And it’s beautiful.

Other days I’ll go for a run and enjoy the rich outdoor air, salty when I jog by the ocean, sweet when I pass a field of wildflowers, saturated with soft light. And this is a wonderful time for me, as I enjoy the moment, as I soak in the quietness, as I bask in my connection with life but my disconnection with technology.

Other times I’ll sit with a friend and have a cup of coffee and chat. We’ll argue about politics, or whose computer OS is better, or tease each other, or share stories. While disconnected from technology.

And some days, I take a walk or go for a run with my wife. Or I’ll sit with my child, and read, or just play.

These are unbeatable moments.

These are the moments when disconnection shows its glorious face, when life is in full force, when we are fully connected to the world immediately around us, while disconnected from the world at large.

These moments have become increasingly rare and fleeting, because of our connectedness with technology. And that’s a sad thing in my book.

I’m no Luddite — I don’t think we should abandon technology. It’s given me the career and life that I’ve always wanted, where I’m able to play for a living, create, be a full-time writer, help others, and live a simple life. Technology has empowered me, and I am as big a proponent of the latest technologies as anyone.

It’s not technology we should be afraid of. It’s a life where we’re always connected, always interrupted, always distracted, always bombarded with information and requests. It’s a life where we have no time to create, or connect with real people.

Disconnection is the solution, or at least an integral part of it. It’s very difficult for many people, because connection is addictive. We’ll talk more about that in a minute.

The Benefits of Disconnection

Why should we even consider disconnecting from the grid of information and communication? Let’s look at just a few reasons:

• You shut off the interruptions and distractions of email, Twitter, IM, blogs, news, and more.
• You give yourself space to focus and work.
• You allow yourself space to create.
• You can connect with real people without distractions.
• You can read, you know, books.
• You can accomplish a lot more.
• You allow yourself a break from the stress of overload.
• You can find quiet and peace of mind.
• You can reflect and contemplate.

There are dozens of other good reasons, but I think those are serviceable for our needs.

How to Disconnect

So how do we go about disconnecting? There are varying strategies, and no one is better than another. I won’t be able to tell you what will work best for you — I suggest you experiment, and find a method that fits your needs and situation best. Often that will be a hybrid approach, which is perfectly great — every person is different, and no cookie-cutter approach will work for everyone.

Some ideas:

1. Unplug. Just unplug your network connector or cable, or turn off your wireless router, or go to your connections settings and disable temporarily. Close your browser and open another program so you can focus on creating without distraction. Do this for as long as you can.

2. Have a disconnect time each day. It’s like setting office hours if you’re a professor — you set the times that work best for you, and you can even let people know about these times. Let’s say you are disconnected from 8-10 a.m. each day, or 4-5 p.m., or even anytime after 2 p.m. Tell people your policy, so they know you won’t be available for email or IM. And use this time to create.

3. Work somewhere without a connection. For me, this might be the public library — while it has computers with Internet access, there’s no wireless in my library. Some coffeeshops don’t have wireless connection. Some of you might have to look for a good building that’s quiet but doesn’t have free wireless. Go to this disconnected zone ready to create, or perhaps just to relax and enjoy the quiet.

4. Get outside. Leave your devices behind and go for a walk, or a run, or a bike ride. Enjoy nature. Watch a sunset, go to the beach or a lake or river or forest. Take your child or spouse or friend. Recharge your batteries, reflect and contemplate.

5. Leave your mobile device behind, or shut it off. When you’re on the go, you don’t always need to be connected. Sure, the iPhone and Android and Blackberry are cool, but they just feed our addictions, they make the problem worse than ever. If you’re driving, shut off your device. If you’re meeting with someone, turn off the device so you can focus on that person completely. If you’re out with your family or friends and not working … leave the device at home. You don’t need this personal time to be interrupted by work or your impulse to check on things.

6. Use blocking software. If you’re doing work on the computer, you can use various types of software to shut yourself off from the Internet, or at least from the most distracting portions of it. For example, you can use software to block your web email, Twitter, favorite news sites, favorite blogs, and so on — whatever your worst distractions are, you can block them selectively. Or block all Internet browsing. We’ll talk more about software in a later chapter on tools.

7. Alternate connection and disconnection. There are any number of variations on this theme, but let’s say you disconnected for 20 minutes, then connected for a maximum of 10 minutes, and kept alternating in those intervals. Or you work disconnected for 45 minutes and connect for 15 minutes. You get the idea — it’s almost as if the connected period is a reward for doing good, focused work.

