Win the Fight Against Distraction and Meaninglessness

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We live in a time of unprecedented distraction. The average professional receives over 100 emails per day in addition to countless social media and personal phone text messages.

Most of this communication is unnecessary and indulgent. Meanwhile our attention is being pulled into other people’s emotions, impulsivity and personal agendas. At the end of the day or week you might be wondering what all this communication was for and if it brought any value to your life or business personally.

We are becoming increasingly conditioned to this chaotic and thoughtless way of communicating. Unless you consciously push back against this communication culture it will increasingly sap your time, energy and ultimately your personal privacy and dignity.

Today I wanted to share a few strategies to reduce unnecessary communication in your life and expand your personal privacy and dignity.

  • Unsubscribe from any communication that does not bring value to your life, including my emails.
  • End conversations. Today‘s manipulative marketing fad is for sales people and marketers to maintain useless conversations with you in the hopes you will eventually buy something. Respectfully end all conversations that are not important to you. Do not keep these conversations going.
  • Only use social media consciously. Do not go on social media unconsciously. Identify any need or intention you have prior to scrolling to see if you can actually get that need met in a more human or mature way or you will at least know why you are scrolling so you can take more control of your behavior and direct it.
  • Turn off your phone, often.  For most people there is no need for your phone to be on all the time. Most messages are not urgent. Turn your phone off for extended periods of time and focus on yourself and what is important to you beyond all this unnecessary communication.
  • Challenge norms. You don’t have to communicate how other people are communicating. Invite people into your own communication preferences. For example, if you don’t want to have a conversation over text message don’t do it and offer another way aligned with your preferences.

I hope these tips can help you defend against the unhealthy and neurotic communication norms of our time.

Have a great week,

William