How Not To Get Anything Done
Caution - sarcasm on the trail ahead.
I’ve got a big deadline this week and a cracker of a post I’m working on for here that I want to give real intentional thought and effort to. I can’t do both by Friday, so I thought I’d just pop in to say “Heyo!”, I haven’t forgotten about Outsider and there’ll be another great installment about pain next week. But ALSO (the number ‘also’s in this paragraph is a real indicator of how many things I’m trying to do at once), a quick note on not being productive.
I like to be honest. When I hear the word “concentrate” I immediately think of orange juice. If you’ve ever had a conversation with me that lasted more than 30 seconds (as most do), then you’re aware that my powers in this area are not very…shall we say…resilient. The dawning realisation and then final validation of a formal diagnosis that I do, in fact, have ADHD has answered a lot of questions for me, but I’m not out of the woods yet. I feel like I’m at the starting line. For the sake of this extended metaphor, the woods are a dark and tangled forest of limitless distractions and foreboding obstacles on the other side of which is everything I want to be doing. Go!
I can do this thing called ‘hyper-focus’ which is a type of concentration that, while incredibly deep and potentially productive, isn’t necessarily healthy or functional if, say, I have other parts of life that I’m responsible for (ie: children, housework, appointments, socialising, showering, eating, drinking - you know, minor things). And it’s that OR rapid mind wandering in every direction at once. From my personal experience, I am able to offer you some excellent and fool-proof advice if you’re deeply committed to getting nothing meaningful done at all.
The first thing you need to do is have a lot of things on your plate. Make sure you’re trying to do as much as possible and all at the same time. Don’t bother prioritising tasks or breaking goals and projects into smaller steps, that will only make the endpoint more achievable. The trick is to simply hold an obscene amount of awesome ideas in your head and expect yourself to get them done by June.
Once you’ve made sure that you are trying to do too much, avoid activities that may give you mental clarity. I’d steer away from exercise in any form, but especially anything that takes you outdoors and into contact with fresh air and the healing rays of the sun. That stuff is poison for unproductivity. Don’t sweat. Do not, under any circumstance meditate or do any mindfulness or breath exercises. That Woowoo hockus pockus will only limit your ability to feel completely overwhelmed by all the shit you’ve set out to achieve.
Next, get your phone and download all the social media apps. Anything deliberately designed to spike your dopamine through an incessant loop of scarcity and unpredictable social rewards. I can think of a few that work really well. Don’t forget to turn on notifications. Or not. I’ve found that they work pretty well anyway. But this is important - make sure your phone is ALWAYS within arm’s reach. I cannot stress this enough, think of it like a small child in a swimming pool full of sharks.
If this isn’t quite putting you into complete productivity paralysis, then you can also try leaving your workspace in mind-boggling disarray. This includes desk, computer desktop, and open tabs. Multi-task. Engage in text conversations while in the middle of work. Make social media content related to your work instead of doing the work.
When you do finally get down to business, wait until the act of focusing becomes uncomfortable (it won’t take long, we’ve trained our brains to pay attention to increasingly short bursts of entertainment) then deflect your attention to making a cup of tea or a sandwich or the laundry or a message thread your parents - whatever worthwhile, but not currently the thing you’re supposed to be doing - activity there is to do. I find online shopping for watches super effective. Flit around like that for a while until you finally sit down and get half an hour of work done before picking the kids up from school. That should do it. Congratulations - another day where the only kind of concentration you’ll have to worry about coming into contact with is in the cheap orange juice you got from the shop while running unnecessary grocery errands and avoiding the sun.
The woods are daunting. And all this is completely true. You may not be as distracted as I am by virtue of your personality or neurotype. But Cal Newport isn’t a bestseller for nothing (notes at the bottom). We’re all finding it hard to concentrate in a culture that demands our attention everywhere all at once. Here’s what I’m doing and/or would like to try:
- Do fewer thing. Only giving myself one deadline at a time. And postponing projects that I’m not yet working on.
- Trying to get out in the sun in the morning, exercise, breathe, stretch, meditate, get it into me.
- Drink enough water.
- I use a skateboard in front of my desk to roll around or stand on to help regulate
my sensory stuff. I also put on green noise or nature stuff like waterfalls. Nothing
lyrical if I’m writing, obviously very different if I’m painting.
- Chunk my day into work times (kind of like a school timetable).
- Using a free version of an app to lock my social media apps. It’s crazy effective, but I’m also super cheap. I’m still thinking about deleting them again.
- Keeping my phone upstairs while I work in the studio.
- Giving myself more moments when I’m not listening to anything (as much as I’m
addicted to awesome podcast content…obviously).
- I cleaned my desktop for the first time since… 2018.
- I’ve heard putting your phone into grayscale works to limit distraction too. Cool trick.
- I think getting back into journaling would be a big win for me.
OK. Time to turn that concentration towards a publishing deadline.
Hope you’re well and that none of this is relevant to you because you’re already out there living your best life with purpose and focus! And if you don’t have an ear infection that is making your head feel like it might literally explode all over the trail
… put your runners on ;) xx
The podcasts I’ve been listening to with Cal Newport: