November 27, 2024 • 35 mins
Do you ever struggle to focus on your writing — even on a project you actually enjoy? Whether due to internal or external factors, distraction comes to us in many different forms, for many different reasons. This week, we’re talking about tools, strategies, and habits we writers can use to find our focus again.
Thank you for listening! For show notes and a full transcript of this episode, please visit: https://www.sarahwerner.com/focus-amp-distraction-wn-161
To support the work I do here at the Write Now podcast, become a patron on Patreon at https://patreon.com/sarahrheawerner, or send me a tip on Ko-Fi at https://ko-fi.com/sarahwerner.
Happy writing!
— Sarah
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is the Write NowPodcast with Sarah Werner,
episode 161 (00:03):
Focus and Distraction.
(00:27):
Welcome to Write Now, the podcastthat helps all writers -- aspiring,
professional, and otherwise-- to find the time, energy,
and courage you need to pursue yourpassion and write. I'm your host,
Sarah Werner, and today I wantto talk about distraction.
For me, distraction means a lack of focus,
(00:49):
or an inability to focus on thething that I want to be doing,
which for the purposes ofthis podcast is writing.
Distraction can be caused byexternal factors, internal factors,
and we're going to talk aboutall of that in today's episode.
So hello, welcome. I'm glad you're here.
(01:09):
Let's take a look at what it means tobe focused on our work and what happens
when we find ourselves distracted.
I want to start off bysaying distraction is normal.
This is not a podcast episode abouthow to never get distracted again ever,
because that's not going tohappen. We are not robots,
(01:30):
and our brains are not bug-free computers.
The world may never be assilent or dark or bright enough
for us to maintain a perfect focusat all times, and that's okay.
That just comes from being a person,
a writer who lives in a physical world.
But I think it is possible tohone your ability to focus,
(01:55):
even if that's not somethingyou've been able to do before ever.
And I speak from experience.
I've been really reluctantto share this on the podcast,
and it's honestly part of thereason why I haven't had as many
episodes coming out lately (and by thatI mean it's November and I think this is
(02:15):
my fourth episode of the year),
and that is I was diagnosedwith ADHD. Yes, as an adult,
and as an adult woman. Nonetheless,
part of the reason I've been reluctantto share this with you is because of the
stigma I feel is attachedto talking about ADHD.
(02:36):
I think immediately whenI said those four letters,
probably about 10% of you listenersjust pushed stop on the podcast,
and you're no longer listening. SoI don't know why I'm talking to you.
I've noticed in tryingto talk about and be open
about this diagnosis of what isactually a neurodevelopmental
(02:57):
disorder that [people] shutdown when I talk about it
and they say, oh, Sarah,
everybody has ADHD or ADHD isn't real,
or ADHD is all in your head, which...
technically it scientificallyit is -- it's in my brain.
It's basically a lack of dopamine,
(03:18):
which causes all sortsof different behaviors.
I found that when I told people, Hey,
I just got diagnosed with ADHD andit's explaining a lot about me,
I felt myself getting a littlebit defensive because the, quote,
"symptoms" of ADHD (I don't knowwhy I put quotes around that) --
(03:39):
the symptoms of ADHD are typicallythings that are not accepted
by normal society.
They are in fact thingsthat we see as lazy,
lacking in discipline.Overindulgent. Growing up,
if it was hard for me topay attention in class,
it was because I was lazy orbecause I was too easily distracted
(04:03):
or because I wasn't interestedenough or because I was a bad
student -- and honestly, I wasn'ta bad student. I got good grades.
I graduated summa cumlaude from high school.
I graduated cum laude from college,and I think I did pretty okay.
I know things. I learned stuff in school.
I just did it at my own paceor I did it through extreme
(04:25):
procrastination, which again,
can be easily interpreted as lazy.
And lazy is so oftenseen as a moral failing.
So in part, I feel like by saying, "Hey,
I have an ADHD diagnosis,"what I'm saying is,
"Here's my heart.
I'm opening it up to you and you cantell me whether or not you think I'm a
(04:49):
moral failure." I mean, I hope youdon't think I'm a moral failure,
but again, that's up toyou and as I've learned,
other people's opinions ofme are none of my business.
The other reaction that I hear is, oh,
you weren't diagnosed as a child, sotherefore you don't really have it.
(05:11):
To that, I say, when I wasgrowing up in the eighties,
people legitimately did notthink that girls could have ADHD
because it presents differentlyin male and female children,
and male and female adults.Growing up, we said, oh,
that kid is ADHD,
because it was usually a boy who sat inthe back of the class who could not sit
(05:32):
still. He was fidgeting into hisseat. He wanted to go out to recess.
He couldn't pay attention.He was disruptive in class.
That was the classic ADHDor ADD diagnosis that I
grew up witnessing.
So when my friend Sean suggested asan adult in what was my mid-thirties,
"Sarah,
have you ever just looked atgetting diagnosed for ADHD?" I
(05:56):
said, no. Why would I do that?
I'm not a boy sitting in the back ofclass having trouble sitting still,
fidgeting, thinking about football,jumping out the window and whatever.
I don't have ADHD.
And then I started readingabout the symptoms and how they present themselves in
girls and in women.
(06:18):
(I promise this whole podcast episodeis not going to be about ADHD.
This is simply something that I wantedto explore as we dive into today's
topic.) Finally, in my very late thirties,
after doing a little bit of researchand seeing some things that I struggled
with on a daily basis reflectedin ADHD symptom listings,
(06:42):
I went in and I sat downfor an ADHD assessment,
which for me took about two hours.
And what it does is it looks at notonly what you're dealing with in
the present, but also historicallythrough your childhood,
what you and other peoplewitnessed as specific behaviors.
(07:03):
And for this segment of the assessment,
I actually was able to digup some notes from teachers.
My mom generally throwsaway pretty much everything,
but she did keep a file
for me and each of my siblingsthat contained, I guess,
important school documents. And so Iwas able to go through this folder,
(07:25):
and I found documentationand it was a little bit
surreal.
One teacher wrote specificallythat I had issues --
I struggled with moving between tasks,
so moving from science to math,
moving from gym class to geography.
(07:46):
Another noticed that Ipreferred to read books under my
desk instead of payingattention to the lesson.
Another noted that I seemed spacey,
that I had trouble understandingthe segments of the day,
that if maybe I procrastinated less,I could live up to my true potential.
