Addicted to Distraction

So, we have been talking about distraction. It is one of the two D's in The 2-D Solution. It is the easier of the two D's, and that is why we prefer to use it.

All this got me to thinking about an article I read, about this time, last year. The article was by Tony Schwartz and it was titled “Addicted to Distraction.” Here is the article in its entirety:

One evening early this summer, I opened a book and found myself reading the same paragraph over and over, a half dozen times before concluding that it was hopeless to continue. I simply couldn’t marshal the necessary focus.

I was horrified. All my life, reading books has been a deep and consistent source of pleasure, learning and solace. Now the books I regularly purchased were piling up ever higher on my bedside table, staring at me in silent rebuke.

Instead of reading them, I was spending too many hours online, checking the traffic numbers for my company’s website, shopping for more colorful socks on Gilt and Rue La La, even though I had more than I needed, and even guiltily clicking through pictures with irresistible headlines such as “Awkward Child Stars Who Grew Up to Be Attractive.”

During the workday, I checked my email more times than I cared to acknowledge, and spent far too much time hungrily searching for tidbits of new information about the presidential campaign, with the election then still more than a year away.

“The net is designed to be an interruption system, a machine geared to dividing attention,” Nicholas Carr explains in his book “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.” “We willingly accept the loss of concentration and focus, the division of our attention and the fragmentation of our thoughts, in return for the wealth of compelling or at least diverting information we receive.”

Addiction is the relentless pull to a substance or an activity that becomes so compulsive it ultimately interferes with everyday life. By that definition, nearly everyone I know is addicted in some measure to the Internet. It has arguably replaced work itself as our most socially sanctioned addiction.

According to one recent survey, the average white-collar worker spends about six hours a day on email. That doesn’t count time online spent shopping, searching or keeping up with social media.

The brain’s craving for novelty, constant stimulation and immediate gratification creates something called a “compulsion loop.” Like lab rats and drug addicts, we need more and more to get the same effect.

Endless access to new information also easily overloads our working memory. When we reach cognitive overload, our ability to transfer learning to long-term memory significantly deteriorates. It’s as if our brain has become a full cup of water and anything more poured into it starts to spill out.

I've known all of this for a long time. I started writing about it 20 years ago. I teach it to clients every day. I just never really believed it could become so true of me.

Denial is any addict’s first defense. No obstacle to recovery is greater than the infinite capacity to rationalize our compulsive behaviors. After years of feeling I was managing myself reasonably well, I fell last winter into an intense period of travel while also trying to manage a growing consulting business. In early summer, it suddenly dawned on me that I wasn’t managing myself well at all, and I didn’t feel good about it.

Beyond spending too much time on the Internet and a diminishing attention span, I wasn’t eating the right foods. I drank way too much diet soda. I was having a second cocktail at night too frequently. I was no longer exercising every day, as I had nearly all my life.

In response, I created an irrationally ambitious plan. For the next 30 days, I would attempt to right these behaviors, and several others, all at once. It was a fit of grandiosity. I recommend precisely the opposite approach every day to clients. But I rationalized that no one is more committed to self-improvement than I am. These behaviors are all related. I can do it.

The problem is that we humans have a very limited reservoir of will and discipline. We’re far more likely to succeed by trying to change one behavior at a time, ideally at the same time each day, so that it becomes a habit, requiring less and less energy to sustain.

I did have some success over those 30 days. Despite great temptation, I stopped drinking diet soda and alcohol altogether. (Three months later I’m still off diet soda.) I also gave up sugar and carbohydrates like chips and pasta. I went back to exercising regularly.

I failed completely in just one behavior: cutting back my time on the Internet.

My initial commitment was to limit my online life to checking email just three times a day: When I woke up, at lunchtime and before I went home at the end of the day. On the first day, I succeeded until midmorning, and then completely broke down. I was like a sugar addict trying to resist a cupcake while working in a bakery.

What broke my resolve that first morning was the feeling that I absolutely had to send someone an email about an urgent issue. If I just wrote it and pushed “Send,” I told myself, then I wasn’t really going online.

What I failed to take into account was that new emails would download into my inbox while I wrote my own. None of them required an immediate reply, and yet I found it impossible to resist peeking at the first new message that carried an enticing subject line. And the second. And the third.

In a matter of moments, I was back in a self-reinforcing cycle. By the next day, I had given up trying to cut back my digital life. I turned instead to the simpler task of resisting diet soda, alcohol and sugar.

Even so, I was determined to revisit my Internet challenge. Several weeks after my 30-day experiment ended, I left town for a monthlong vacation. Here was an opportunity to focus my limited willpower on a single goal: liberating myself from the Internet in an attempt to regain control of my attention.

I had already taken the first step in my recovery: admitting my powerlessness to disconnect. Now it was time to detox. I interpreted the traditional second step — belief that a higher power could help restore my sanity — in a more secular way. The higher power became my 30-year-old daughter, who disconnected my phone and laptop from both my email and the Web. Unburdened by much technological knowledge, I had no idea how to reconnect either one.

