.
Two of my favorite takeaways from Louis’s post to reclaim our attention are:
- Dedicate specific blocks of time to single tasks or categories of work and protect them fiercely.
Last year, I actually mapped out my time using percentages and task blocks. But I missed this key part: protect them fiercely. Love this. The word being fiercely. - Practice meditation to strengthen your “attention muscle.”
Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of this through tai chi and yoga and in the past years, through gratitude and journaling. I agree that this really does strengthen our attention muscles.
Thank you Louise for this wonderful topic.
Note to self: Our attention and focus are sacred gifts. Let’s honor them as such and stop scattering them like confetti.