(08:06):
I forgot things constantly. I leftthings at school. I left things at home.
I forgot about projects entirely.
I won't go through thewhole list with you here,
but I was very quicklydiagnosed as an adult with ADHD
and more than anything else,
certain behaviors that I struggledwith began to make sense,
(08:28):
and once they began to make sense,once I could identify and label them,
I was able to not cure them,
not become a "better new person",
but I was able to start dealingwith them more intentionally.
And as I began to deal with someof these things more intentionally,
I noticed that a lot of my Write NowPodcast episodes dealt with what I
(08:49):
now understood to be ADHD issues:
procrastination, motivation,
getting lost in a hyperfocus,obsessing about strange,
random little things,
an inability to stay focused even whenI deeply cared about the project I was
working on.
(09:09):
And so I stopped podcasting for a littlewhile because I was really in my own
head about -- this whole time,
have I not been podcasting aboutwriting so much as podcasting about
having ADHD and not knowing it?
Is my show actually helpful? Is myshow actually even about writing?
(09:31):
Today was really the first day thatI sat down and journaled my thoughts
about all of this, and Irealized, you know what?
A lot of people strugglewith focus and distraction.
A lot of people struggle withprocrastination. In fact,
everybody probably does. It'snot just people who have ADHD.
(09:53):
Everybody struggles with these things.
So maybe these episodes arehelpful to writers regardless.
So I am not a special snowflake. Iam not unique in these struggles.
At least I don't think I am,
and I'm not sure if that'sgood news or bad news,
but we're just going to take it and moveforward. So... you sit down to write,
(10:18):
and 30 minutes later you realizeyou still haven't started writing.
In fact, you're not eventhinking about writing.
You're not even looking at the page.
You're scrolling on your phone oryou're looking out of the window,
or maybe you're looking at the page, butyou're not thinking about your story.
You're thinking aboutTHING -- insert THING here,
(10:41):
whatever that may be,
that THING that is not the project thatyou currently want to be working on.
You are distracted.
I feel like distraction looksdifferent for everybody.
Some people can't sit still.
Some people just find they'rehaving trouble focusing.
Some people realize their brainis jumping all over the place.
(11:04):
Some people feel an intense pressure tobe doing literally anything else other
than sitting down and writing.
Some people find themselves respondingto emails without even realizing they've
opened up their web browser. Somy first question for you is,
when you're distracted,
how long does it take before yourealize that you are distracted,
(11:27):
and what does that tendto look like for you?
I realized that a lot of the time,I didn't even know I was distracted
or having difficulty focusinguntil I was 45 minutes
in and realized I had not written a word,
or I realized that I had been doingsomething that I had not intended to do --
(11:50):
just pure muscle memory.
I opened up my phone and I startedscrolling through social media without
intentionally wanting to do that.
It's easy to get distractedfrom writing. Writing is a big,
massive undertaking.Writing is hard. It is.
It's hard. I know we love todo it, but it also uses energy,
(12:15):
and there are so many other thingsthat can give us a quick fix,
a quick jolt of dopamine. Like, sure,
I could finish writing this scene,
but I could also scroll theinfinite scroll of Instagram.
Both give me dopamine. It's just thatone is passive and one is active;
one is easy and one is hard.And it's not a moral failing,
(12:38):
or a failing of any kind.
If your brain sometimes justwants to scroll through Instagram,
that is okay. We are not machines.
We are not productivity engines.
We cannot be productive 12hours a day, 24 hours a day,
whatever it is we think or weare told that we "should" be.
(12:59):
We get distracted despiteour best intentions.
And like I mentioned earlier,not all distraction is internal.
Not all of it comes from our brains.
Some of you may be familiar withthe sound of screaming children,
or construction work out inyour street, or barking dogs,
(13:21):
or people who constantly need your help.
These are all distractions thatcan break the focus we need to
truly dig into our writing and write.
Then there's the odd time,
and I don't know if this has everhappened to you or if you've ever found
yourself doing this,
but every once in a while Iwill consciously realize that
(13:44):
my brain is searching for distraction.
I'll find myself walking around the housesaying, does this need to be cleaned?
I haven't watered my plants yet this week.
Is there anything else thatshould go into the dishwasher?
I will find myself actively searchingfor tasks that I normally do
(14:05):
not want to do becausemy brain is looking for
distraction from my writing project.So there's a lot going on here.
There are a lot of things thatcan break or intrude upon our
focus, and it's reallyfrustrating in most cases,
at least for me, I've found that there'sstill part of me, despite all this,
(14:28):
that wants to write, even if I findmyself looking for distractions.
There's still a pull toward, oh man, Ishould really be getting some words down.
I should really, reallymake some progress today.
I don't want to be distracted,and it can get really frustrating.
I don't know if you've everread Deep Work by Cal Newport,
(14:48):
but it was one of my favorite books,
and I found that it applied to writing.It applies just to so many things,
but in his book, Deep Work,
Cal Newport talks about ourneed to have a large chunk of
uninterrupted time inwhich we can sit down and
generate and furtherdevelop big ideas. Now,
(15:12):
I totally agree with this.
It takes me a long time toreally get into my work.
It takes me a good 20 - 30 minutesto sort of get my brain back
into a project first thing in themorning. It makes sense that yes,
if you have hundreds or thousandsof dollars to rent a seaside cabin
(15:32):
where you won't be disturbed at all,
where you can work on a bookor a project for uninterrupted
weeks at a time, yeah, that'sgreat for your writing.
But the thing is,
long stretches of uninterruptedtime aren't really available for
everyone -- parents, I'm looking at you,
(15:52):
but I'm also looking at anyoneelse who has daily responsibilities
or a difficult scheduleor trouble sleeping,
people who are maybe strugglingwith their relationships,
people whose work lifeis chaotic. Growing up,
my dad was a pastor,
and he had the opportunity to dosomething called a sabbatical,
(16:15):
which meant time away from his work sothat he could have that deep focus on
something. I was really sad whenI found out as an adult that,
if you are working ata typical office job,
so if you're in marketing like I was,
you don't really get a sabbatical.At least here in the United States.
(16:36):
You don't really ever get more thana couple of days off at a time,
and those days off are usually filledwith all the things that you can't usually
do during the work week.
