On Distraction

Oliver Burkeman and Confronting Our Limits

Hi Friends,

How do you focus on something deeply? And how do you take a break?

I’ve been thinking about these questions recently. A few weeks ago, I spent three nights at a Getaway cabin just across the border in Washington State with my friend Austen. Without internet, without dishes or laundry, with an autoresponder on my email, I did one single thing: I compressed transcripts from recorded interviews about teaching and writing (for the book I’m co-writing with my colleague John). Over the three days we were there, I compressed almost ten interviews, often from around 4-5K words to 800 or 1200 words. I also read five books (and bits of others)¹. We took a few walks. We ate lots of snacks. But mostly, I compressed interviews. I was in it.

Cabin view with laptop and books.

Sure, from time to time, I’d pop my head up and say “Listen, this is so brilliant!” and read a passage out loud or whine “This is such a sloooow process! Why am I so slow?” But I also lost track of time in the grooves of the sentences. As I fell asleep reading after a day of condensing, my brain started trying to compress and tighten sentences in the book I was reading! This made me laugh and reminded me of learning to ski as a sixteen-year-old exchange student in Switzerland, drifting asleep only to feel my body lean into curves and shift edges.

All to say, I focused. And it felt really good.

But often, I find it so hard to do one thing. It’s partly the real demands of my life: teaching, parenting, meetings, taxes, tasks. In the thick of the term, I can rarely devote a day to a single thing. But it’s also psychic. Even when I could set some hours aside, I don’t. Or not fully. It’s the noise of the to-do list, the impossibility of metabolizing the news, the nagging feeling of something forgotten, the vague hope of some good news greeting me if I look away. All this adds up to feeling scattered, starting one task only to shift to another without really noticing, leaving the work email open in the browser and clicking over at each chime of arrival, reopening social media or the news on reflex.

It’s ok. Life’s like this at times. I’ve mostly accepted the cycle of drifting and regrouping that characterizes my creative life. As I near the end of the term and a moment of regrouping, I find myself turning to Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, particularly how Burkeman talks about distraction.

Four Thousand Weeks, as its distinctive ripening banana cover implies², is a book for people who find it usefully confronting, even comforting (as well as dismaying), to contemplate our own mortality. Unlike many “productivity books” (which he acknowledges himself a historical sucker for), Burkeman proposes that maximizing and efficiency are ultimately losing propositions. To live a meaningful life, he argues, we need to accept our limits and make choices, rather than persisting under the illusion that if we only find the right task-management system, everything will fit.

As a person who likes a tidy inbox and a fully checked-off to-do list, I found it deeply useful (and challenging!) to be told to give up. Ever since I read the book, I’ve been thinking about the importance of “declining” to clear the decks. I’ve been trying to accept that there will always be a certain number of “shame emails.”³ Or that I might clear them every few months (Hi Avoidance Club!), but I will never get to a point where I just don’t have any. Or maybe more accurately, I could. I could get there! But if I did, I’d be giving up more valuable things to achieve it.

So, where do focus and distraction come in?

Burkeman describes distractions as “places we go to seek relief from the discomfort of confronting limitation” (107). That feels true to my experience: I open my email when I get stuck on a sentence and worry that I’m too muddled to work it out. Or I feel a wave of anxiety at an approaching deadline and suddenly, wheeee, I’m opening up a browser window to search for brown boots.

Here’s what Burkeman recommends:

The most effective way to sap distraction of its power is just to stop expecting things to be otherwise—to accept that this unpleasantness is simply what it feels like for finite humans to commit ourselves to the kind of demanding and valuable tasks that force us to confront our limited control over how our lives unfold. (108).

This passage has become a lever to gently turn myself back to the page, to make an uncertain peace with my limits—of time, of certainty of outcome, of ability to confront the task at hand, of knowledge of the next step.

Here are a few other bits from Four Thousand Weeks that stuck with me (and got copied in dip pen and pinned to my office door for passers-by to take home):

“When you render the process more convenient, you drain it of its meaning.” Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks

This is getting long enough. Let’s talk about how to take a break next time!

Anyone else struggling with focus? Does this framing of distraction as a place we go to “seek relief from the discomfort of confronting limitation” resonate? Have you read Four Thousand Weeks? If so, did anything stick with you? Let me know in the comments!

Upcoming in Vancouver

I have the pleasure of hosting two remarkable poets, Cindy Juyoung Ok and Diana Khoi Nguyen, at Massy Arts Society in Vancouver on Saturday, April 27th at 6 pm. Diana and Cindy will read from their new books, and I’ll introduce them, read a few poems, and ask them some questions about their work. If you’re in Vancouver, please join us!

Yours with damp cherry blossoms,

Bronwen

PS: If you liked this post, please hit the heart to let me know! You can also support this newsletter by subscribing, sharing, or commenting. (I’ve turned off the pledge thing btw).

PPS: I tried out recording an audio version (“article voiceover” at the top) this time in case that’s more convenient/accessible for anyone. If so, please let me know, and I’ll do it next time too.

1. If you’re curious, they were: The Book of (More) Delights by Ross Gay, Wendy, Master of Art by Walter Scott, Public Abstract by Jane Huffman, The Most Precious Substance of Earth by Shashi Bhat, and Serpentine Loop by Elee Kraljii Gardiner (my friend and The Whole Cloth Reading Series collaborator).

2. There’s also an “Atlas under the weight of the clock” cover, a “pleasant bench by a lake” cover, and “birthday candle with both ends alight” cover. Someone go do a rhetorical analysis!

3. If one of these is to you, please believe me when I say that I am very sorry! An end-of-term clearing is coming soon!