If you ask someone why they can’t focus, they usually say they’re very distracted.
But are we really distracted? Or is it congestion, instead?
Let’s dig deeper into this slight nuance, and find out if distraction may be a good thing after all.
Right click to save this episode.
Note: (This is an unedited transcript)
If you ask a person, what is the opposite of focus? They will usually say distraction.
Okay, let's test this term, shall we? Let's say you get in a car, and you start driving towards the country. As you get out of your driveway, you'll notice your neighbor taking out the garage. Then there is also the mailman delivering the mail.
The leaves flutter to the ground, and the clouds seem to be pushing the trees forward. Are you still focused? Of course you are. You don't suddenly veer off the road and crash into the nearest tree.
The main reason why we do just fine is because distractions don't matter as much as we think they do.
Most of us function superbly well, and we are focused enough to do the task at hand. Now let's just say that you are learning to drive. Do we even need to describe how rattled you are likely to be? The trees, the neighbors, everything seems like a flashing red light.
Plus, you're battling with brakes, acceleration, and who knows what else. Hence, the opposite of focus isn't distraction. Instead, it's congestion.
Which is when things get tricky, don't they?
Because if we take these two individuals, and they could just be you, when you are already adept at driving the car, you don't feel any frustration or congestion, and distraction doesn't bother you. But the earlier version of you, who is just learning to drive, you feel crushed by congestion. And this isn't very different from how we operate on a day-to-day basis.
Let's take an example of my day. I happen to be learning not one, not two, but three separate languages. This sounds insane, doesn't it? How does so much language learning not lead to congestion? The answer is, it depends on how much control you have over the situation.
Let's say I decide to boldly announce that I'm learning three languages. Now, your assumption is likely to be that I started learning all the three just last week. Instead, it's not the case at all. With French, I've covered 83,476 reps in a little over a year. With Spanish, it's just 18,343 repetitions. And with Thai, I'm just 661 repetitions old.
And the moment you hear these facts, everything seems to shift just a little bit.
Because you realize that when I'm dealing with Thai, which is just 660 repetitions, that's completely different from 83,000 repetitions. Which means that there's more control over French, less control over Spanish, and absolutely total congestion when it comes to Thai.
Because in Thai, I don't understand how it sounds, I don't understand the tones, I can't read the alphabet, and the only thing I can say in Thai is hello, thank you, and I'm bored. Hence, having different levels of learning in progress is crucial if you're going to take on any work.
And while all this talk of three languages sounds very impressive, all of us are operating on a completely different scale than we used to. We're talking about the difference between an adult, any adult, and any five-year-old. Even the laziest, most incompetent adult can achieve and control several things with less congestion than a five-year-old.
That five-year-old has a problem even tying shoelaces. Even that is a big achievement. So if we extrapolate this idea, we start to understand how you can become multi-talented.
You can learn to cook. You can learn to draw, sing, dance, do a podcast, write a sales page, and do it all in a single day. Because the people that seem more talented than you, the people that seem to be achieving more than you, they are just that adult.
And, unfortunately, for now, you are just the five-year-old. The reason why the five-year-old is struggling is because of the volume of congestion. The reason why we struggle in so many areas is because we too have that congestion.
We think of it as distraction, but really, it is congestion.