So what we really need to learn howto do is work within the restrictions
that we're given. Everybody hasrestrictions: time restrictions,
(16:56):
health restrictions, focus restrictions.
Everybody is working with-slash-against
something.
Maybe you don't have eight hoursa day to set aside for writing,
but maybe you do have two hours in themorning before anyone else in the house
wakes up, or an hourafter everyone is in bed,
(17:18):
or 45 minutes over yourlunch break each day.
It's really difficult to rememberwhen we look at our lack of
giant eight-hour swaths oftime that the little steps can
still add up.
Even writing a hundred words a day couldget you a short novella by the end of
the year. So don't despair,
(17:40):
because life will never liveup to what we want it to be.
So once you've identified whatdistraction looks like for you,
and it could be (and probablywill be) multiple things,
write them down, make alist, acknowledge them.
I know I'm not a therapist or a mentalhealth professional or anything like
(18:03):
that, but I have found that atleast for me, this was helpful.
Some of the items on your listare things that we can work on.
Some of the things on your list are just
life. Some things are within your control,
and probably many, many morethings are outside of your control.
(18:25):
I remember, years ago,
I was trying to focus on a project andit had some kind of crazy deadline that I
was working against,
and my neighbor startedcutting down a tree.
And it was so loud,
it was shaking the windows.
And I remember I wasnear tears and I said,
(18:46):
I cannot work with this.
And I remember I was near tearsbecause of that helpless feeling.
I couldn't work, and I couldn't doanything about it. I couldn't say, hi,
can you please stopcutting down this tree?
So look at your list and identifywhat things are in your control
(19:06):
and what things aren't.
This can be simultaneouslydeeply frustrating,
but also a kind of liberating exercise.
Once we realize that not everythingin our world is within our control,
we can stop blaming ourselves so much.
We can relieve ourselves of atleast some of that pressure.
(19:30):
I have to be with the kids when they gethome from school from 3:30 until they
go to bed at 8:30 PM,
and so there's no use feeling guiltyduring those hours for not writing.
And there's freedom tojust be with the kids.
If you get migrainesor disease flareups or
any sort of pain -- painis very distracting,
(19:53):
and usually outside of our control. Now,
if there is something you cando to cut down on the pain,
then I definitelyencourage you to do that.
But if you can't write because youare in pain, don't blame yourself.
It's not your fault.
No one expects you to write andto produce good creative work
(20:16):
when your body is rebelling against you.
But there are many types ofdistraction that are within our
control,
and that's what I want to spend therest of this episode talking about --
is what do we do with this?What do we do about it?
(Side note,
I just had to pause this recording becausea whole bunch of airplanes just went
(20:36):
over my house. So...distractions that we can't help.
Okay,
back to distractions that we do maybehave some degree of control over.)
For me,
it has been helpful to understand whatit feels like to be distracted when
I'm distracted, and whatcauses me to become distracted.
So writing down that list earlierwas a helpful step for me.
(21:00):
So then you can identify-- and again, in my case,
it has been most helpful totake preventative measures.
One of the easiest steps that I sortof trained myself to do was to put my
phone on do not disturb (orfocus mode as it's often now
called I think in some operating systems),
or turn the phone offaltogether. Now if you have kids,
(21:24):
if you have people who might need toget in touch with you in an emergency,
you might not be comfortableturning off your phone.
I am not comfortable turning off myphone because I want to know if something
happens to a loved one,
so I'll use focus or do notdisturb mode while I'm writing.
There are also programs that-- if you find yourself,
and a lot of the times it's justhabit, it's just muscle memory.
(21:47):
If you find yourself reaching towardyour phone or if you look down and
realize you are holding your phone inyour hand and you are scrolling through
Instagram and you have noidea how that happened,
there are also preventativemeasures that you can take.
There are a lot of focus apps thatwill essentially brick your phone for a
certain amount of time. I use Flora,
(22:10):
which it lets you grow a little treeand if you use your phone for anything
during the set amount of focustime, you kill the little tree,
and it's very sad and distressing.And so the stakes are low,
but it still helps me to not use my phone.
Another thing that I havefound is helpful is for me --
(22:31):
sound is extremely distracting,
and so I invested in a pair ofnoise canceling headphones...
and usually that isnot even enough for me.
My brain is like a magnet for distraction,
and it's a magnet for soundsespecially. It searches out,
it's got a radar that's looking for soundsto distract me and pull me out of my
(22:53):
writing. So even with thenoise canceling headphones on,
I also have to run an app thathas constant white noise or
rain noises to really justfully drown everything
out for me. That hasbeen extremely helpful,
and I encourage you to experimentwith white noise, with ambient noise,
(23:13):
with rain noises, with lyric-free music --
that sounds weird... music withoutlyrics -- if that's helpful to you,
so that you can give yourself a betterchance at maintaining your focus when you
need to. I also have theability to shut the door.
I used to work out at the diningroom table in our house, which...
(23:34):
I loved working out there because therewere windows and I could snuggle with
Cyrus (my cat) while I wrote,
but I realized that there wasno door that I could shut.
And sometimes a shut dooris a very useful tool
in keeping yourself frombeing distracted when,
if you have other people in the house,
(23:55):
keeping other people maybe gentlyoutside of your writing space,
visibly closing off any distractionsof people or pets walking by,
or maybe even keepingpets out. I love animals.
I love our pets,
but I often need to gently removethem from my writing space and
(24:16):
keep them out so that I can focus.
You may also find sometimes that you aredistracted because you are too tired to
focus. Maybe you aremissing out on some sleep,
maybe you are burned out.
Maybe you have a lot going on inlife and you are emotionally drained.
There are a lot of differentthings, believe it or not,
(24:37):
in this world that willmake you extremely tired.
And sometimes it comesdown to the choice of:
do I need to push myself to focus more,
or do I need to let my brain rest?
Do I simply need to set a timerfor 25 minutes and to take a
nap?
(24:57):
A lot of this you don't know untilyou experiment with it a little bit.
That's something that I havefound for me personally.
I know for a lot of people,
a quick power nap will help restoretheir energy and refresh their focus.
For me, if I take a nap, no matter ifI set an alarm or a number of alarms,
I will be out for the next three tofour hours. I am, for whatever reason,
(25:21):
incapable of taking ashort nap. And so for me,
naps are simply not on the menu.
