Is your goal valuable enough for you to have motivation, to break your bad habits and avoid all the temptations in your environment?
Another ring of your mobile phone just distracted you one more time from your concentration zone.
You tell yourself, I will check fastly, just have a short look, maybe it is important. Without noticing, you spent over 30 minutes scrolling through the app and jumping from one app to another.
Such a waste of time, you promised yourself to finish writing this article today but now, you have some other obligations, you need to pick up the children or prepare dinner. Your window of opportunity to work on your project just shut off again.
Why do you get distracted so easily? Why are you wasting your time?
Jocko Willink would say that you lack discipline.
The tools we are using and our environment distract us.
Why do you get distracted so easily?
Our mobile phones and computers are loaded with apps to get our attention.
Social media and games are built to attract our attention.
According to ZDNET.com, the average American spends 5.4 hours a day on their phone. Millennials spend slightly more time on their phones (5.7 hours) compared to baby boomers (5 hours) on average.
Source: Provision Living
The more we spend time on them, the more the company is making money with ads and/or selling the data they collected on our behavior.
If the app is free, it means we are the product.
Facebook earned over 50 billion USD in ad revenue in 2021.
Source: eMarketer
Social media companies manipulate our hormones
These companies play with the hormone in our brain called dopamine and cortisol.
Dopamine is a happy chemical, it is released in our brain when we expect a reward such as “likes” or “points”.
That’s why social media is addictive, it makes us feel good when having likes/viewers/followers.
The UX/UI designers put the little red dots to notify you when you have a notification to encourage you to go connect back to their app. The “ding” is another trigger.
These triggers are cues, then you have a craving to go check the app, you see the “likes”, and you have a reward in a release of dopamine. This is how is built a habit loop.
Cortisol is the stress hormone to warn us from danger.
What if the email was important? We want to check the message to feel relieved of missing out.
They mastered the system of human behaviors and all the tricks to get our attention with rewards and fear of missing.
Why are you wasting your time?
Waste is when you are not getting closer to your goal. You are wasting your time with non-value-added activities.
These bad habit loops distract you from your goal. Your environment is filled with temptations to distract you from your path. Your mobile phone, but also your fridge (go grab a delicious snack), your bed (just a little nap), are these other examples of temptations.
What are the root causes of these wastes? Do you lack motivation? Do you have bad habits?
What is the root cause of your lack of focus?
The true question is: “Is your goal valuable enough for you to have motivation, break your bad habits, and avoid all the temptations in your environment?”
Why do you have these goals (if you have any)?
Without a clear and compelling goal, you will probably continue wasting your time.
Check out these book summaries to know more about your habits and hormones:
- Atomic Habits by James Clear
- Indistractable by Nir Eyal
- Habits of a Happy Brain by Loretta Breuning
