Distractions are things that take away your full focus. They are not relevant to your productiveness and prematurely redirect your thoughts or sights. There are many forms of distractions such as people, things, ideas, situation’s, etc. One minute we are on a roll with one thing, and the next minute we have wondered off into something completely unrelated to what we were initially supposed to be doing. Even as I am writing this blog post I am distracted by notifications and am tempted to stop what I’m doing to check them. Why does this happen? For some reason, we are convinced that the distraction is more interesting or deserves our attention first before we tackle our initial intended task. We end up doing things like checking our notifications, scrolling through our social media feeds, and somehow we end up an hour or two deep of unproductivity. How Sway?! It all boils down to “discipline”. We aren’t disciplined enough to limit the time we feed into distractions.
The biggest issue I discovered is that we are too accessible and connected to the world. People have way too much access to us. From the time we wake up in the morning, to the time we go to sleep at night, people are constantly wanting our attention. We have to learn how to minimize or set limits on the access we give to the world. This can be done by setting time limits of talk time, using the do not disturb feature on your electronics, unplugging (turning off electronic devices, making them inaccessible, or at least just setting them down for an extended period of time in order to refocus), and re-prioritizing (let go of distractions that are not relevant to your life). Now don’t get me wrong, we are all very important people and it is not necessary to take these actions to the extremes, but for the sake of productivity and inner peace we should all at least implement a strategy. James 4:14 (NLT) says, “How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone.” So if life goes by so quickly, why are we wasting so much time on things that don’t benefit us or God. We have a purpose to tend to and if we don’t tend to it then just as a weed overtakes an untended garden, so will distractions overtake our purpose. If you have a goal that you are trying to reach, you cannot get there as efficiently if you don’t settle down and focus. When we are consistently distracted, we get so behind on the things we were supposed to be doing, by the time we refocus on doing it, we are too drained and become discouraged and put it off until the next day. Tomorrow may never come if we let this saga continue. Make the choice today to regain your focus and stay on track.
“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”