But if you find this is something thatworks for you and does help restore and
refresh your focus, I encourageyou to give it a try. Similarly,
I often find myself feeling jittery and
(25:41):
restless,
and my body is twitching andI'm moving my shoulders and I'm
swaying back and forth in my seat,and I realize I need to go for a walk.
And so I will go. We live on agraveyard as many of you know,
and one lap around the graveyardis, very fortunately, one mile.
So I will go out and I will doone lap around the graveyard.
(26:03):
So about 15 to 20 minutes isa mile (because I'm a slow
walker),
and usually that and then maybeanother smaller lap or another
full lap will be enough so that I'velet my body get its restless energy out,
and then I can come insideand I can finally focus. Plus,
(26:24):
if I've been sitting in the chair andstaring at my screen or my page and trying
to force myself to focus,
a change of scenery really andtruly can help restore your focus.
It can refresh your mind. I knowfor me, even just looking at trees,
as silly as that sounds,
going outside and looking at treesis often enough to refresh me.
(26:46):
And after a 20 minute walk, Ican come back in and I can write.
If you find you are distractedbecause you have a list of
to-dos and "shoulds" burningin your mind or burning on a
list right next to you, it'stime for another decision.
Do you want to knock out one or two ormore of the tasks on that list and get
(27:09):
them over with so that you can focus,
or have you set aside this timeto focus and you need to get that
list out of sight and know that whenyour writing time is over in 30 minutes,
in an hour, whenever it is,
know that you will get to thosetasks at that time and not before?
This is kind of a hard boundary to setwith yourself and it's something that I
(27:32):
very much struggle with.
It's very hard for me to focus when Iknow that there's dishes getting crusty in
the sink or, darn it, I have anappointment in 30 minutes, aaah,
I've got to get ready for it,
even though it won't take me 30minutes to get ready for it, et cetera.
So do you do one or two ofthe items on the to-do list?
Will that alleviate the pressureand allow you to focus? Again,
(27:55):
this is probably not something that youwill know and understand right away.
You might have to experiment andafter a few days say, you know what?
I've noticed that when I go to my to-dolist, I just stay on the to-do list.
I never come back to my writing.That does not work for me.
I need to save my to-do listfor after my writing session,
and I need to put my to-do list in aplace where it cannot weigh on my soul,
(28:20):
where it cannot judge me from afar.I need to get it out of sight,
out of mind. So again,whatever works best for you --
I encourage you to experiment and findout how you can be least distracted,
if this is something thatyou struggle with. Now,
what do you do when yourbrain is distracting itself? I don't know about you,
(28:40):
but my brain will oftenfixate or lock onto something,
and I try to redirect it back to mywriting project and it's like, no,
Sarah, you need to research19th century alchemical
practices right now.And when that happens,
my brain becomes a sort of runaway train
(29:04):
chugging single-mindedlytoward that weird offshoot --
not what I want to be working on,
but something that it isfixated on for whatever reason.
The good news is that, if you dostay on that particular train track,
often at least I've discoveredthat the things my brain decides it
wants to research randomly willactually end up having a place in the
(29:28):
story that I'm writing,the story that I'm telling.
So often I do relieve the itch to
research something,
but I have to remain very awareof the time that I'm giving it.
I don't want to go down a Wikipediarabbit hole for four hours and
not get any writing done.
(29:48):
And sometimes your brain's going todo what your brain's going to do,
and sometimes even though it's your brain,
sometimes it's not 100% within yoursphere of control, which... again,
very frustrating, but also part of life.
I have not even begun toscratch the surface, probably,
with the plentiful things inthis world that can distract
(30:11):
us from our writing, that can takeaway from our focus on our work.
But I hope that in this discussionI've given you a couple things.
First,
the ability to name and labeland identify and understand
what it is that distracts your focus,
what it is that distracts you from thework that you feel you are called to
(30:34):
do. What is taking thataway from you? B...
or two... I guess we didn't reallynumber or letter the first one,
so I'll just say -- I also...
I hope that you take a look at that
list and really understandwhich of these are within my
control.
(30:55):
I cannot stop the city from workingon the pipes outside of my house --
I mean, not without taking some verydrastic and possibly illegal measures.
I can't keep my neighborfrom cutting down that tree.
I can't control that there are peoplein my life that need help right now.
And when you come across theseinevitable frustrating things,
(31:16):
I hope you take a moment torealize this is not in my control.
This is not a failure of me towrite. This is not a moral failing.
And I hope that you giveyourself some grace,
and give the people and loved ones (andmaybe less-than loved ones) in your life
some grace and forgiveness.
(31:39):
And for the things thatyou can control or at least
influence,
I encourage you to take thoseoften preventative steps.
If you know you have a tendency toscroll through social media and lose two
hours of your day, put your phoneon airplane mode, turn it off,
put it out of reach, put it in focus mode.
(32:00):
Understand that that'sa distraction for you,
and start building the habitaround doing something about it.
Shut your door. Unwire your doorbell,
soundproof your windows. Kindly askyour neighbor to turn their radio down.
Take a walk, take a shower, take a nap.
(32:21):
Take care of one of those items on yourto-do list that is burning into your
brain,
or put your to-do list out of sight andout of mind until your writing session
is over. Use your noisecanceling headphones.
Use that Spotify subscription.Use a white noise machine.
Use the time in your life,in your living space,
(32:43):
when no one else can interruptyou. But most of all, remember:
we're not robots and our brainsare not bug-free computers.
They simply are not.
And we will face distraction andlack of focus from time to time.
Build habits for the thingsthat are within your control.
(33:04):
Take care of the thingsthat you can influence,
and give yourself grace forthe things that you can't.
Thank you so much for listening tothis episode of the Write Now podcast.
Special thanks go to the people whosupport me via Patreon and other
platforms, especially: Laurie, Regina Calabrese, (33:20):
undefined
Amber Fratesi, CharmaineFerreira, Kim, Mike Teftt,
Poppy Brown, Summer, TiffanyJoyner, and Whitney McGruder.
Seriously, thank you so much foryour financial contributions.
(33:41):
You helped me keep this show hostedand ad free, and I truly appreciate it.
If you would like to support the show,
there is a link in the show notesfor this episode where you can do so.
If you want to use Patreon, you can.If you want to use something else,
I do have other options. So yeah,see what works best for you.
(34:02):
If you want to give $1 per episode, ifyou want to give $2 per episode, or more,
you can totally do that, and I amvery appreciative. So thank you.
