- The problem of distraction is deeper than tech. Before phone/pc, we had television to distract us. Before that, we had comic even novels.
- “tantalizing” means want things that you can never get. Tantalus was a Greek God that was punished to be in hell to wanting to reach grapes but can never reach it. The deeper side about the story is that he does not actually need it, but he cannot let the desire go away. The same truth holds for our distractions.
- Every choice we make are either Distraction (leading to things that do not align with our real goals) or Traction (things that lead us to our goals)
Our pure and sole motivation is not pleasure, but “the desire of free ourselves from the pain of wanting”. All of our behaviors and actions are for the relief of discomfort. Sometimes, distractions are used for escaping reality in an unhealthy way.
4. We are never going to be satisfied for long because survival of fittest intended only those who never feel contented can survive. (feeling contented wasn’t good for the species) 4 reasons: boredom (in a study, participants even rather shock themselves than doing nothing); negativity bias (bad things have a longer and bigger effect than good ones); rumination (we keep thinking about bad things to improve, but nowadays it just makes us sad); Hedonic adaption (we adapt to the new happiness very fast and the effect of happiness go away quickly. That's why you never feel happy for a new car or phone for too long).
5. Mental abstinence can backfire (example: try not to think of a Polar bear, and you will turn out thinking about it much more often.) Lots of addictions are psychological. (example: people’s desires depend not on how much time had passed after the last smoke but on how much time was left before they could smoke again. That’s why people want to smoke very bad right before the flight lands)
6. Reimagine the internal triggers following these steps:
One. look for discomfort. (you are not wanting to google in the middle of the work, you are just feeling anxious, having a craving, feeling restless, or thinking you are incompetent.)
Two. Write down the trigger, be an observer of your internal trigger.
Three. Explore your sensations.
“Leaves on a stream”: imagine you are seated beside a gently flowing stream, then imagine there are leaves floating down that stream. Place each thought in your mind on each leaf. It could be a memory, a word, a worry, an image. Let each of those leaves float down that stream, swirling away, as you sit and just watch.
Four. Beware of liminal moments.
“Ten minutes Rule”: When feeling the urge, give in, but only after 10 minutes. It’s like riding them like a wave, surfing the urge.
7. Fun is not necessarily enjoyment. Instead of running away from our pain, the idea is to pay close attention that you find new challenges/variabilities you/others didn’t see before and turn the difficult tasks into “play”, to discover its hidden beauty.
“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”
8.
- We don’t run out of willpower, only people who believe in this will run out of willpower. Believing we do make us less likely to accomplish our goals by providing a rationale to quit when we could otherwise persist.
- What we say to ourselves matters. Labeling yourself as having poor self-control is self-defeating.
- Practice self-compassion. Talk to yourself the way you’d talk to a friend.
- If you ruminate and blame yourself too hard on your mistakes or weak willpower, you are more likely to get depressed even compare to other leading factors like traumatic events or genetics.
