take control of their attention will see their value in the marketplace multiplied.
The key to the cave? You must be unreachable. You’ re familiar with Murphy’ s Law, right? It states that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. This applies especially to your attention. If anyone can interrupt you, they will. And the easier it is to reach you, the less likely the interruption will be important. How do you keep distractions away? Let’ s get practical. You Need To Create Physical Barriers Keep Your Door Closed A good cave is going to be a place where you can physically separate yourself from your peers. It should have walls or barriers that keep you from co-workers, friends, family, and maybe even the occasional enemy. Hang Up Your“ Do Not Disturb” Sign Buy yourself a“ Do Not Disturb” sign. Hang it on your door and you’ ll watch the unnecessary interruptions come to a screeching halt. Invest in a Pair of Noise-Canceling Headphones Some of us don’ t have the luxury of a personal office. Maybe you share an office, maybe you work in one of those monstrosities known as an open office, or maybe your office walls are just paper thin. Noise-canceling headphones are a great alternative for less than ideal circumstances such as these.
Physically isolating yourself is the first step, but it isn’ t enough. You may be away from your peers, but your phone and laptop keep you at arm’ s length to almost everyone in the world. You’ ve put up walls of defense around your attention, but your phone is a Trojan horse. It never really had to break down walls to get to you. It entices you until you invite it inside, but at any moment, it will drop a band of attentionhungry soldiers who will pillage your mind and thwart your plans. Keep the Trojan horse out! You Need To Create Virtual Barriers Lock Up Your Phone There is no cell reception in real caves and there shouldn’ t be in your cave either. You need to virtually isolate yourself from Facebook, satellites, and cell towers. Consider putting your phone in a box or desk drawer. While you’ re in the cave, you’ re off the phone. Enter“ Airplane Mode” The airplane mode or“ Do Not Disturb” mode on your phone is another great alternative. This setting is especially ideal if you are expecting an important phone call as you can select who can still reach you. Either Close Your Laptop or Put It in“ Full Screen” If you’ re able, keep the laptop out of the cave. But we live in the digital age, after all, so this is not likely an option. Consider limiting yourself to the screen in which you’ re working. Viewing it in full screen will keep your wandering eyes from the legion of distractions scattered across the rest of your
computer screen. If you have multiple tabs open, you are working against your own focused attention. Use Tech to Fight Tech While tech can divide our attention, it can also focus it. Here are some apps that you should consider adopting:
• Freedom- a program that turns off the internet for a set amount of time
• WriteRoom- a simplified word processor so you can write without being distracted by annoying red squiggly lines and inexplicable setting changes( Thanks, MS Word.)
• RescueTime- tracks your time to tell you how you are spending it
• Headspace- a guided mindfulness phone app( nothing increases focus like mindfulness)
• Forest- a phone app that rewards you for not looking at your phone
• Chrome Extensions- Limitless( simple organizational landing page) and Strict Workflow( an alternate to Freedom)
Twenty-five hundred years ago, Plato used the analogy of a cave to share his philosophy of how people learn and grow. Plato said all people begin life inside a cave, a dimly lit world where light and shadows are all that you can see. In order to grow and understand, people must climb out of the cave and take in the fuller truth of the world outside of it. But 2,500 years later, in a world where daily life casts us into environments of constant distraction, wisdom says that growing and learning is not a matter of leaving a cave but of entering a cave. It’ s about going back inside the cave, not to turn away from learning but to get away from the interferences of daily life that are keeping us from learning and developing.
Long ago we left the cave to evolve. Now we need to reenter the cave to keep from devolving.
Curt Steinhorst
Curt Steinhorst is on a mission to help today’ s workforce win the battle against digital distractions. Having fought ADD his entire life and spent years studying the impact of tech on human behavior, he now equips professionals across the world to work smarter and stronger in this constantly-connected age. Curtsteinhorst. com