8. Disconnect away from work. A good policy is to leave your work behind, when you’re done with work, and a better policy is to stay disconnected during that time, or work and browsing will creep into the rest of your life. Draw a line in the sand, and say, “After 5 p.m. (or whatever), I won’t be connected, I’ll focus on my family and my other interests.”

How to Beat the Connection Addiction

Being connected is an addiction — and it’s one that can be extremely hard to beat. Trust me, I struggle with it myself, all the time.

Like any addiction, connection has very quick positive reinforcements and only long-term negative consequences. When you take drugs or eat junk food, for example, you get instant pleasure but the negative health effects aren’t felt until much, much later, when you’re already firmly addicted. So you get the positive reinforcement immediately, each time you do the addictive activity such as eating sweets or taking drugs, giving you a pleasure rush and making you want to do the activity again, as soon as possible. You get the positive reinforcement again, and again, and again, in a constant cycle of positive reinforcement, and soon you’re addicted.

Connection works the same way. When we check email and get a new message, it’s a little bit of validation that we’re worthy of someone else’s attention — we get a little ego boost, a little pleasure from this. When we check Twitter or our feed reader and see something that grabs our attention, that’s a positive reinforcement, a little bit of reward for checking. And so we check again, and again, until we’re addicted.

It’s not until much later that we feel the consequences, if we even admit them to ourselves. It’s months or years later, much after we’re addicted, that we realize we’re spending all our time online, that our personal lives have been taken over, that we have lost our ability to find quiet and focus, that our creative time and energies have been eroded by these addictions.

So while I can list all kinds of ways to disconnect, if you’re addicted even to a small degree, it won’t be a small feat to disconnect and stay disconnected.

How do we beat this addiction, then?

The same way you beat any addiction: by breaking the cycle of positive feedback, and by replacing the old habit with a new one.

And while beating addictions is really a subject to be tackled in another book, let’s briefly outline some quick strategies you can use to beat this addiction:

• Figure out your triggers. What things trigger your habits? It’s usually something you do each day, something that leads directly to your addicted behavior. List these out.
• Find a new, positive habit to replace the old habit for each trigger. For example, with quitting smoking, I needed a new habit for stress relief (running), a new thing to do after meetings (write out my notes), a new thing to do with coffee in the morning (reading), and so on.
• Try changing each trigger, one at a time. So if you go to check your blogs first thing in the morning, make it a new habit to not open your browser, and instead open a simple text editor and start writing.
• Create positive feedback for the new habit. If the new habit is something you don’t enjoy, you’ll quit before long. But if it’s something enjoyable, that gives you positive feedback, that’s good. Praise from others is also a good positive feedback — there are many, and you’ll want to engineer your habit change so that you get almost instant positive feedback.
• Create instant negative feedback for the old habit. Instead of having negative feedback be long-term for going online, you want some negative feedback instantly: make it a rule that you have to call someone and tell them you failed if you go online after a certain trigger, for example. There are lots of kinds of negative feedback — maybe you’ll have to log and blog your failures, or something like that.
• Repeat the positive feedback cycle as often as possible for the new habit. Soon, after a few weeks, it’ll become a new habit and the old one will be (mostly) licked. Repeat for the next trigger.

Starting small, with just one trigger at a time, is a good way to be successful.

Next chapter: Focus Rituals

One of the best ways of doing that is with what I like to call “Focus Rituals”.

A ritual is a set of actions you repeat habitually — you might have a pre-bed ritual or a religious ritual or a just-started-up-my-computer ritual. One of the powerful things about rituals is that we often give them a special importance: they can be almost spiritual (and sometimes actually spiritual, depending on the ritual). And when they become special, we are more mindful of them — we don’t just rush through them mindlessly.

Mindfully observing a ritual is important, especially when it comes to focus, because often we get distracted without realizing it. The distractions work because we’re not paying attention. So when we pay attention to a ritual, it’s much more conducive to focus, and then to creativity. Mindful attention to a ritual also helps keep it from become too rote or meaningless.

It’s important to give importance to each ritual, so that you’ll truly allow yourself to focus and not forget about the ritual when it’s not convenient. For example, you might start each ritual with a couple of cleansing breaths, to bring yourself to the present, to clear your head of thoughts of other things, and to fully focus on the ritual itself.

