S3 E12: How to Support Your Focus by Filtering Out the Noise
If you’re feeling scattered lately with everything going on, here are many ways to support yourself, so that you have energy and focus to direct toward what really matters in your life and creative work. This is a menu, not a checklist - never underestimate the power of small changes!
RESOURCES DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
Self-Control app (for Mac) + PC alternatives
One Tab extension for Chrome
My post on the Digital Munchies
Mental Clarity oil from Pranarom
Balancing Spring Energy PDF in my Free Resource Library
TRANSCRIPT
Hello everyone. How are you all doing? I hope you're hanging in there in this unprecedented year. Are you tired of hearing “unprecedented times” yet? I definitely am, but it's still true, since there's so much going on. You know, the eighth month of a pandemic, the election coming up here in the U.S., whatever else is going on in your life, which is already probably a lot! I've been hearing from a lot of people that they're feeling very scattered lately, and even more so, trying to pay attention to politics, and trying not to pay attention to politics, perhaps, to an extent.
So, today I'm going to give you a bunch of helpful tips on ways that you can support yourself and turn down the noise so that it is easier to focus on what really matters to you - what matters in your life, what matters in your creative work, the important stuff. I'm about to mention a lot of different tips, but I definitely don't want you to feel like you have to do all of them. Just pick one, pick a couple, pick whatever feels good. I'm just hoping that at least one of them will resonate with you, and that maybe you can try that, to just eliminate some of the noise.
It's always a menu, it's never a checklist - just want to get that out there at the beginning. So the obvious thing that you might think of is to eliminate distractions, and there are so many different types of distractions, right?
But there are a few things you can do that are device-related that are kind of a no-brainer thing. Once you put them into practice, if you have a lot of notifications on your phone, you can turn some of them off. I only have a few. I have texts, I have Facebook Messenger, I have air quality and earthquake ones, because those are things that come up for me here in California. But really there are not a lot of things that make my phone buzz, or even make something come up on the screen, and that is because I don't feel like I need them, especially social media.
I haven't had any notifications for social media on my phone in years and I don't miss it. It would just really stress me out if I did. You might want that, that's totally cool, but if it stresses you out, you can turn a lot of stuff off. Just try it for a week and see how it goes. You can also turn off that little red badge number, like on your email or whatever app that tells you how many unread things you have. And like, doesn't that number just kind of stare you in the face and stress you out? It definitely does for me. So I turned it off for pretty much everything.
Also, if you're on your computer, you can block social media or whatever websites are distracting to you with the Self Control app, which is awesome. I think that one's just for Mac. I really need to look up a PC equivalent, but if you Google SelfControl app PC, I'm sure you can find something. Hopefully I'll find something and put it in the show notes, but you can blacklist websites that you don't want to look at. You can only whitelist a few that are okay. It's saved me so many times when I'd get that twitch to just open another tab. “I'm just going to peek for five minutes, no problem.” And of course, like it's never five minutes, right?
I also want to credit “the twitch” to Anthony Ongaro who has the website Break the Twitch. I got that term from him - that twitch to do the habitual kind of mindless thing. I'll link to his website. He writes a lot of great stuff.
Going back to the web browser, I just learned about the One Tab extension for Chrome that just saves all your tabs in a list so that you don't have a million of them open because, okay, be honest. How many do you have open right now? I have 31 in many different windows, many of which are minimized, but yeah, it's out of control sometimes. I just feel like I need the mental space of only looking at one thing at a time, and that makes a huge, huge difference.
You can also close your email. I always leave it open in a tab just in case, but it's like, I don't really need to do that. I just kind of look back to it, and distract myself when I don't really need to. Things that are emergencies, for most of us, aren't going to arrive by email. You can set certain times when you want to check your email and really be intentional about that.
Then you can even just step away from the computer entirely. I know when I'm writing things, I do like to type into a document because it's a lot faster than writing on paper for me. But when it comes to editing, printing that out to edit is so helpful, anyway. It's just nice to get me away from a screen for a little bit. Those of you who are visual artists and people who do creative work that involve a screen, you can just do that, and that works really well for me. I get away to practice piano sometimes when I just need a break from a screen.
