Do you know that scene in the Disney Pixar movie UP where Doug, the talking dog, suddenly gets distracted by a squirrel? That’s become short-hand in our house anytime someone loses their train of thought, or forgets what they’re doing. But I’ve noticed that my brain is “Squirreling” any time I begin a task these days. In fact, it happened when I sat down to write this post. I opened a blank page and suddenly picked up my phone and scrolled Facebook for a couple minutes before I realized what had happened. What’s up with that?
I will start by saying I’m not really a lover of social media, especially Facebook. I pretty much stayed off it for three years until recently, when I’ve started using it more as part of my business. I do use Instagram because I curated my feed to be positive and beautiful, so generally, I feel happy after scrolling. But over the past six months or so, I have noticed that I scroll social media more than I ever did before...and I’ve spotted a pattern.
My brain squirrels and I start scrolling when I am about to do something that feels stressful, whether it’s related to my business or my home. I’ve caught myself scrolling while sitting in my car in the garage, stalling to go into the house because I have work I’m dreading or the kitchen is a mess. The problem is that this mindless scrolling is taking time away from me. It makes me late for meetings, puts me behind in my work, and actually increases the stress that it’s trying to distract me from. Frankly, it’s not a positive action that produces useful results.
I got curious about this tendency of mine. It happens so automatically sometimes that I hardly notice I’m doing it, and I have to audibly remind myself to stop (yes, I talk to myself. Who better to talk ‘sense’ to me than me?). So why am I getting distracted, and how do I reduce or stop this tendency?
Get curious and start noticing
Noticing that I was doing it was an important first step because after all, I can’t change something I'm not aware of. Seeing the pattern was also an important step because it offered me a starting point to understand what was causing the behaviour: I’m scrolling because I’m feeling stress and/or anxiety about something I’m about to do, and the scrolling is the action my brain takes to distract me from these feelings because this distraction releases dopamine, intended to make me feel safe.
But here’s the thing: it’s easy to think that scrolling is the problem. It’s not. The scrolling is the action I take in response to a feeling I have. To address the problem, I first have to understand why I’m having the feeling in the first place, and this involves understanding the thoughts that trigger my feelings of anxiety in relation to some circumstance. This part is trickier because there may be different circumstances and I may have several thoughts (my mind can be a scary place).
Going back to my pattern, the circumstances I was avoiding when I found myself scrolling fell into two categories: either I was doing something I’d never done before or felt uncertain doing, or doing something I dreaded or felt very uninspired to do. The circumstances themselves are neutral--clean the kitchen, grade papers, create a promotion. It was the way I was thinking about these things that caused my anxiety. Thoughts like “I hate housework” “Why doesn’t anyone else help?” “Grading is so tedious.” “I’d rather spend my time reading” “I have no idea what I’m doing.” “What if this doesn’t work.”
It was really useful to understand why my social media seems so fascinating sometimes because awareness is the first step towards change. And when I became aware of this, I let it soak in for a while, which deepened my awareness but I was still scrolling...and that was okay. It’s a process. But losing the time was starting to be more problematic than the stress that the scrolling was attempting to avoid, so it was time to do something about it.
Break the pattern down
I’d love to say that I resolutely decided never to scroll mindlessly again, but you have only to read the first paragraph of this post to realize that I’d be lying. Our brains and millenia of evolutionary conditioning are powerful things, and while there are those among us that can seemingly flick a switch on behaviour they want to change, for most of us it is more of a process. Here's the process I took to work reduce the distraction.
Break it down to find the pattern:
- What action are you taking (eg. scrolling)?
- What is the result (eg. lost time)?
- What feeling is spurring the action?
- What thoughts are producing the feeling?
- What is the event or circumstance that is triggering the thoughts?
- What could you do or think instead to break the cycle?
I started making an effort to notice when I was getting distracted. At first, I was scrolling for a while before realizing it and stopping. But that's okay. I congratulated myself for noticing and stopping. The more I increased my awareness, the shorter the gap between distraction and stopping. Eventually, I was able to catch it right when it started --I was reaching for my phone--so I stopped it before it began. Some days I fell back, and that was okay. I cut myself some slack and just kept trying.
Even though I nipped the distraction in the bud by increasing my awareness, I still needed to deal with the feelings driving the distraction. This is where self-compassion and thought work came into play.
Self-compassion was critical in first acknowledging and naming what I was feeling. I identified that I was feeling anxious and stressed. Next, I acknowledged that my feelings were normal and human--doing new, challenging things can be hard and can spur thoughts like I don’t know what I’m doing, or I might fail. Likewise, doing things that I think are uninspiring can also be hard and joyless. That’s normal, and I’m not alone in feeling this way and having these thoughts in these situations just means I’m human.
I began noticing the thoughts running in the background--usually unhelpful ones like I note above--and choosing instead how to think about a situation differently so I could feel better, take positive action, and get better results. I’m not talking affirmations here. Choosing the thought “I love grading”, for example, would never work because I won’t believe it. If I don’t buy into the thought, it doesn’t matter how often I say it; it’s not something I will ever adopt. Instead, I choose a thought like, “I can do hard things” or “Feedback helps my students learn”. Whatever I choose, the feeling it produces should be neutral or better than the anxiety I felt before. Then I practice the thought consciously, especially when I find I’m about to scroll or once I catch myself scrolling.
For me, this is what it looks like in practice: I sit down to grade and I become aware that I’ve just picked up my phone (I rarely scroll on my computer). I tell myself, “No, I’m going to focus on grading right now because the students need the feedback for their next assignment.” I place my phone down further away or with “do not disturb” on, and turn back to my computer and begin. If I get distracted again, I repeat the process. It’s a negotiation, a dance, between my brain and me, and that’s okay.
Becoming aware is the first step to change. Being self-compassionate, taking small, consistent action, and thinking about the circumstance differently can help you shift your pattern to produce better results.
Let me know in the comments what distracts you most these days and how you’re managing it. If you try breaking it down, let me know how it goes or if you need any help. Make sure to subscribe to receive the latest articles and gems first!