And with that,
this has been episode 161of the Write Now Podcast,
the podcast that helps all writers --aspiring, professional, and otherwise --
(34:24):
to find the time, energy,
and courage you need topursue your passion and write.
I'm Sarah Werner, and I'm goingto go try and focus on something.
This is the Write NowPodcast with Sarah Werner,
episode 161 (00:03):
Focus and Distraction.
(00:27):
Welcome to Write Now, the podcastthat helps all writers -- aspiring,
professional, and otherwise-- to find the time, energy,
and courage you need to pursue yourpassion and write. I'm your host,
Sarah Werner, and today I wantto talk about distraction.
For me, distraction means a lack of focus,
(00:49):
or an inability to focus on thething that I want to be doing,
which for the purposes ofthis podcast is writing.
Distraction can be caused byexternal factors, internal factors,
and we're going to talk aboutall of that in today's episode.
So hello, welcome. I'm glad you're here.
(01:09):
Let's take a look at what it means tobe focused on our work and what happens
when we find ourselves distracted.
I want to start off bysaying distraction is normal.
This is not a podcast episode abouthow to never get distracted again ever,
because that's not going tohappen. We are not robots,
(01:30):
and our brains are not bug-free computers.
The world may never be assilent or dark or bright enough
for us to maintain a perfect focusat all times, and that's okay.
That just comes from being a person,
a writer who lives in a physical world.
But I think it is possible tohone your ability to focus,
(01:55):
even if that's not somethingyou've been able to do before ever.
And I speak from experience.
I've been really reluctantto share this on the podcast,
and it's honestly part of thereason why I haven't had as many
episodes coming out lately (and by thatI mean it's November and I think this is
(02:15):
my fourth episode of the year),
and that is I was diagnosedwith ADHD. Yes, as an adult,
and as an adult woman. Nonetheless,
part of the reason I've been reluctantto share this with you is because of the
stigma I feel is attachedto talking about ADHD.
(02:36):
I think immediately whenI said those four letters,
probably about 10% of you listenersjust pushed stop on the podcast,
and you're no longer listening. SoI don't know why I'm talking to you.
I've noticed in tryingto talk about and be open
about this diagnosis of what isactually a neurodevelopmental
(02:57):
disorder that [people] shutdown when I talk about it
and they say, oh, Sarah,
everybody has ADHD or ADHD isn't real,
or ADHD is all in your head, which...
technically it scientificallyit is -- it's in my brain.
It's basically a lack of dopamine,
(03:18):
which causes all sortsof different behaviors.
I found that when I told people, Hey,
I just got diagnosed with ADHD andit's explaining a lot about me,
I felt myself getting a littlebit defensive because the, quote,
"symptoms" of ADHD (I don't knowwhy I put quotes around that) --
(03:39):
the symptoms of ADHD are typicallythings that are not accepted
by normal society.
They are in fact thingsthat we see as lazy,
lacking in discipline.Overindulgent. Growing up,
if it was hard for me topay attention in class,
it was because I was lazy orbecause I was too easily distracted
(04:03):
or because I wasn't interestedenough or because I was a bad
student -- and honestly, I wasn'ta bad student. I got good grades.
I graduated summa cumlaude from high school.
I graduated cum laude from college,and I think I did pretty okay.
I know things. I learned stuff in school.
I just did it at my own paceor I did it through extreme
(04:25):
procrastination, which again,
can be easily interpreted as lazy.
And lazy is so oftenseen as a moral failing.
So in part, I feel like by saying, "Hey,
I have an ADHD diagnosis,"what I'm saying is,
"Here's my heart.
I'm opening it up to you and you cantell me whether or not you think I'm a
(04:49):
moral failure." I mean, I hope youdon't think I'm a moral failure,
but again, that's up toyou and as I've learned,
other people's opinions ofme are none of my business.
The other reaction that I hear is, oh,
you weren't diagnosed as a child, sotherefore you don't really have it.
(05:11):
To that, I say, when I wasgrowing up in the eighties,
people legitimately did notthink that girls could have ADHD
because it presents differentlyin male and female children,
and male and female adults.Growing up, we said, oh,
that kid is ADHD,
because it was usually a boy who sat inthe back of the class who could not sit
(05:32):
still. He was fidgeting into hisseat. He wanted to go out to recess.
He couldn't pay attention.He was disruptive in class.
That was the classic ADHDor ADD diagnosis that I
grew up witnessing.
So when my friend Sean suggested asan adult in what was my mid-thirties,
"Sarah,
have you ever just looked atgetting diagnosed for ADHD?" I
(05:56):
said, no. Why would I do that?
I'm not a boy sitting in the back ofclass having trouble sitting still,
fidgeting, thinking about football,jumping out the window and whatever.
I don't have ADHD.
And then I started readingabout the symptoms and how they present themselves in
girls and in women.
(06:18):
(I promise this whole podcast episodeis not going to be about ADHD.
This is simply something that I wantedto explore as we dive into today's
topic.) Finally, in my very late thirties,
after doing a little bit of researchand seeing some things that I struggled
with on a daily basis reflectedin ADHD symptom listings,
(06:42):
I went in and I sat downfor an ADHD assessment,
which for me took about two hours.
And what it does is it looks at notonly what you're dealing with in
the present, but also historicallythrough your childhood,
what you and other peoplewitnessed as specific behaviors.
(07:03):
And for this segment of the assessment,
I actually was able to digup some notes from teachers.
My mom generally throwsaway pretty much everything,
but she did keep a file
for me and each of my siblingsthat contained, I guess,
important school documents. And so Iwas able to go through this folder,
(07:25):
and I found documentationand it was a little bit
surreal.
One teacher wrote specificallythat I had issues --
I struggled with moving between tasks,
so moving from science to math,
moving from gym class to geography.
(07:46):
Another noticed that Ipreferred to read books under my
desk instead of payingattention to the lesson.
Another noted that I seemed spacey,
that I had trouble understandingthe segments of the day,
that if maybe I procrastinated less,I could live up to my true potential.
(08:06):
I forgot things constantly. I leftthings at school. I left things at home.
I forgot about projects entirely.
I won't go through thewhole list with you here,
but I was very quicklydiagnosed as an adult with ADHD
and more than anything else,
certain behaviors that I struggledwith began to make sense,
(08:28):
and once they began to make sense,once I could identify and label them,
I was able to not cure them,
not become a "better new person",
but I was able to start dealingwith them more intentionally.
