Delaying Digital Distractions

Before the pandemic started, I was quite productive. Both at work and in the little business I had back then, I was able to make progress on many topics at once. Things felt urgent and important, and I could put in the hours to check off to-dos one by one.

Then the lockdown hit our little family like a sledgehammer. We were taking half-day shifts homeschooling our daughter E, who showed little interest in learning the boring stuff, discovering in the process what appallingly bad teachers we are. Meanwhile, her four-year-old brother T couldn’t understand why one of us was focusing solely on his sister while the other one was off limits trying to get work done. The entire business model of my company, which was to sit down for a lengthy tasting with my customers and come home with the sale, had vanished overnight. And our jobs needed tending to, in many cases dealing with emergencies caused by the lockdown itself.

This was the most stressful time we ever had as a family. We were able to take a few weeks of holidays in August, though we sure could have used three months of rest. We came home feeling like we normally feel right before well-deserved holidays.

With pandemic measures easing up, things seemingly returned to normal, but there wasn’t much breathing room. Trying to save my business took its toll, causing strange health issues I’d have imagined having to deal with 20 years from now. I had a brush with burnout that I barely averted by taking swift action as soon as I realised what was happening to me. My wife had to deal with quite some issues in her business as well. Our family constellation of characters causes many arguments and tensions.

With all this, I never felt my productivity ever returned to its former high. I’m more easily distracted, nowadays. Many things just don’t seem too important. I’m much more wary of things that may cause stress. I can’t quite hold as many topics and details in my head—not that I’ve ever been good at that!

So I made it a priority for me this second half of 2022 to regain this lost sense of productivity.

One of the measures I’m experimenting with is delaying digital distractions as much as I can. Over time, I’ve become more and more addicted to my smartphone, to the point that on some days, it’s the first and last thing I look at during my waking hours. If I had a minute to wait for something, I’d whip up Hacker News. In the morning, I’d play a game of chess to get the brain started. In the evening, I’d watch something before going to sleep.

Soon, I discovered that when I start my day consuming digital content like this, I never quite get started. I quickly return to distractions as soon as I have a second. It’s easier to browse YouTube than to tackle the next to-do on the list.

So the new game is to delay consuming digital content in any form for as long as I can throughout the day. This is a new experiment, so we’ll see how it works out in the long run—I’m typically very bad at sustaining a new routine like this. But I’m enjoying it so far, and I’ve definitely been better these past few days tackling the to-dos one by one than in the past.

So, in the spirit of exorcising this bad habit, I shall name this program: Vade retro, digita!