Racing To Not Fall Behind

Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries, and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.

– Blaise Pascal, 17th Century

We have now, as a society, reached a point of near constant and total connectedness. We have phones that travel with us, wherever we go. We can access the entirety of human knowledge on those phones. Our cars connect to orbiting satellites to guide us, and radar stations to advise us of traffic problems. Hell, even our refrigerators are now connected to the internet. If Pascal thought we were easily distracted back before steam power was even dreamt about, he would certainly blush at the incalculable opportunity for distraction our devices provide us with today.

And, as we’ve all undoubtedly thought by now, this constant connectedness, and constant distraction, is bad for us. Constant interruption, so easily facilitated by that constant connectedness, prevents deep, complex thought. So, of course, we should try to limit this constant interruption and distraction.

But before we can figure out how to do that, we should first ask why we have the urge to distract ourselves in the first place.

There are many reasons we procrastinate, some might even be good. But one of the reasons people distract themselves with news is that people like to be up to date on the latest goings-on in the world. It gives people something to talk about. It makes some people feel educated, or enlightened, or superior, to those who aren’t in the know. This attitude has become so ingrained in us that we’re actually pushed to buy products so we’re not the last ones to know:

But this treadmill never ends. In the age of 24 hour political coverage, sports coverage, science coverage, gossip coverage, local news, etc., etc., you could literally never stop consuming “news”. Devouring everything in your chosen stream leaves you feeling empty and stuffed, all at once.

That emptiness is there for a reason: it’s reminding you of the value you’re destroying by feeding at the endless buffet of data. You’re not accomplishing anything. You’re not learning, or building, or creating anything. In fact, tomorrow, all that news will be stale, and you’ll be no better off than you were yesterday. If that news isn’t stale, if it’s actually important, you’ll no doubt have heard about it from some source other than your local anchorman or your favorite news aggregator.

The easy answer is to simply stop. Quit watching the news and sports and political coverage,. Quit reading whatever news or entertainment channels you read every day. Recognize the reasons you’re wasting time watching or reading about things and people you don’t care about and have no impact on your life. You’ll soon realize you haven’t fallen behind at all.