And as I began to deal with someof these things more intentionally,
I noticed that a lot of my Write NowPodcast episodes dealt with what I
(08:49):
now understood to be ADHD issues:
procrastination, motivation,
getting lost in a hyperfocus,obsessing about strange,
random little things,
an inability to stay focused even whenI deeply cared about the project I was
working on.
(09:09):
And so I stopped podcasting for a littlewhile because I was really in my own
head about -- this whole time,
have I not been podcasting aboutwriting so much as podcasting about
having ADHD and not knowing it?
Is my show actually helpful? Is myshow actually even about writing?
(09:31):
Today was really the first day thatI sat down and journaled my thoughts
about all of this, and Irealized, you know what?
A lot of people strugglewith focus and distraction.
A lot of people struggle withprocrastination. In fact,
everybody probably does. It'snot just people who have ADHD.
(09:53):
Everybody struggles with these things.
So maybe these episodes arehelpful to writers regardless.
So I am not a special snowflake. Iam not unique in these struggles.
At least I don't think I am,
and I'm not sure if that'sgood news or bad news,
but we're just going to take it and moveforward. So... you sit down to write,
(10:18):
and 30 minutes later you realizeyou still haven't started writing.
In fact, you're not eventhinking about writing.
You're not even looking at the page.
You're scrolling on your phone oryou're looking out of the window,
or maybe you're looking at the page, butyou're not thinking about your story.
You're thinking aboutTHING -- insert THING here,
(10:41):
whatever that may be,
that THING that is not the project thatyou currently want to be working on.
You are distracted.
I feel like distraction looksdifferent for everybody.
Some people can't sit still.
Some people just find they'rehaving trouble focusing.
Some people realize their brainis jumping all over the place.
(11:04):
Some people feel an intense pressure tobe doing literally anything else other
than sitting down and writing.
Some people find themselves respondingto emails without even realizing they've
opened up their web browser. Somy first question for you is,
when you're distracted,
how long does it take before yourealize that you are distracted,
(11:27):
and what does that tendto look like for you?
I realized that a lot of the time,I didn't even know I was distracted
or having difficulty focusinguntil I was 45 minutes
in and realized I had not written a word,
or I realized that I had been doingsomething that I had not intended to do --
(11:50):
just pure muscle memory.
I opened up my phone and I startedscrolling through social media without
intentionally wanting to do that.
It's easy to get distractedfrom writing. Writing is a big,
massive undertaking.Writing is hard. It is.
It's hard. I know we love todo it, but it also uses energy,
(12:15):
and there are so many other thingsthat can give us a quick fix,
a quick jolt of dopamine. Like, sure,
I could finish writing this scene,
but I could also scroll theinfinite scroll of Instagram.
Both give me dopamine. It's just thatone is passive and one is active;
one is easy and one is hard.And it's not a moral failing,
(12:38):
or a failing of any kind.
If your brain sometimes justwants to scroll through Instagram,
that is okay. We are not machines.
We are not productivity engines.
We cannot be productive 12hours a day, 24 hours a day,
whatever it is we think or weare told that we "should" be.
(12:59):
We get distracted despiteour best intentions.
And like I mentioned earlier,not all distraction is internal.
Not all of it comes from our brains.
Some of you may be familiar withthe sound of screaming children,
or construction work out inyour street, or barking dogs,
(13:21):
or people who constantly need your help.
These are all distractions thatcan break the focus we need to
truly dig into our writing and write.
Then there's the odd time,
and I don't know if this has everhappened to you or if you've ever found
yourself doing this,
but every once in a while Iwill consciously realize that
(13:44):
my brain is searching for distraction.
I'll find myself walking around the housesaying, does this need to be cleaned?
I haven't watered my plants yet this week.
Is there anything else thatshould go into the dishwasher?
I will find myself actively searchingfor tasks that I normally do
(14:05):
not want to do becausemy brain is looking for
distraction from my writing project.So there's a lot going on here.
There are a lot of things thatcan break or intrude upon our
focus, and it's reallyfrustrating in most cases,
at least for me, I've found that there'sstill part of me, despite all this,
(14:28):
that wants to write, even if I findmyself looking for distractions.
There's still a pull toward, oh man, Ishould really be getting some words down.
I should really, reallymake some progress today.
I don't want to be distracted,and it can get really frustrating.
I don't know if you've everread Deep Work by Cal Newport,
(14:48):
but it was one of my favorite books,
and I found that it applied to writing.It applies just to so many things,
but in his book, Deep Work,
Cal Newport talks about ourneed to have a large chunk of
uninterrupted time inwhich we can sit down and
generate and furtherdevelop big ideas. Now,
(15:12):
I totally agree with this.
It takes me a long time toreally get into my work.
It takes me a good 20 - 30 minutesto sort of get my brain back
into a project first thing in themorning. It makes sense that yes,
if you have hundreds or thousandsof dollars to rent a seaside cabin
(15:32):
where you won't be disturbed at all,
where you can work on a bookor a project for uninterrupted
weeks at a time, yeah, that'sgreat for your writing.
But the thing is,
long stretches of uninterruptedtime aren't really available for
everyone -- parents, I'm looking at you,
(15:52):
but I'm also looking at anyoneelse who has daily responsibilities
or a difficult scheduleor trouble sleeping,
people who are maybe strugglingwith their relationships,
people whose work lifeis chaotic. Growing up,
my dad was a pastor,
and he had the opportunity to dosomething called a sabbatical,
(16:15):
which meant time away from his work sothat he could have that deep focus on
something. I was really sad whenI found out as an adult that,
if you are working ata typical office job,
so if you're in marketing like I was,
you don't really get a sabbatical.At least here in the United States.
(16:36):
You don't really ever get more thana couple of days off at a time,
and those days off are usually filledwith all the things that you can't usually
do during the work week.
So what we really need to learn howto do is work within the restrictions
that we're given. Everybody hasrestrictions: time restrictions,
(16:56):
health restrictions, focus restrictions.
Everybody is working with-slash-against
something.
Maybe you don't have eight hoursa day to set aside for writing,
but maybe you do have two hours in themorning before anyone else in the house
wakes up, or an hourafter everyone is in bed,
(17:18):
or 45 minutes over yourlunch break each day.
