Fallton Havenstonne

Distractions can keep up us from focusing on what we need to do. It can keep us from being productive, creative, and accomplished.

In order to free ourselves from distractions, we must remove the distractions from our space. If that’s not possible, we must be somewhere where there are no distractions. For some people, distractions can be sounds or visuals. For other people, they can be their own thoughts.

Those thoughts can take up mental space, mental energy. They can be about something we want to buy, or an idea that has been pressing on our mind. To free ourselves from these, we need to block them out–focus on the task at hand. We must not give them the emphasis and attention they seek. We need our mind to be on a single track. We need to have tunnel vision.

If you’re a subscriber to a store or a company, you’ll be inundated with emails on their sales and deals. 50% off. 2 for 3. Buy 1 get 1 50% off. All of these are great marketing pitches. You’ll probably even get flyers in the mail with coupons and special (exclusive) deals.

The temptation to buy things is much greater the more you’re exposed to them. Besides, how else are the businesses supposed to make their money without exposure? How else are people supposed to know what sales they have to offer?

But caving into buying into these sales/deals depends on our perspective. Although it can take a great amount of effort to delay buying the things we want, eventually, we’ll end up buying them (sooner or later). But if our perspective is, “I don’t need it,” or “I already have it,” or “It’s a waste of money,” then there is no temptation to buy it. It’s as if the sales and deals went through one ear and out the other.

There are periods in our life where we go through a reset. It’s like when a game doesn’t work on the old Nintendo. We push the reset button to get it to work. In the same way, we hit the reset button philosophical, psychologically–start over and play again.

The reset is like a Copernican revolution of the things we had believed, or the things we had assumed to be true. Maybe we didn’t have it all right.

It can occur after a sudden realization at a random moment, or after going through an unexpected trial. It’s as if God stirred us from our slumber, woke us up, made us realize something that was amiss–something that we had been oblivious to.

When this happens, we start to reassess everything we had believed in. We investigate all the premises, the flaws, the shortcomings, and then start to dismantle the infrastructure. After countless hours of online research, internal reflection, and reading copious amounts of literature and books, we come to an epiphany that we had things wrong–that we didn’t have everything figured out.

There’s always tweaking we have to do with our vision, our life, our philosophical or religious perspective. Just like with writing a book, we have to edit each page, perfect it, get it right. That’s why there’s that saying it’s not about the destination, but the journey.

There is a major difference between time and effort. Time is the duration it takes to complete something, whereas effort is the amount of energy, thinking, or labor that must be invested to complete it.

We can spend a lot of time reading something, or time driving down a road. But both can require little effort if they don’t challenge us, or require us to learn something new.

Thus, it differs from effort in terms of difficulty, challenge. For example, if the book we’re reading contains words that are unfamiliar to us, jargon that is esoteric, or concepts that are new to us, we’ll spend more energy focusing on those things rather than breezing through the pages. Likewise, if the route we’re traveling on is unfamiliar to us and requires us to make abrupt or sudden turns, as in a city, then we’re investing a lot more effort than time to get to our destination.

Although the chapter might be short, as well as the trip, the amount of effort to complete them is much greater. Thus, time and effort are exclusive, though there can be a correlation between them. The correlation exists depending on the learning curve of what we’re trying to do. It also depends on how much (or how many tasks) we’re trying to do as well.

Having more time to work on something seems like it would make things easier. Perhaps it would. Or it might change the final product, or the work may go on indefinitely.

If we had more time to work on something, of course we could perfect it–get it to where we would be happy with it. But would it ever be perfect? Would we not find a minuscule flaw, something that we could fix later on because we didn’t see the flaw before?

Obviously, having more time is necessary if the project isn’t close to completion. If we’re progressing at a slow rate, more time would be needed–adjusted accordingly to the timeline. But more time means higher expectations, since there is more work for us to put in.

There is a window of time when we can function at our best on any given day. Of course, we can function for a long period of time, but then we are working at a less optimal output.

When writing, I can zone out and write really well for so many hours of the day. But at a certain point, the sentences begin to drag on. The writing feels less organic and inspirational, and feels more like I’m wrapping up a chapter. The momentum slows down to a halt, and every bit of effort after that is like climbing up a ladder with a bag of weights.

This window of time can apply to anything. Whether it applies to writing, painting, building, etc., our energy will run low eventually. We need time to rest, eat, or take a step away for a while to reflect on our work. Then we can come back to it again with renewed vigor.