professional practice
Cutting through
the Noise
HOW TO RE-FOCUS IN A WORLD DESIGNED TO DISTRACT
By Curt Steinhorst
Everyone knows this smartphone-driven reality we live in has gone a little overboard,
but most of us aren’t up for doing much about it because we like it.
It’s our passion. We’re devout. Think about it – we’re the most conversational
people in the history of the world. But it also feels impossible to disconnect.
Between sunrise and sunset, we now receive and send an average of 215 emails. In the
same span, we collectively post a staggering 2.5 billion pieces of content to Facebook and
tweet 500 million times, which helps explain the approximately 150 interactive sessions
each of us manages to have with our phone before bed. Our entanglement with our devices
is increasing so fast that by the time you finish reading the blurb on your phone that
says Americans now look at their phones once every six minutes, you’ve just helped push
the national average to 5.5.
Thanks to our constant connectivity, the world has never been noisier. There’s too much
coming at us interfering with our tasks and relationships. It’s made it harder, quite frankly,
to do anything and everything well. But what it has undoubtedly impacted most is our capacity
to focus on our most important work in the quiet of our offices. Studies reveal that
we are interrupted every three minutes during work and it takes us 23 minutes on average
to get back to the original task, and more than half of our distractions are completely
self-inflicted.
Attention is one of your most valuable resources, and you can learn to take that resource
back. By intentionally putting a few strategies in place, you can separate yourself from the
competition and enrich your life along the way. You can reclaim your time, energy and focus
and put them towards the things that matter most.
EVERY TIME
YOU ACTIVELY
PUSH AWAY A
DISTRACTION,
YOU ARE
SAPPING
RESOURCES
THAT WILL
REDUCE YOUR
ABILITY TO
EFFECTIVELY
DO IT THE
NEXT TIME.
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