It's really difficult to rememberwhen we look at our lack of
giant eight-hour swaths oftime that the little steps can
still add up.
Even writing a hundred words a day couldget you a short novella by the end of
the year. So don't despair,
(17:40):
because life will never liveup to what we want it to be.
So once you've identified whatdistraction looks like for you,
and it could be (and probablywill be) multiple things,
write them down, make alist, acknowledge them.
I know I'm not a therapist or a mentalhealth professional or anything like
(18:03):
that, but I have found that atleast for me, this was helpful.
Some of the items on your listare things that we can work on.
Some of the things on your list are just
life. Some things are within your control,
and probably many, many morethings are outside of your control.
(18:25):
I remember, years ago,
I was trying to focus on a project andit had some kind of crazy deadline that I
was working against,
and my neighbor startedcutting down a tree.
And it was so loud,
it was shaking the windows.
And I remember I wasnear tears and I said,
(18:46):
I cannot work with this.
And I remember I was near tearsbecause of that helpless feeling.
I couldn't work, and I couldn't doanything about it. I couldn't say, hi,
can you please stopcutting down this tree?
So look at your list and identifywhat things are in your control
(19:06):
and what things aren't.
This can be simultaneouslydeeply frustrating,
but also a kind of liberating exercise.
Once we realize that not everythingin our world is within our control,
we can stop blaming ourselves so much.
We can relieve ourselves of atleast some of that pressure.
(19:30):
I have to be with the kids when they gethome from school from 3:30 until they
go to bed at 8:30 PM,
and so there's no use feeling guiltyduring those hours for not writing.
And there's freedom tojust be with the kids.
If you get migrainesor disease flareups or
any sort of pain -- painis very distracting,
(19:53):
and usually outside of our control. Now,
if there is something you cando to cut down on the pain,
then I definitelyencourage you to do that.
But if you can't write because youare in pain, don't blame yourself.
It's not your fault.
No one expects you to write andto produce good creative work
(20:16):
when your body is rebelling against you.
But there are many types ofdistraction that are within our
control,
and that's what I want to spend therest of this episode talking about --
is what do we do with this?What do we do about it?
(Side note,
I just had to pause this recording becausea whole bunch of airplanes just went
(20:36):
over my house. So...distractions that we can't help.
Okay,
back to distractions that we do maybehave some degree of control over.)
For me,
it has been helpful to understand whatit feels like to be distracted when
I'm distracted, and whatcauses me to become distracted.
So writing down that list earlierwas a helpful step for me.
(21:00):
So then you can identify-- and again, in my case,
it has been most helpful totake preventative measures.
One of the easiest steps that I sortof trained myself to do was to put my
phone on do not disturb (orfocus mode as it's often now
called I think in some operating systems),
or turn the phone offaltogether. Now if you have kids,
(21:24):
if you have people who might need toget in touch with you in an emergency,
you might not be comfortableturning off your phone.
I am not comfortable turning off myphone because I want to know if something
happens to a loved one,
so I'll use focus or do notdisturb mode while I'm writing.
There are also programs that-- if you find yourself,
and a lot of the times it's justhabit, it's just muscle memory.
(21:47):
If you find yourself reaching towardyour phone or if you look down and
realize you are holding your phone inyour hand and you are scrolling through
Instagram and you have noidea how that happened,
there are also preventativemeasures that you can take.
There are a lot of focus apps thatwill essentially brick your phone for a
certain amount of time. I use Flora,
(22:10):
which it lets you grow a little treeand if you use your phone for anything
during the set amount of focustime, you kill the little tree,
and it's very sad and distressing.And so the stakes are low,
but it still helps me to not use my phone.
Another thing that I havefound is helpful is for me --
(22:31):
sound is extremely distracting,
and so I invested in a pair ofnoise canceling headphones...
and usually that isnot even enough for me.
My brain is like a magnet for distraction,
and it's a magnet for soundsespecially. It searches out,
it's got a radar that's looking for soundsto distract me and pull me out of my
(22:53):
writing. So even with thenoise canceling headphones on,
I also have to run an app thathas constant white noise or
rain noises to really justfully drown everything
out for me. That hasbeen extremely helpful,
and I encourage you to experimentwith white noise, with ambient noise,
(23:13):
with rain noises, with lyric-free music --
that sounds weird... music withoutlyrics -- if that's helpful to you,
so that you can give yourself a betterchance at maintaining your focus when you
need to. I also have theability to shut the door.
I used to work out at the diningroom table in our house, which...
(23:34):
I loved working out there because therewere windows and I could snuggle with
Cyrus (my cat) while I wrote,
but I realized that there wasno door that I could shut.
And sometimes a shut dooris a very useful tool
in keeping yourself frombeing distracted when,
if you have other people in the house,
(23:55):
keeping other people maybe gentlyoutside of your writing space,
visibly closing off any distractionsof people or pets walking by,
or maybe even keepingpets out. I love animals.
I love our pets,
but I often need to gently removethem from my writing space and
(24:16):
keep them out so that I can focus.
You may also find sometimes that you aredistracted because you are too tired to
focus. Maybe you aremissing out on some sleep,
maybe you are burned out.
Maybe you have a lot going on inlife and you are emotionally drained.
There are a lot of differentthings, believe it or not,
(24:37):
in this world that willmake you extremely tired.
And sometimes it comesdown to the choice of:
do I need to push myself to focus more,
or do I need to let my brain rest?
Do I simply need to set a timerfor 25 minutes and to take a
nap?
(24:57):
A lot of this you don't know untilyou experiment with it a little bit.
That's something that I havefound for me personally.
I know for a lot of people,
a quick power nap will help restoretheir energy and refresh their focus.
For me, if I take a nap, no matter ifI set an alarm or a number of alarms,
I will be out for the next three tofour hours. I am, for whatever reason,
(25:21):
incapable of taking ashort nap. And so for me,
naps are simply not on the menu.
But if you find this is something thatworks for you and does help restore and
refresh your focus, I encourageyou to give it a try. Similarly,
I often find myself feeling jittery and
(25:41):
restless,
and my body is twitching andI'm moving my shoulders and I'm
swaying back and forth in my seat,and I realize I need to go for a walk.
And so I will go. We live on agraveyard as many of you know,
and one lap around the graveyardis, very fortunately, one mile.
