Over the past two years, I have noticed something change in me. At first, it was barely noticeable, it was subtle — but increasingly I have become more aware of it. What I noticed was the fragmentation of my focus. I came to realize over the past couple of years that my ability to concentrate wasn’t as sharp as it once was. I thought it might have been due to having so much on my plate at work. But then, I have always been very good at focusing on my career.
It Wasn’t Only Happening To Me
As I looked around me, it seemed I wasn’t the only one struggling with focus. In fact, I am often taken by surprise how little focus people have these days. Their actions seem scattered, uncertain, and anxious. Were I first began to notice this was in a curious place, not somewhere most people would expect. As a martial arts coach, I get to work with diverse groups of people, from all walks of life. It was on my mat, in teaching them, that this fragmentation of focus first jumped out at me. People seemed less and less able to stay focused on one specific thing long enough to get it down. Their ability to retain information seemed to escape them. If I wasn’t experiencing the same phenomena myself, I may have put it down to the learning process and simply requiring more time to get it down. But this wasn’t the case.
I then realized, over the past two years I have focused considerably more on my social media presence than any time in the past. If you are an entrepreneur you are constantly told that you need a social media presence to be competitive in this world. So, taking that advice, I engaged in all of the most popular social media platforms. Before I knew it, I was concerned about likes, comments, and shares. It became addictive, and not checking to see my latest likes, or retweets made me feel like I had missed my morning coffee. An underlying anxiety began to build. First, I couldn’t explain it and wrote it off as stress. But around the same time, my wife, who has never really been into technology or social media, got a brand new iPad for her birthday. Before long, she was hooked too. As we sat around one day talking, we both reflected on this underlying, what we thought was unexplainable anxiety we were both feelings.
The bottom line is, there is a lot of research now and articles that have been written to show that social media is addictive, and it isn’t good for you. It’s not my intention here to rewrite the research, and in fact, I am pretty convinced that when people think about it, they intuitively know it isn’t good for them too. What I want to offer up here is what I have been doing to get my focus back, and it’s working.
Here are my 4 tips that anyone can apply in their life to get more focus back in their lives:
- When I wake up in the morning now, I take it slow. A cup of coffee, a cuddle with my cat, or a relaxing gaze out the window at the wondrous birds that visit my garden. Only once I am awake for an hour do I open up my laptop or reach for my iPhone. I then clear all my emails, check my social media accounts and head off to work. As a side note, I leave my iPhone in the kitchen overnight and no longer have it lying next to my bed.
- Throughout the day I don’t check any of my social media accounts. I stay off Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and only answer emails if I absolutely have too (I run an online business so at times I have no choice). At 4 pm, I check my social media accounts again, and then that’s it for the day.
- When I am on social media, especially Facebook I stay away from the newsfeed. I have told all the important people in my life, to tag me rather in a post they make, especially if they want me to be aware of it. This way, the only page I ever see on Facebook is my own. It honestly makes the whole experience a lot less stressful. I don’t get to see the ranting antics of ‘stuff’ that, to be honest, sometimes should simply remain in someone’s head. As a bonus too, I then steer clear from all the negative posts as well.
- Anytime I am on social media now, I practice what I call Social Media Mindfulness. I post, and I tweet like everyone else. But just like everyone else, I found, as I noted earlier, that I began to become addicted to the likes, to the feedback. Before I knew it, I had an expectation that people would respond to my tweets, my posts – and when they didn’t, I felt some level of despair and panic. I now post, tweet, or Instagram ensuring that what I put out there is important, and then taking a deep breath, I no longer attach to the outcome. If people like it, or comment, great. If not, that’s fine too.
My four strategies above have allowed me to be on social media, but without becoming consumed by it. Cutting back on how many times I would check my social media accounts during the day (and night) and being disciplined about it has been the single most important change I have made in my daily routine. This alone has boosted my concentration. I am now able to stay more focused on one project at a time for longer because I no longer have that constant background anxiety that I am missing out on something. The truth is, I realized within a week of making these changes, that for the most part, not much changes in 8-hours in my social media world anyway.
