Focus is Superpower
The digital revolution has brought a new world of cyber zombies who consistently consume the social media readily available at their disposal. Masses have chosen an escape route from reality and living and seeking temporary comfort in front of their digital screens.
Digitization has come about with myriad repercussions. As the lead consumers, the young generation has fallen victim to a virtual world of distraction. They have been prompted into a pathetic notion of believing that they are a 'woke' generation. Get me right.
I am neither condemning nor denigrating the scientific revolution. No! In fact, its use has simplified life. Without it, life would have been a hard plight. Anyhoo, well used; it's phenomenal. Then, why have we chosen to misuse it and lose the bigger picture!
Because most of what is do is not essential. If you can eliminate it you'll have more time, and tranquility. We should suggest to ourselves on every occsassion this question; Is it necessary? ~ Emperor Marcus Aurelius
In some mysterious manner, people have lost their creativity, their mastery, and the general fabric of our society has been destroyed. Everyone has become an addict to distraction and afflicted with interruption. A new pandemic of temptation to distraction and grave digital dementia has infested almost every individual thriving in the era.
Screen addiction has become the number one most pervasive addiction facing our society. Forget about nicotine and methamphetamine! We have lost conscious control of our entrance and exit from the virtual world. Slavery into digital devices and platforms has befallen us. Drowning in such a gargantuan seismic wave of addiction is an inevitability. We cannot look back.
First thing in the morning, after lazily waking up after the sun, is to reach for our devices and check for messages or scroll endlessly on Twitter. This is after a late-night sleep watching our favorite movie or the latest TV show in town. We then get up preparing for work or school while our TV is on, or instead listen to the news at a local FM station to become acquainted with an update on the fatalities of an accident that occurred in the neighborhood the previous evening.
Oh, crap! It never ends there. As we drive to work, we are having endless chats and calls at the wheel's mercy. We walk into the office. Broken focus syndrome haunts us there. Our production dies. We cannot deliver with mastery and precision. Emails, messages, and video clips all with us. Little do we know that we are eroding the Everest of our production potential. Our talents, capabilities, and genius at work all get crippled.
Concentration and mental toughness are the margins of victory. ~ Bill Russell
You will realize that more than ever before, multifarious mistakes, some fatal, others expensive, are being made at work. This is crystal clear that we are no longer present in whatever we are doing. Our focus has been scattered, and our precious concentration has been robbed by these digital devices that we get our hands on. They have kidnapped our gifted genius.
The addiction has blunted and blurred our ancient conscious mind, so we cannot rewire it anymore. We get from work and carry with us the new nature into our homes. First things first, we never wish to miss the evening news with a fake and lame ideology that 'we need to get informed,' but the fact is that we are just getting drip-fed with anxiety-provoking facts by the Main Stream Media.
Victims have big TVs. Leaders own large libraries ~ Robin Sharma, The 5 AM Club
The real-time we ought to have with our partners, children, and friends have been swindled. We are endlessly scrolling our devices in the comfort of our living rooms. Fewer meaningful interactions with those around us, fewer conversations, and definitely fewer sincere connections. We passively spread this to our children, just like cigar smokers. They are left in dark-lit rooms playing video games and consuming television programs that we really don't scrutinize. With such a young and rapidly developing brain, they can quickly rewire into anything and probably lose their creativity.
Indeed we are raising a generation of cyber-zombies. We are letting the world face the greatest pandemic that has never before occurred in history by letting die what is within us while we are alive. What a mess!
Neurobiologically, the distraction of a phone notification whenever we hear those dings and feel the vibrations in our pockets is compared to that of a scream. Our brains can only produce one or two thoughts at most. But what has happened is that we have fallen for a delusion that we can follow several media platforms and, at the same time, focus on our core activities. It's not uncommon to find an average young adult swiping WhatsApp statuses, responding to Twitter notifications, commenting on Facebook stories, laughing alone at Tiktok videos -you would think that they have gone nuts- and at the same time reading notes from a previous lecture. We tend to believe that we are multi-tasking; little do we know that we are just juggling around.
Imagine, say, you are doing an academic writing, and a notification pops on your screen. You will rush to check on it and then return to your work. Doing so, even for a few seconds, might seem a glance and ordinary, but the fact is that your brain has to reconfigure when it shifts from one task to another. This sophisticated organ has to remember what it was doing before. Guess what happens; we just get distracted! Our performance drops. We are developing an attentional pathogenic culture- an environment in which sustained and deeper focus is difficult.
Modern food is made to keep you addicted. Modern news is made to keep you addicted. Modern shows are made to keep you addicted. Modern technology is made to keep you addicted. Addiction is the end game. Profit is what they seek. ~ Jose Rosado
When we hear those incoming notifications, our brains kick in with the chemical reward system that draws us to surge our dopamine. It is until we try to break free from the bondage of this penitentiary of addiction that we realize how powerful it is. It is until we begin to feel the intense nomophobia concealed within the depths of our nearly broken souls. It is when the extreme Fear Of Missing Out(FOMO) gets revealed.
The chains of addiction are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken ~ Charlie Munger
We feel that we might miss a lot when we leave social media slightly longer than that. Consequently, we end up feeding into the endless cycle of scrolling. We spend a great deal of time within a day staring at the screens. Some studies report that an average of 7 hours a day is spent on our digital devices while life passes by unnoticed.
These are just but a single gulp of water from the Pacific. The addiction to distraction has affected each and every sphere of life. There is a plethora of instances of distraction in the virtual world, so many that if I were to recount them, the planet could not contain the books that would have been written.
Focus is power—guard it fiercely to reclaim your peace and purpose.