Let’s take a look at just a few Focus Rituals. Please note that this isn’t meant to be a comprehensive list, nor am I suggesting you do all of these. It’s a list of ideas — you should try ones that seem best suited for your situation, and test them out to see what works best.

1. Morning quiet. You start your day in quiet, before the busy-ness of the world intrudes on your peace of mind. If you live with others, you might want to wake before they do. The key to enjoying this focus ritual is not going online. You can turn on the computer if you just want to write. You can have coffee or tea and read. You can meditate or do yoga or do a workout or go for a run. Or take a walk. Or sit quietly and do nothing. The key is to take advantage of this peaceful time to rest your mind and focus, however you like.

2. Start of day. Begin your work day by not checking email or any other distractions, but start a simple to-do list on paper or with a text file. On this blank to-do list, just list your three Most Important Tasks. Or if you like, just list the One Thing you really want to accomplish today. This helps you to focus on what’s important. Even better: continue this focus ritual by starting immediately on the top task on this short list of Most Important Tasks. Single-task on this important task as long as you can — ideally until it’s done. Now you’ve started your day with focus, and you’ve already accomplished something great.

3. Refocus ritual. While the start of day ritual is great, there are lots of things that get in the way to distract you, to mess up your focus. So every hour or two, do a refocus ritual. This only takes a minute or two. You might start it by closing down your browser and maybe other open applications, and maybe even take a walk for a couple of minutes to clear your head and get your blood circulating. Then return to your list of Most Important Tasks and figure out what you need to accomplish next. Before you check email again or go back online, work on that important task for as long as you can. Repeat this refocus ritual throughout the day, to bring yourself back. It’s also nice to take some nice deep breaths to focus yourself back on the present.

4. Alternate focus and rest. This is almost like intervals in exercise — alternating between periods of hard exercise and rest works well because it allows you to do some pretty intense exercise, as long as you allow yourself some rest. Focus works much the same way — if you give yourself built-in periods of rest, you can get some great periods of focus. There are many variations on this, but some ideas might include: 10 minutes of focus + 2 minutes of rest; 25 minutes of focus + 5 minutes of rest; 45 minutes of focus + 15 minutes of rest. You get the idea — you’ll need to experiment to find the length and mixture that works best for you. Some prefer short bursts and others like longer periods of undisturbed creativity.

5. Alternate two focuses. Instead of alternating between focus and rest, you could alternate between two different focuses. For example, you could work on two different projects at once, or study for two different classes at once. I’d suggest not switching too rapidly, because there’s a short period of adjustment each time you switch. But you could work for 10 minutes on one thing and then 10 on another, or stay focused on one as long as you are interested in it, then switch when your interest lags. The great thing about this method is that switching to a new project can help give your brain a rest from the other project, and it can keep you creating for much longer before getting distracted.

6. Communicate first, then blocks of focus. Set a timer and give yourself 45 minutes to do email, Twitter, Facebook IM, and any reading you would normally do. Then use an Internet blocker to block these distractions for a couple of hours (up to 3-4 hours if you like) while you focus on creating. Then another 45 minutes of communicating and reading, followed by another block of distraction-free focus.

7. End of day. At the end of each day, you might review what you did, think of what can be improved, remind yourself to disconnect for the rest of the evening, and think about what you’ll focus on tomorrow. It’s a good time to reflect on your day and your life in general.

8. Weekly focus rituals. While it’s not necessary to do a complete weekly review of everything you’re doing, have done and plan to do, it can be useful to schedule 10 minutes every week to quickly bring your work and life back into the right focus. I suggest you review your projects to make sure you’re not letting them get out of hand; simplify your to-do list as much as possible; review the focus rituals you’ve been doing to see what’s working and what isn’t; and basically reflect on what you’re doing with work and life and whether anything needs to change.

9. Other ideas. The rituals above are just some of the ideas I like best — you should find the ritual that works best for you. There are an almost infinite number of possibilities. Just a few other ideas: taking 5 minutes every hour to refocus yourself; taking a walk every hour to get fresh air and get refreshed; yoga or meditating at the beginning of each day; running or other exercise after work; giving yourself a “focus and disconnected hour” in the morning and afternoon where you’re disconnected and completely focused on creating; breathing and self-massage techniques for relaxation and better focus.

