“One of the simplest and most powerful tools we have as individuals is the ability to pause. Think about it. When you press pause on a machine, it stops. When we pause as humans, we begin. Pausing creates a space where one can see clearly.”
Dov Seidman
Pausing is hard. In our world today, it is much easier to stay stimulated and “feed the distraction machine,” where constant connectivity creates a false perception of doing more but traps us in a perpetual vortex of distraction.
Merely wanting to pause isn’t enough. One must be highly intentional in building the necessary firewalls or circuit breakers to prevent distraction or the constantly running mind; accomplishing this isn’t a matter of pure willpower. In Dr. Benjamin Hardy’s excellent book “Willpower Doesn’t Work,” he speaks to the importance of designing your environment in a manner that enables you to accomplish your goals by default instead of having to constantly invest energy into forcing your mind to stay the course, “Designing your environment is more powerful than relying on willpower, because your environment works on you, day in and day out, without your conscious involvement.”
Admittedly, I haven’t always been good at forcing a pause and giving myself time to recharge and think. It’s a battle where the world tells us that being busy is good and is a normal and even desired state. Don’t believe me? Take count of how many people you come across in your life in the next week who answer the question, “how are you doing?” with the first response out of their mouths being, “busy.” (Here’s another quote and post on the topic)
So, how do you overcome this? How can you give yourself the latitude to think and create space to see clearly? The most obvious answer is to turn off notifications on your devices so that you can focus on the task at hand. (Check out this article for more information)
A potentially more impactful answer is to program your time where you intentionally disconnect, remove distractions, free your mind from the confines of structured thinking, and allow yourself the space necessary to pause. Giving yourself time to take a morning walk without a device (yes, this means walking without earbuds and a podcast/music) could unleash the creativity lying just beneath the surface of the ocean of distraction.