Sometimes we convince ourselves that we need this screen, but we don't really. You could also go the next step in terms of portable devices, like phones and iPads, you can delete your social media apps entirely while you're working and then redownload them later. Or you can just put them in a different room, or you can give them to someone in your house and say that they can't give them back. You can be as rigorous with that as you need to be.
Just in general, if you think about picking a designated work time when you're less tired, it can just be easier to focus, too. Iif you feel like you're always tired, that's probably a sign that you need more rest or more frequent breaks, or just more replenishment. I won't get into that in this show, but I always encourage that. As you know, if you've listened to this before, just getting a little change of scenery for work is great, but the more that you can monotask rather than multitask, the better it's going to be.
I have a really hard time with this, too. I always want to be listening to something, or just doing too many things at once, even when my brain says, “No, don't do that. This is too much.” Sometimes I don't want the extra sound of listening to music while I'm working. I get a strong “no” from my intuition and I'm like, “Hmm, okay. I guess I'll turn that off.” And then I feel better. So, just paying attention to when you get those little messages, that's very helpful, too.
Going back to taking breaks, you can be strategic about how you take breaks too. I was saying you can go to screen free work, like practicing piano, or whatever it is for you, but you might just take a break to do one of those mundane things. I'm saying this as a person who's working from home and knowing a lot of us are right now. I know this isn't everybody, but you could go take a break to do the dishes when you just need a mental break, because you gotta do the dishes anyway. Or sometimes I save taking a shower for that point in the morning when I kind of hit the wall mentally, sometimes take a break and go pet Rusty the cat, my relaxation mentor, or brush him, because he's very fuzzy these days.
You can go take a walk for like five minutes and that'll really reset your brain nicely. Take just a five minute break to stare at the wall, even, or meditate, if that's something you do. If that seems like too much, really just taking a moment of quiet can make all the difference.
I talked a lot about social media a minute ago, but being more intentional about the actual boundaries you're setting around it is huge right now. I’ve been taking weekends off from social media, and my weekend now is midday Saturday to midday Monday, because of different rehearsal schedules that I have. I have done that entire time, and I have done just Sundays - even just having one day where I don't look at social media and news has been so refreshing. I feel like my brain is just kind of fried, as a sensitive person.
It's so easy to get what I call the “Digital Munchies”, where you just want to click on the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing. It's because you're already kind of in this anxious state that you want to do more of it, and it's just this loop that you get stuck in. It's very tempting, and it happens, and you can break this cycle, luckily. It happens to all of us at one time or another, I think.
So, just pay attention to how you feel while you're opening the next browser tab, or while you're scrolling through that article. Is something happening in your body? Are you clenching up? Are you holding your breath? Are you noticing symptoms of stress in your body at those moments? That might be your trigger to go, “Okay, I'm going to take a break. I'm going to close this window. That's enough.” I've been setting a timer sometimes when I open Facebook or Twitter, especially because there's so much political stuff, and I feel like I can only handle so much of it.
My friend, Susan Shehata just wrote a blog post about emotional energy pollution, which I'll link to in the show notes, and how it happens unconsciously, that we are soaking up other people's energy. It could be someone in your life who needs to share something negative that happened to them. Or it can just be like scrolling through the news and being like, “Wow, the world is terrible. I can't believe it.” And you don't even realize that this is building up in the background until all of a sudden it's like, “Whoa, this is too much.” She has so many articles that are helpful about how we're processing these times right now from a trauma oriented perspective, and from the perspective of just knowing our core stories about things and how they affect how we experience the world. Super great information, I'll link to that. And she is going to be on the podcast too in the future, so definitely look forward to that.
If you like getting scientific about this stuff, you can set a timer, and see how long it takes you to get overloaded, too, which is going to vary depending on what you're reading, or what you're looking at. But maybe they'll just give you an idea of, “Okay, what should my limit on this be?” You can experiment with setting more concrete limits or when you know you feel tired generally. Like, in the evening, I know that I feel darker as it is darker outside, so I have mostly stopped using social media after it gets dark, because that's when I know I'm just going to doomscroll, and it's not going to help me, and it's going to make me anxious. It's just not helpful.
