How Broken Wi-Fi Taught Me the Magic of Not Being Distracted
I had no idea of the tremendous cost of the distractions in my life until, by accident, they were gone.
Last year, I was flying home from London after a week-long fundraising trip. The 11-hour flight left at 2 p.m. and would land in SFO at 5 p.m. Once we took off, I had difficulty connecting to Wi-Fi, so I asked the flight attendant to try to restart it. Yes, I was “that guy.” She came back after about 20 minutes saying that because of some communications error, the Wi-Fi would be off for the entire flight.
Eleven hours. No sleep. No Wi-Fi.
For the first hour, I was super grumpy.
After about 90 minutes, I finished replying to my cached emails on Outlook and wondered what to do.
I’m one of those people who never watches movies on a plane. I try to find something “productive” to do with the time.
I made a list of all the ways I could spend the next 10 hours. I came up with the following:
Write in my journal,
Send notes to several friends, family members, and mentors telling them how much they meant to me,
Write out a 10-year plan for Alpine,
Complete two articles I’d started writing,
Re-read journal entries dating back 15 years, and
Finish reading my book.
The rest of the flight was truly magical. Not only did I not get distracted, but I KNEW I wouldn’t be distracted! My mind knew that I was captive on an airplane and, other than occasional turbulence, there was no way that I would be interrupted.
Even though I was tired from the different time zones and I was landing at 1 a.m. London time, I was full of energy. My mind opened up a capacity that I hadn’t tapped into in years. I felt three times smarter, more efficient, more productive, and more at peace.
When I landed, I was blown away by how much I had achieved in 11 hours. I completed more than a week worth of work. I almost stayed in the airport and boarded a flight back to London just so I could experience that “flow” again.
My experience was not unique. In his book, Deep Work, Cal Newport describes how intense periods of distraction-free concentration push our cognitive abilities to the limit. He argues that deep work creates new value, improves your skills, and allows you to stand out from the crowd—because very few people ever experience deep work. According to Newport, intense periods of distraction-free work actually cause changes in your brain. These periods stimulate the creation of Myelin, which allows brain cells to fire faster and cleaner. Newport describes how author JK Rowling checked herself into a 5-star hotel to complete her final book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. And Bill Gates used deep work to code the first version of Basic (the foundation of Microsoft’s operating system) in only eight weeks, working day and night with very little distraction.
The obstacles to our concentration
Most of us don’t realize how destructive interruptions can be to our concentration. Unlocking our phones and seeing new texts, emails, or messages on social media releases quick hits of dopamine, a “feel good” chemical in our brains. We get addicted to these hits, so when we don’t have them—like during the first hour of my flight—we experience withdrawal. According to Apple, we check our phones on average more than 80 times per day. Checking our phones seems harmless, we think: “Let’s just see if anything new happened,” “I’ll just reply to this text quickly, and then I’ll be present.” The cumulative impact of all of these quick scans of our screens is that regular users of phones and social media—most people on the planet—have significantly reduced attention spans.
I didn’t realize how much of a toll these small distractions were taking on me until I couldn’t access my phone, email, social media or Wi-Fi. Incessant interruptions impact my creativity, focus, attention span, peace of mind, happiness, confidence, productivity, and even sleep. Constant distractions were negatively impacting my health.
When I returned home after my flight, I vowed to make some changes.
Here are a few changes I’ve made which might help you free your mind, improve your focus, increase your productivity, and achieve that flow I described above:
Place 2-hour blocks on your calendar at least 2-3 times per week to do actual thinking and work. Look at your calendar several weeks into the future and block the time. Treat these time blocks like important meetings (because they are!), go to a place where you won’t be interrupted, and put your phone and laptop into airplane mode. These blocks will allow you to do “deep work,” but you need to schedule and protect this time. You’ll complete more work and have more ideas in these blocks than you will in a week of distracted working.
Turn off sound, banners, vibrations, and all notifications—always. You don’t want to hear a ping every time you get a new message. The pinging itself will interrupt your train of thought, and the anticipation of the pinging will keep you from deep concentration.
Avoid screens for at least an hour before bed and charge your phone in a room away from where you sleep. Both of these simple hacks have been proven to improve the quality of your sleep. You may need to invest nine dollars for a radio clock for your bedroom.
Take your social media apps off your phone. Designate a time each day to post and/or respond to social media. During this time, you can either reinstall the apps (which only takes a minute) or use your laptop to check your social channels. Freeing yourself from knowing that social media is always available in your pocket has the same impact as freeing yourself from the consistent pinging of incoming messages. Try this for a few weeks and notice how you feel. I haven’t had any social media apps on my phone for nearly three years. After a week or so of withdrawal, I can’t imagine ever going back!
Your environment—calls, texts, DMs, meetings, emails, and social media—will keep you from attaining your best concentration, thinking, and creativity. Give yourself the gift of deep concentration and you’ll reap the benefits of more efficient work and unleash creativity you never imagined.
