Out of Focus

Late morning on Saturday, I was awakened by the noise as my housemates prepared food for their late breakfast. I reached my phone, opened my Facebook and quickly scanned the news feed. I was still lying in my bed while trying to entertain myself with some funny videos in Facebook. Plagued with boredom, I tried to entertain myself some more with the funny videos I'm watching not realizing that it is already midday. I just can't seem to get rid of my phone no matter how much willpower I muster and remind myself that I still have a lot of things to do for the day.

I am pretty sure that some of you, if not all, can relate to this struggle. Procrastination and indulging ourselves on pleasant but unimportant things are almost second nature to us. Do you agree? Well, I can say that it takes discipline and commitment to keep ourselves moving throughout the day. There are myriad of reasons why procrastination seems to take over our lives.

One reason is nature. As I've said earlier, we tend to indulge ourselves on pleasant things which soothe our feelings and abstain on unpleasant things that usually involve effort and pain. As John Maxwell said in his book titled Failing Forward, "People naturally tend towards inertia. That's why self-improvement is such a struggle." Maybe God intended us to be like this so that we can consider effort and sacrifice as the sole means of achieving our goals, which in turn can make us become more self-reliant and confident as we go through the different kinds of challenges in our lives.

Another reason I can think of is distraction. We can probably spend much of our discussion on this matter since distraction, like an epidemic, is affecting lots of people nowadays especially the newer generations. While it is true that technology improved our lives in ways unimaginable, it also affected our relationships with ourselves, with others and with our work. We became obsessive data hoarders and voracious data consumers. Everywhere we go, there are always distractions. Most workers and professionals today use computers to do their job. And these computers are excellent tools for multi-tasking and are very good in giving workers a lot of to dos which are irrelevant to their work.


What is the very first thing you do when you sit in front of your work computers? In my case, I usually end up browsing through the hundreds of emails piling in my Inbox. Although, I often try to condition my mind to focus first on my To Do list so that I can sort those items which are important and require me to spend much of my effort and time. However, given the mountain-load of tasks that bombard me every day-- I usually end up doing them spontaneously.

Furthermore, it is also a sad reality that our gadgets  steal much of our precious time with friends and families. Therefore, we need to put a significant effort in this area to ensure that we are still in alignment with the most important things in our lives which include our values, our relationships, our dreams, and our personal growth.

One effective practice that I can think of which can help us strengthen our focus is mindfulness. Being mindful means being aware of the circumstances happening both inside and outside ourselves without judging them whether they are good or bad. This practice is relatively simple but not easy. That is because our minds are like wild animals which keep on running from place to place. Mindfulness tries to train our minds to become still and calm amidst the inner and outer happenings that we encounter in our everyday lives.

Procrastination and distractions are normal. We just have to make sure that they do not get into our way of living a balanced and worthwhile life. It is already a reality that technology today worsens our tendency to procrastinate given the abundance of distractions it bring. Therefore, this reality urges us to be more conscientious in ensuring that our precious time and energies are focused on things which are important to us, to our friends and families, and to the world we live in. This will be a constant challenge for us as we continue to travel to our own life journey.