Next chapter: a simple system for getting amazing things done

It’s meant to be short, simple, concise. We’ll talk about some of the problems we face as we try to live and create in a world of overwhelming distractions. And we’ll look at some simple ways to solve those problems.

And yet, at the heart of this simple book lies the key to many of the struggles we face these days, from being productive and achieving our goals, to getting healthy and fit in the face of fast food and inactivity, to finding simplicity and peace amidst chaos and confusion.

That key is itself simple: focus.

Our ability to focus will allow us to create in ways that perhaps we haven’t in years. It’ll allow us to slow down and find peace of mind. It’ll allow us to simplify and focus on less — on the essential things, the things that matter most.

And in doing so, we’ll learn to focus on smaller things. This will transform our relationship with the world. It’s not that “less is more”, but “less is better”. Focusing on smaller things will make us more effective. It’ll allow us to do less, and in doing so, have more free time for what’s important to us. It’ll force us to choose, and in doing so, stop the excesses that have led to our economic problems, individually and as a society.

Focus. Smaller things. Less. Simplicity. These are the concepts that we’ll talk about, and that will lead to good things in all parts of our lives.

My Story

If you don’t know me, I’m Leo Babauta, best known for my popular blog on simplicity, Zen Habits, and my best-selling productivity book, The Power of Less.

These concepts of simplicity and focus and less … they’ve been a revelation to me, in my life. In the past few years, I’ve completely changed my life by changing one thing at a time, by learning to find focus so that I can create, by simplifying and focusing on less.

I thought I’d share this because it’s an illustration of how effective these ideas are — and they’ve worked not only for me but for many of my readers.

By focusing on one thing at a time, small changes, little baby steps, I’ve been able to change a bunch of habits: I quit smoking, started running, began eating healthier, started waking earlier, and became more organized. And I’ve accomplished a lot more, taking on one project at a time and using the power of focus and the power of play to accomplish things: running a few marathons and triathlons, simplifying my life, eliminating my debt, starting up a successful blog and business, writing a few books, and much more.

This stuff works. And it’s tremendously liberating to discover that you can find focus, you can simplify, and you can change your life.

Next chapter: The Age of Distraction

And this includes a much larger group than the traditional “creative types” — artists, writers, photographers, designers, musicians and the like. No, people who create are a much larger group than that, though creative types are included. Those who create include:

• those who invent and create products or services
• teachers who create lessons and activities and content for students
• professors who write syllabi and lectures
• anyone who writes research papers
• stay-at-home parents who create activities for their kids
• executives who create plans, presentations, visions, proposals
• ad execs who create ad campaigns
• bloggers
• people who make websites of any kind
• anyone who writes reports
• someone who crafts physical products like clothing, cars, etc.
• kids who have to do homework
• and many other types of people

In short, it includes most of us, in one way or another.

Focus is crucial to those of us who create, because creating is so difficult without it.

How Distraction Hurts Creativity

It’s fairly difficult to create when you’re reading a blog or forum or tweeting or sending an email or chatting. In fact, it’s almost impossible to do these things and create at the same time.

Sure, you can switch back and forth, so that you’re creating and engaging in any of these activities of consuming and communicating. We’ve all done that.

But how effective is that? When we switch between creating and communicating through email, say, we lose a little bit of our creative time, a little bit of our creative attention, each time we switch. Our mind must switch between modes, and that takes time. As a result, our creative processes are slowed and hurt, just a little, each time we switch.

Here’s the catch: creating is a completely separate process from consuming and communicating.

They don’t happen at the same time. We can switch between them, but again, we’re hurting both processes as we do that.

All the reading and consumption of information we do, all the communicating we do, and all the switching between modes we do — it all takes away from the time we have to create.

We should note that communicating and consuming information aren’t necessarily evil to the person who creates: they actually help. We shouldn’t throw them out completely. Communicating with others allows us to collaborate, and that actually multiplies our creative power, in my experience. When you communicate and collaborate, you bounce ideas off people, get ideas from things they say, learn from each other, combine ideas in new and exciting ways, build things that couldn’t be possible from one person.

When you consume information, you’re helping your creativity as well — you find inspiration in what others have done, you get ideas, you gather the raw materials for creating.

But consuming and communicating aren’t creating. They aid creating, they lay the groundwork, but at some point we need to actually sit down and create. Or stand up and create. But create.

