"I find myself using huge amounts of time on distractions, going for whatever strikes me at the time. And then I feel bad, even lost, about not getting things done and not really living life. I must escape this trap I'm setting for myself."
Anonymous
Today's gadgets and social networks providing so many stimuli to react to that one can just live in a state of distraction, of aimless wandering and responding as if a Pavlov's dog, searching for stimulation, trying to fill a hole with cotton candy - never getting anywhere...
This is not a pretty picture. It is eating lives away with wandering and meaninglessness. We are losing our ability to concentrate and focus for long - losing one of our most powerful abilities.
We are becoming from the bottom up agewise a nation of kids and adults suffering from ADD (" attention deficit disorder"), which used to be called lazy thinking and immature behavior. It used to be called at times "a low attention span", which all parents and all those affected should read and solve. The inability to direct and concentrate one's thinking leads to the inability to run one's life effectively and to learn what is needed to have the skills to be effective. See also Predictor Of A Child's Success.
This is the opposite of using the brain to think - where directed high thinking has been what has created our prosperity and differentiated us from the animals.
Can you focus for a minute without something running you in order to keep the focus?
There's TV, which is especially alluring when I am tired or when I am directionless and need to just find something to fill the hole, the available time.
A mess in my office.
Just sitting down in front of the TV to eat and then stay glued to the entertainment box, actually, per all studies, leading to a state of mild depression after a 1/2 hour.
Enabled by confusion or a complete lack of what to do next, what would be beneficial and life enhancing or life supporting.
The solution always comes back to having a directed agenda where one is managing oneself. How train to do that, how avoid getting lured away or drifting.
Solutions:
Learn and implement Calm Coherence, a source of power in life, where one maintains calmness and higher thinking, so that one is "together" and "in charge".
Not having tasks seems so overwhelming, time-collapsing, causing a sense of helplessness and lack of control.