I did leave myself reachable by text. In retrospect, I was holding on to a digital life raft. Only a handful of people in my life communicate with me by text. Because I was on vacation, they were largely members of my family, and the texts were mostly about where to meet up at various points during the day.

During those first few days, I did suffer withdrawal pangs, most of all the hunger to call up Google and search for an answer to some question that arose. But with each passing day offline, I felt more relaxed, less anxious, more able to focus and less hungry for the next shot of instant but short-lived stimulation. What happened to my brain is exactly what I hoped would happen: It began to quiet down.

I had brought more than a dozen books of varying difficulty and length on my vacation. I started with short nonfiction, and then moved to longer nonfiction as I began to feel calmer and my focus got stronger. I eventually worked my way up to “The Emperor of All Maladies,” Siddhartha Mukherjee’s brilliant but sometimes complex biography of cancer, which had sat on my bookshelf for nearly five years.

As the weeks passed, I was able to let go of my need for more facts as a source of gratification. I shifted instead to novels, ending my vacation by binge-reading Jonathan Franzen’s 500-some-page novel, “Purity,” sometimes for hours at a time.

I am back at work now, and of course I am back online. The Internet isn’t going away, and it will continue to consume a lot of my attention. My aim now is to find the best possible balance between time online and time off.

I do feel more in control. I’m less reactive and more intentional about where I put my attention. When I’m online, I try to resist surfing myself into a stupor. As often as possible, I try to ask myself, “Is this really what I want to be doing?” If the answer is no, the next question is, “What could I be doing that would feel more productive, or satisfying, or relaxing?”

I also make it my business now to take on more fully absorbing activities as part of my days. Above all, I’ve kept up reading books, not just because I love them, but also as a continuing attention-building practice.

I've retained my longtime ritual of deciding the night before on the most important thing I can accomplish the next morning. That’s my first work activity most days, for 60 to 90 minutes without interruption. Afterward, I take a 10- to 15-minute break to quiet my mind and renew my energy.

If I have other work during the day that requires sustained focus, I go completely offline for designated periods, repeating my morning ritual. In the evening, when I go up to my bedroom, I nearly always leave my digital devices downstairs.

Finally, I feel committed now to taking at least one digital-free vacation a year. I have the rare freedom to take several weeks off at a time, but I have learned that even one week offline can be deeply restorative.

Occasionally, I find myself returning to a haunting image from the last day of my vacation. I was sitting in a restaurant with my family when a man in his early 40s came in and sat down with his daughter, perhaps 4 or 5 years old and adorable.

Almost immediately, the man turned his attention to his phone. Meanwhile, his daughter was a whirlwind of energy and restlessness, standing up on her seat, walking around the table, waving and making faces to get her father’s attention.

Except for brief moments, she didn’t succeed and after a while, she glumly gave up. The silence felt deafening.

The 2-D Solution

Last week I talked about avoidance behavior. I said, we avoid doing things that make us anxious and uncomfortable. We tend to stay in our comfort zones. We tend to take the path of least resistance.

When dealing with troubling thoughts and emotions the solution is a 2-D solution. Meaning, we can either: Distract or Dispute. Avoidance falls into the Distract category.

When dealing with tough situations, one option is we can distract ourselves so we do not dwell on the negative. The idea is to avoid thinking disturbing thoughts.

Sometimes this can be very adaptive. An example would be when good friends help keep you busy after a rough break-up or job-loss.

Then, sometimes distraction can be quite maladaptive. An example is when you choose (too frequently) to distract yourself with a vice. Drugs, alcohol, gambling, gaming, sex, facebook, etc. These distractions are easy to become depend upon.

And, of course, all strategies are capable of both positive and negative outcomes. Too much distraction and you never look for another job or relationship. A little vice can actually be adaptive. While excessive vice is usually destructive.

Teddy Roosevelt used the distraction strategy to outrun his depressive tendencies. He simply stayed very busy. And, by-and-large, it did work. One problem is, this strategy of distracting yourself can take a lot of energy to sustain.

When it came to his physical health, Roosevelt seems to have taken a number of shortcuts. He ended up dying of a heart attack at only 60 years of age.

The first step is to truly understand the meaning of the words adaptive and maladaptive. One way to think of it is that adaptive thoughts and behaviors help us achieve our goals, whatever those goals may be. And, maladaptive thoughts and behaviors inhibit the attainment of our goals.

Remember, goals do not just mean things like making money or losing weight. If your goal is to not be sad, it is maladaptive to sit and dwell on sad thoughts.

Sometimes the distract strategy is the right call. A shining example is when dealing with someone who is very mad. The key, again, is to know which direction you would like to head and then make decisions accordingly.