How to Beat Distraction, and Create

If the problem is that these separate processes of creating, consuming and communicating get in the way of each other, the solution is obvious: we need to separate the processes. We need to create at different times than we consume and communicate.

I know, easier said than done.

But that’s what the rest of this book will be about: how to separate these processes. Because in the end, when you separate them, you’ll free up your time and mind for creating, and create better and more prodigiously than ever before.

Separate your day: a time for creating, and a time for consuming and communicating. And never the twain shall meet.

You can split your day into many different combinations of the two, but don’t put them all together. Or if you do, just be aware that you’re hurting your creativity. That’s OK sometimes, as there isn’t a need to be uber-productive, as long as you’re doing something you enjoy. But if your interest is in creating, separate your day.

Focus, Distraction and Happiness

There’s more to focus and distraction than just creating, though. Constant connectivity and distractions, and a lack of focus, can affect our peace of mind, our stress levels, and our happiness.

In the days when computers took up only part of our lives, there were times when we could get away from them, when we were disconnected from the grid. Unfortunately, many people still filled much of that time with watching television, which isn’t much better.

But it’s important to get away from these constant distractions — we need some quiet, some time to reflect and contemplate, some time for solitude. Without it, our minds are constantly bombarded by information and sensations, unable to rest. That constantly stresses our minds in ways we’re not meant to handle.

We need the rest. It’s important in ways we don’t often think about. We need to de-stress, and we need to recharge our mental batteries.

Quiet and solitude and reflection lead to greater happiness when they’re a part of our daily lives, at least in some degree. What you do during this time — read, write, run, nap, sit, watch, listen, even have a quiet conversation, play, study, build — isn’t as important as the simple fact of having that time of disconnection.

We’ll look at how to find this time, and how to find focus, in later chapters. At this point, we just need to note that these things are important.

Next chapter: The Beauty of Disconnection

While humanity has never been free of distraction — from swatting those bothersome gnats around the fireplace to dealing with piles of paper mail and ringing telephones — never have the distractions been so voluminous, so overwhelming, so intense, so persistent as they are now. Ringing phones are one thing, but email notifications, Twitter and Facebook messages, an array of browser tabs open, and mobile devices that are always on and always beeping are quite another. More and more, we are connected, we are up to our necks in the stream of information, we are in the crossfire of the battle for our attention, and we are engaged in a harrying blur of multitasking activity.

When we’re working, we have distractions coming from every direction. In front of us is the computer, with email notifications and other notifications of all kinds. Then there’s the addicting lure of the browser, which contains not only an endless amount of reading material that can be a black hole into which we never escape, but unlimited opportunities for shopping, for chatting with other people, for gossip and news and lurid photos and so much more. All the while, several new emails have come in, waiting for a quick response. Several programs are open at once, each of them with tasks to complete. Several people would like to chat, dividing our attention even further.

And that’s just in front of us. From the sides come a ringing desk phone, a ringing mobile device, music from several different coworkers, a colleague coming to our desk asking a question, incoming papers needing attention, other papers scattered across our desks, someone calling a meeting, another offering up food.

With so much competing for our attention, and so little time to focus on real work, it’s a wonder we get anything done at all.

And then we leave work, but the attack on our attention doesn’t end. We bring the mobile device, with incoming text and email messages, all needing a reply, with incoming calls that can’t be ignored. We have reading material, either in paper form or on the mobile device, to keep our attention occupied. We are bombarded from all sides by advertising, asking for not only attention but our desires. We get home, and there’s the television, constantly blaring, with 500 channels all asking for yet more attention, with 500,000 ads asking for yet more desires. There’s our home computer, asking us to do more work, sending us more messages, more distractions, social networks and shopping and reading. There are kids or spouses or roommates or friends, there’s the home phone, and still the mobile device is going off.

This is unprecedented, and it’s alarming.

We’ve come into this Age without being aware that it was happening, or realizing its consequences. Sure, we knew that the Internet was proliferating, and we were excited about that. We knew that mobile devices were becoming more and more ubiquitous, and maybe some people harrumphed and others welcomed the connectivity. But while the opportunities offered by this online world are a good thing, the constant distractions, the increasingly urgent pull on our attention, the stress of multitasking at an ever-finer granular level, the erosion of our free time and our ability to live with a modicum of peace … perhaps we didn’t realize how much this would change our lives.

Maybe some did. And maybe many still don’t realize it.

I think, with so many things asking for our attention, it’s time we paid attention to this.

