Focus is my word of the summer

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Welcome to this week’s edition of Sustain – short essays about work and our relationship to it.

Years ago, I became fixated on solving a problem we all feel but are paralyzed to do anything about. Our phone usage.

After reading titles like How to Break Up With Your Phone I started a peer group of people that took the 30-day challenge with me to be more intentional about our phone usage. The goal was to control how we used our phones, not the other way around.

Me and this group were fully in on using our phone as a utility, not a distraction. The 30-day challenge worked.

Feeling strong, I added the highly addictive apps back in feeling confident I’d retrained my mind. First came LinkedIn then Instagram. Slack weaseled its way back on my home screen.

You know where this is going…

As the months turned into years, my phone addiction was as strong as ever. I opened the door a crack and Instagram and friends pushed it wide open.

My free time evaporated. I got distracted during my work day more often meaning I was working longer, less productive hours. And the work culture I was in created implicit pressure to be reachable at any time and always churning something – anything – out. It was a bad recipe that left me feeling overloaded and producing more commodity work than normal.

This brings me to recent feelings similar to the slippery slope that led me into my greatest burnout period. I want to avoid this at all costs, obviously. This is leading me to take some drastic measures.

The titles I’ve read most recently describe where I’m at better than I could. Digital Minimalism and Stolen Focus are providing context and steps for the habits I want to rebuild. The hours of audiobooks I’ve listened to can be distilled down to these two pieces of practical guidance:

1. Make your phone a utility - Since your phone is your third arm it’s easy to have it available at every moment. Stock it full of things that make life easier like banking, maps, reminders, etc and take away the addictive entertainment (usually social media, shopping, etc). This paves the way for more time experiencing, less time scrolling.
2. Create happy mind time - Opening up more time from stolen focus is just the first step. You’ll feel withdrawals if you don’t give your mind hits of pleasure it's craving like TikTok. Your mind wants to do hard things so allow it physical and mental opportunities to stretch. This could be thinking of a cool idea while in the grocery line or a new work project while taking a Friday morning long walk.

The intent is not to promote becoming a hermit or harken back to less connected times. We’re fully here, there’s no going back. But there’s an opportunity to be more curated with distractions – which serves an important place of disconnection and relaxation.

I’m working on creating intentionally designed slots throughout my day.

In the morning, I spend deep and dedicated time to reading the news to understand the context, rather than disconnected social media snippets throughout the day that distract and overwhelm me. I plunge into the news once a day only and I’m just as updated with less of the social media stickiness.

During my work day, I put my phone away, block social media sites, and create more focus time. I have weekly thinking blocks to spend working time on a long walk or bike ride to develop the initial concepts for my role far better than sitting at my computer.

In the evening, I leave time to watch my silly little shows (my love of trashy reality TV runs deep) and catch up briefly on social media (on my iPad). Luckily, the algorithms are great and serve me everything I need to see within 10-20 minutes.

This is all a work in progress so please do reach out and keep me honest!

To tie it back to the purpose of Sustain – my goal with all of this is to do the best work of my career in less time. I want to log in, do great work, then log the heck off.

To do so I need magical mind space to develop ideas. I need to remove distractions so I can jam through my top three tasks of the day. And I need time in the evenings – not for work – but for hobbies and activities that are rejuvenating. All of this hinges on holding focus long enough to make this happen.

Focus is my word of the summer. ☀️

Grant Gurewitz Full-time corporate type and School of Logging Off Founder

Good vibes only ✌️

Working hard or hardly working? Doesn't matter. Step into nature for a brief moment of awe to escape the crazy at work 😵‍💫