Hopefully we can contact people more directly. I know I'm always resolving to do that. As an introvert, it's sometimes hard to put it into practice, but that might be a cool side effect of setting more limits. Because, when we're on social media, we feel like we're connecting with people, but either we're not actually connecting with them, or we're just connecting with them through a little heart, and, you know, it's not as meaningful as actually texting your friend and being like, “Hey, how are you doing?” That's going to give you much better energy than the endless scroll.
Speaking of energy, paying attention to your energy is my next topic that could be in terms of physical needs. There are simple things like staying hydrated that make a huge difference in your mental clarity and your mood and your focus.
Sometimes food: I don't realize I'm hungry because I'm just involved in something, and, you know, the brain fog sets in, you realize everything is taking you too long. If you just got up to get that snack, you would suddenly be able to think more clearly. That happens to me a lot. Our brains need glucose, so we can give it to our brains.
Getting a little bit of exercise can go a long way, too, in the amount of focus that you have. I've referenced this study before, and I don't know where I found it, but I read that even seven minutes of exercise showed very different brain scans, in terms of how much of the brain was lighting up with activity. So you don't think you have time for a walk, but you probably have time for a seven minute walk or a five minute dance break, or even just standing up can make a huge difference.
If you've been sitting for so long, there are ways that you can invigorate your senses to increase focus. I really like using essential oils that are invigorating, like citrus smells. I really like this Mental Clarity oil from Pranarom. It has grapefruit, and rosemary, and peppermint, and all these things that just make my brain feel more alive. You might have different scents that make you feel more invigorated, or if you're feeling very scattered, anxious energy, both moving your body and sensory stuff are going to be really good for that. You might want a more grounding scent.
You might just want to pay attention to your senses, like feeling your feet on the floor, giving yourself a neck massage, or some kind of soothing touch. If you have access to acupuncture - I know we don't all have that these days or necessarily ever - but you can tap pressure points.
So, just taking a second to know where your energy level is, and whether you need more of that calming grounding or more of that boosting energy, and you can act accordingly. I have a bunch more suggestions for that scattered frantic energy in this PDF that I call Balancing Spring Energy. It's really good for any time. You can think of spring as more metaphorical, like when everything is springing up and becoming active, that happens to us in all seasons. I have that PDF in my resource library for free, which I will link to as well. There's lots of fun, helpful stuff in there.
Then, in terms of energy, also, you can think about, what's weighing you down energetically, like, people do cord cutting, where they envision cords attached to the things that are weighing them down. Then you imagine some kind of, either like, scissors, or some people like a sword or whatever, cutting implement actually physically cutting those cords away. So you’re no longer attached to the things that are stressing you out. If that sounds kind of out there, it's surprisingly helpful, if you can get your mind in the right spot.
So, bottom line, make sure you're being nice to yourself, have self-compassion. It's definitely normal to have a hard time focusing at a time like this. It's normal to have a hard time focusing normally. And that's never a reason to beat yourself up, of course, but like during a hard time focusing, being motivated, having a lot of energy, maybe those are things that aren't going to come as easily, and that's okay.
It might be hard to accept, but it doesn't mean that you're doing a bad job, and it doesn't mean that anything is wrong with you. So maybe you just need to do a little bit less ,or expect a little bit less, and that's a more realistic expectation. That's totally okay. It is much easier to stay focused while you're feeling more replenished too. So, the more that you push yourself beyond your limits, the harder it's going to be to regain that focus.
If you're wondering, how do I even do that? Let me know. We can talk about it. I love helping people who are overwhelmed find little ways to boost their energy that they didn't think were possible, or hadn't thought of. Sometimes these little small changes have such a big impact in your life.
So if you're looking for support there, I have a free call, which I'll also link to in the show notes. I'd love to chat with you, and we can figure out some ways to boost your energy as much as possible.
I hope that you got some useful tips out of this. Again, don't feel like you have to do this like a checklist. If any one of these things helps you even 5%, that's awesome. Small changes are great. Small changes are more sustainable. If you're already overwhelmed, you don't need a whole giant list of things that you absolutely must do. Start small. It's great. So I hope that's helpful. I hope you have a great week, and wishing you the best, as always!
Pianist and composer