Franti-C-ity
Over the last few years, I’ve realized that I have become an inhabitant of what can only be described as Franti-C-City (fellow fans of The Office will understand the head nod). Over the past few weeks, having paid more attention to this feeling, I’ve identified the following as the biggest reasons leading to the Frantic Feeling.
The Expectation of Instant Gratification: this is a tough one because while the impact is on me, the driver for this is.. most things around us. Deliveries, information, social media responses, credit approval and whatnot. I am learning that part of undoing this habit, is to remove as many ‘temptations’ as possible. This does not mean that I will stop using two-day delivery or don’t love it when I can download something I want to watch instantly. Rather, I want to be able to remember that that is a luxury and not the baseline in life.
Endless Subscriptions: I love a good newsletter, and my interests (like most of us) are varied, and include signing up for discount codes. There is SO much thoughtful content out there; such fun cartoonists and artists; folks who write beautiful reflections on life; informative newsletters and SO MUCH MORE. I can’t keep up and most of us can’t - there is way too much information thrown at us the way our world is set up. I’ve tried using apps such as Unroll Me in the past, but I have a different and simpler approach now. Each time I get an email that irks me mildly or I am tempted to file away to read later (aka: read never), I open it, hit unsubscribe - this has become so simple with the various laws that have compelled organizations to unspool the labyrinth-level challenges to unsubscribe. If this doesn’t work, I block and report spam.
Constant notifications: I realized that notifications had peaked in my life when I was tempted to connect my Fitbit to see emails as they came in. My life is not such that if I don’t see an email during a workout class, something earth-shattering will happen. We all know that the constant notifications are distractions, and distractions have an attention cost. I’ve slowly removed notifications for several apps, and the next step is to also have only the apps I truly need (so maybe not Tetris ha). It has helped. Not seeing every chat or like pop up, has taken some of the pressure off to react and respond.
Overall, all of these along with the other usual suspects, have impacted by ability to focus and do deep work. And I honestly miss the flow of deep work - I still have it but not as much and I would like to bring back more of it into my life. I’ve learned that Flow often precedes Happiness (and that some of Happiness is forgetting yourself to what you are doing).