It’s an Addiction

There’s instant positive feedback to such constant activities as checking email, surfing the web, checking social networks such as blogs, forums, Twitter and Facebook. That’s why it’s so easy to become addicted to being connected and distracted.

Other addictive activities, such as doing drugs or eating junk food, have the same kind of instant positive feedback — you do the activity, and right away, you’re rewarded with something pleasurable but don’t feel the negative consequences until much later. Checking email, or any similar online activity, has that addictive quality of instant positive feedback and delayed negative feedback.

You check your email and hey! A new email from a friend! You get a positive feeling, perhaps a validation of your self-worth, when you receive a new email. It feels good to get a message from someone. And thus the instant positive feedback rewards you checking email, more and more frequently, until the addiction is solidly ingrained.

Now, you might later get tired of answering all your email, because it’s overwhelming and difficult to keep up with. But usually by then, you’re addicted and can’t stop checking. And usually the checking of the email has positive reward (a good feeling) but it’s the activity of answering all the emails that isn’t as fun.

We’ll explore how we can stop this addiction later, in the chapter “the beauty of disconnection”.

It’s a New Lifestyle

Being connected, getting information all the time, having constant distractions … it has all become a part of our lives.

Computers, at one time, were a small part of our lives — perhaps we used them at work, but in the car and on the train, and usually at home and when we’re out doing other things, we were disconnected. Even at work, our computers had limited capabilities — we could only do certain things with desktop applications, and while solitaire is definitely addicting, it doesn’t take up your entire life.

Not so anymore.

Computers are taking over our lives. And while I’m as pro-technology as the next guy (more so in many cases), I also think we need to consider the consequences of this new lifestyle.

Because we’ve created a new lifestyle very rapidly, and I’m not sure we’re prepared for it. We don’t have new strategies for dealing with being connected most of the time, we don’t have new cultural norms, nor have we figured out if this is the best way to live life. We’ve been plunged into it, before we could develop a system for handling it.

It’s an Expectation

Let’s say you woke up one day and decided you no longer wanted to participate in the Age of Distraction in some way … could you just drop out?

Well, you could, but you’d be up against an entire culture that expects you to participate.

A good example was when I recently announced that I was ditching email (more on this later) so that I could focus less on answering emails and more on what I love doing: creating. That seemed fairly straightforward to me, but it turns out it drew quite a strong reaction in a lot of people. Some applauded me for having the courage to give up email — indicating this was a huge step that took bravery, took an ability to break from a major societal norm. Other people were insulted or indignant, either feeling like I was insulting their way of doing things, or that I was some kind of prima donna or “diva” for not wanting to be available through email.

Interesting: the simple act of giving up email was either hugely courageous, or arrogant, because I wasn’t living up to the expectation of society that I’d be available via email and at least make the attempt to reply. Interesting, because just a decade earlier, many people didn’t use email and no one cared if they didn’t.

And email is just one facet of these expectations. How high these expectations are depends on your job, who you are, where you work, and the standards that have evolved in the group you work with. But some people are expected to be available all the time, carrying a Blackberry or other device with them, and to respond almost immediately — or they’re out of touch, or not good businesspeople. Others are expected to be available for instant messaging or Skype chats, or be on social forums or social networks such as Facebook or Twitter. Others need to follow the news of their industry closely, and constantly read updates of news sites.

Being connected all the time, being part of this constant stream of distraction, is an expectation that society now has of us. And going against that expectation is immensely difficult for many people — it requires courage, or a willingness to be an arrogant prima donna.

How did this happen? When did we opt-in to be a part of this? There was never a time when we agreed to these expectations, but they’ve evolved rapidly over the last decade or so, and now it’s hard to get out.

I’m not saying we should get out. I’m saying we need to rethink things, to change expectations so that the system suits us, not the other way around.

A Simple Question

Here’s a little exercise that might prove useful: as you read this chapter, how many times were you distracted or tempted to switch to another task?

How many times did you think of something you wanted to do, or check your email or other favorite distractions? How many times did you want to switch, but resisted? How many different things made a noise or visual distraction while you were reading? How many people tried to get your attention?

In an ideal world, the answers to all those questions would be “zero” — you’d be able to read with no distractions, and completely focus on your task. Most of us, however, have distractions coming from all sides, and the answers to this little exercise will probably prove illuminating.

Next chapter: The Importance of Finding Focus