As pertains this blog, I hope you can see how adaptive behaviors are basically the definition of effectiveness! We will discuss the dispute strategy in the future.

Have an adaptive week :)

Avoidance is the Hallmark

Legendary psychologist Aaron Beck says, “Avoidance is a hallmark of anxiety.” We tend to avoid the things that make us uncomfortable.

I believe this is important because growth is life's imperative. We need to keep growing. McDonald's owner, Ray Kroc, said something to the effect of, “When you are green you're growing. When you're ripe you rot.”

Growth is life's imperative. And, with growth comes fear and failure. Quite the conundrum, wouldn't you say?

For this reason, I feel we need to make friends with fear and anxiety. We need to understand that they are an integral part of the growth process.

Personally, on my desktop, I have a document titled, “Current Fears Worksheet.” This document is a journal of sorts. And, periodically, I will sit down and write about the fears I am facing.

I sit and tune-in to my internal broadcaster. The inner Vin Scully, so to speak. I chronicle the beliefs, and automatic thoughts, that have given rise to each particular fear.

Then, I work through the flawed logic which has led to my fear. For each fear, I think of a more rational and reasonable perspective regarding the situation.

For example, like many people, I tend to be a perfectionist. When I do not perform, just right, I tend to beat myself up. Especially as pertains my work. This causes me to avoid activities where I fear I may under perform.

Of course, the more rational and reasonable perspective is to remember that nobody is perfect. And, even if I do achieve perfection, it can actually drive people away. All of us have a hard time relating to, and a distrust of, perfection.

Do your best? Yes. Perfection? No.

Or, let us say you are afraid of flying in an airplane. To fix the problem you will first need to be honest with yourself. Do not make excuses or place blame. Simply admit that horrible ideas circulate, in your brain, when you think of flying.

Your mind might automatically think about dying in a fireball of a crash. Or, you may think about drowning, trapped inside, as the fuselage sinks into the ocean. Whatever the thoughts are you should work on gaining a new perspective.

Here is one possibility. Ask yourself this question, how many people fly each year? I can tell you this, a quick Google search suggests that 100,000 commercial flights take place every day! And, how often do we hear of a deadly plane crash? Maybe once a year.

Thus, your chances of being in a deadly plane crash are about 1 in 37 million. As far as probabilities go, this is essentially zero. How is that for perspective?

Hopefully this all makes sense. I recommend you periodically tap into your inner monologue. Sit quietly and listen in to the thoughts swirling around in your head.

Then, record the themes. Write down what is causing your anxiety. Anxiety is usually the result of distorted thinking. By systematically analyzing your fears you will be able to repair those distortion.

Admittedly, this is harder than it first sounds. So, you might consider looking for some help.

In addition to growing, fear is one of the main barriers to effectiveness. For the most part, if you want to increase your effectiveness, you want to decrease your level of fear. More on this later....

Nick Saban and Sales

College football is in full swing and, unsurprisingly, Alabama is the #1 team in the nation. How has Alabama been so good for so long?

A big part of the answer is that they keep their saws sharp. And, a lot of that credit goes to their head coach, Nick Saban.

Last week, I talked about the idea of staying sharp. If you have not read it, click here. When I combined college football, with Covey's seventh habit, I was reminded of an article I read not too long ago.

The article was written by a sales trainer named Gary Walker. Here is the article in its entirety:

The college football season kicked off last week. Reigning national champion, the Alabama Crimson Tide, began right where they left off last season with a convincing 52 to 6 win over the University of Southern California.

A while ago, CBS 60 Minutes did a segment on Alabama football coach Nick Saban. He's one of the best coaches in college football, having now won four BCS championships with Alabama in 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2015, and another with LSU in 2003. I included a link to the segment. It’s under fourteen minutes long. If you have the time, and you’re a salesperson or sales leader, I think it is worth watching. There are so many lessons in this brief segment (Click here to watch the 60 Minutes segment.)

Most notably to me is that he attributes his team’s success to following and executing what he calls a football process. He insists his players not look at the scoreboard or worry about winning, but instead to focus on executing their individual assignments, perfecting their skills, and each offensive play that allows them to move the ball systematically, yard by yard down the field, and ultimately score. Now, they don’t sit around all week and decide they will go play a game on Saturday. When they are not playing an actual game they are practicing; about five (5) days of practice prior to the actual game. They practice their process for hours on a daily basis. That is the Alabama football process and it achieves the desired results.

So why is that notable to me? CustomerCentric Selling® is a sales process. If you are a salesperson and will continually focus on understanding, practicing and mastering the sales process, perfecting your sales skills, and moving the opportunity systematically through the company’s sales process, you will ultimately win. If you are a leader of salespeople, if you drive the execution of the sales process, you’ll drive the required revenue. It will require skill practice and opportunity coaching on a daily basis. You will help your salespeople prepare to win.

What practice do you have scheduled for your team?