So I will go out and I will doone lap around the graveyard.
(26:03):
So about 15 to 20 minutes isa mile (because I'm a slow
walker),
and usually that and then maybeanother smaller lap or another
full lap will be enough so that I'velet my body get its restless energy out,
and then I can come insideand I can finally focus. Plus,
(26:24):
if I've been sitting in the chair andstaring at my screen or my page and trying
to force myself to focus,
a change of scenery really andtruly can help restore your focus.
It can refresh your mind. I knowfor me, even just looking at trees,
as silly as that sounds,
going outside and looking at treesis often enough to refresh me.
(26:46):
And after a 20 minute walk, Ican come back in and I can write.
If you find you are distractedbecause you have a list of
to-dos and "shoulds" burningin your mind or burning on a
list right next to you, it'stime for another decision.
Do you want to knock out one or two ormore of the tasks on that list and get
(27:09):
them over with so that you can focus,
or have you set aside this timeto focus and you need to get that
list out of sight and know that whenyour writing time is over in 30 minutes,
in an hour, whenever it is,
know that you will get to thosetasks at that time and not before?
This is kind of a hard boundary to setwith yourself and it's something that I
(27:32):
very much struggle with.
It's very hard for me to focus when Iknow that there's dishes getting crusty in
the sink or, darn it, I have anappointment in 30 minutes, aaah,
I've got to get ready for it,
even though it won't take me 30minutes to get ready for it, et cetera.
So do you do one or two ofthe items on the to-do list?
Will that alleviate the pressureand allow you to focus? Again,
(27:55):
this is probably not something that youwill know and understand right away.
You might have to experiment andafter a few days say, you know what?
I've noticed that when I go to my to-dolist, I just stay on the to-do list.
I never come back to my writing.That does not work for me.
I need to save my to-do listfor after my writing session,
and I need to put my to-do list in aplace where it cannot weigh on my soul,
(28:20):
where it cannot judge me from afar.I need to get it out of sight,
out of mind. So again,whatever works best for you --
I encourage you to experiment and findout how you can be least distracted,
if this is something thatyou struggle with. Now,
what do you do when yourbrain is distracting itself? I don't know about you,
(28:40):
but my brain will oftenfixate or lock onto something,
and I try to redirect it back to mywriting project and it's like, no,
Sarah, you need to research19th century alchemical
practices right now.And when that happens,
my brain becomes a sort of runaway train
(29:04):
chugging single-mindedlytoward that weird offshoot --
not what I want to be working on,
but something that it isfixated on for whatever reason.
The good news is that, if you dostay on that particular train track,
often at least I've discoveredthat the things my brain decides it
wants to research randomly willactually end up having a place in the
(29:28):
story that I'm writing,the story that I'm telling.
So often I do relieve the itch to
research something,
but I have to remain very awareof the time that I'm giving it.
I don't want to go down a Wikipediarabbit hole for four hours and
not get any writing done.
(29:48):
And sometimes your brain's going todo what your brain's going to do,
and sometimes even though it's your brain,
sometimes it's not 100% within yoursphere of control, which... again,
very frustrating, but also part of life.
I have not even begun toscratch the surface, probably,
with the plentiful things inthis world that can distract
(30:11):
us from our writing, that can takeaway from our focus on our work.
But I hope that in this discussionI've given you a couple things.
First,
the ability to name and labeland identify and understand
what it is that distracts your focus,
what it is that distracts you from thework that you feel you are called to
(30:34):
do. What is taking thataway from you? B...
or two... I guess we didn't reallynumber or letter the first one,
so I'll just say -- I also...
I hope that you take a look at that
list and really understandwhich of these are within my
control.
(30:55):
I cannot stop the city from workingon the pipes outside of my house --
I mean, not without taking some verydrastic and possibly illegal measures.
I can't keep my neighborfrom cutting down that tree.
I can't control that there are peoplein my life that need help right now.
And when you come across theseinevitable frustrating things,
(31:16):
I hope you take a moment torealize this is not in my control.
This is not a failure of me towrite. This is not a moral failing.
And I hope that you giveyourself some grace,
and give the people and loved ones (andmaybe less-than loved ones) in your life
some grace and forgiveness.
(31:39):
And for the things thatyou can control or at least
influence,
I encourage you to take thoseoften preventative steps.
If you know you have a tendency toscroll through social media and lose two
hours of your day, put your phoneon airplane mode, turn it off,
put it out of reach, put it in focus mode.
(32:00):
Understand that that'sa distraction for you,
and start building the habitaround doing something about it.
Shut your door. Unwire your doorbell,
soundproof your windows. Kindly askyour neighbor to turn their radio down.
Take a walk, take a shower, take a nap.
(32:21):
Take care of one of those items on yourto-do list that is burning into your
brain,
or put your to-do list out of sight andout of mind until your writing session
is over. Use your noisecanceling headphones.
Use that Spotify subscription.Use a white noise machine.
Use the time in your life,in your living space,
(32:43):
when no one else can interruptyou. But most of all, remember:
we're not robots and our brainsare not bug-free computers.
They simply are not.
And we will face distraction andlack of focus from time to time.
Build habits for the thingsthat are within your control.
(33:04):
Take care of the thingsthat you can influence,
and give yourself grace forthe things that you can't.
Thank you so much for listening tothis episode of the Write Now podcast.
Special thanks go to the people whosupport me via Patreon and other
platforms, especially: Laurie, Regina Calabrese, (33:20):
undefined
Amber Fratesi, CharmaineFerreira, Kim, Mike Teftt,
Poppy Brown, Summer, TiffanyJoyner, and Whitney McGruder.
Seriously, thank you so much foryour financial contributions.
(33:41):
You helped me keep this show hostedand ad free, and I truly appreciate it.
If you would like to support the show,
there is a link in the show notesfor this episode where you can do so.
If you want to use Patreon, you can.If you want to use something else,
I do have other options. So yeah,see what works best for you.
(34:02):
If you want to give $1 per episode, ifyou want to give $2 per episode, or more,
you can totally do that, and I amvery appreciative. So thank you.
And with that,
this has been episode 161of the Write Now Podcast,
the podcast that helps all writers --aspiring, professional, and otherwise --
(34:24):
to find the time, energy,
and courage you need topursue your passion and write.
I'm Sarah Werner, and I'm goingto go try and focus on something.
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