We are almost always thinking about something whether it be something important or trivial. Sometimes we are constantly thinking even in our sleep which manifests as our dreams. But this continuous barrage of thoughts comes with a catch and that is the fact that we really have no way to properly control them. The best we can do is direct them to achieve whatever it is that we are trying to do. But although it sounds very simple, even this level of control is very hard to master. And if left unchecked, we are always at the risk of letting our thoughts control us and dictate how we spend our time rather than the other way around. I think most of us are guilty of spending a lot of time thinking about things that never even came close to becoming our reality but we nevertheless keep repeating this cycle again and again until hopefully, we come across something like this article here that helps us realize the difference between rational and irrational thoughts. A lot of the things that sound simple to you are actually very simple in reality as well, but what we fail to realize is that although something is easy and even if we agree upon it instinctively, we are still not actually acting upon it. So you might be thinking that you only think about things that are important and nothing else but then why do you still have trouble being productive? why do you think you spend so much time preparing for future scenarios based solely on your assumption?
Distracting Thoughts
Let us first try to answer the former question i.e. why do we have trouble being productive? Even when we know what we need to do and even when we know when we are doing something in opposition to our goal, we cannot seem to stop ourselves and bring ourselves back to the right track. The one thing that we can agree upon is that whenever we are trying to achieve a new milestone, we are actually doing something which we did not do before or at least doing it more than before. This also means that we are cutting down on something that we used to enjoy before to make time for it. Based on my personal experience, I often find myself unable to focus on the new activity because I always want to return to the things that I enjoy more like the activity that I had cut from my schedule. Once you have reached the point where you want to do something else but are still forcing yourself not to do so, you are already fighting a losing battle. I wish that I could write a few magic words to fill you with motivation but those do not exist. Even if they do exist, no one else can certainly give them to you as you have to define them for yourself personally. What does work is understanding the simple fact that you will always be more attracted to something that has a short-term benefit rather than something else which may pay off much more in the long-term. So once you are already contemplating between the two, the decision has already been made but you just do not know it yet. But even though you cannot always force yourself to pick the right option, you can prevent the choice from ever happening in the first place. That solely depends on how you control your thoughts and direct them to think about what you are doing(the long-term goal) rather than what you could be doing instead(the short-term goal).
Let’s take an example to make sense of what I just wrote down. Consider an example of a student who likes to play games like most other students. Also like most other students, this one has a big test coming up very soon. Obviously, the student knows that he has to give up on his games for the time being and focus on his studies so that he might perform well and get good grades. This is very simple to understand for everyone reading this but we all know that this is not what actually transpires in real life though. If it did, no one would even perform bad in their tests. Whenever the student is trying to study, which he did not do much before, he will find it more difficult than doing something else like gaming, which he was doing a lot before as well. Obviously, you cannot always keep forcing yourself to choose studying over an extended period of time although it might work for a short duration provided you have tremendous willpower or extreme fear of failure. Your thoughts should not be controlled so as you are able to make the right choice and always opt for studying over playing games but the real control is to remove the thought of playing games from your mind as soon as it appears in your mind. What it essentially means is that because you know that you will eventually always lose the battle at the end, you never ever engage in it in the first place. Interestingly enough, this is much much easier to do than you might be thinking. Whenever you start to think about that something else that is distracting you from studying, you immediately remember that you are not allowed to think about it let alone contemplate the pros and cons of both options. Because, as we already established, you will never win that argument with yourself.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, it is a very simple idea that works surprisingly well where you can stop yourself from getting distracted by other activities so long as you remember that you are not allowed to have detailed thoughts about your distractions. You cannot go into hypothetical scenarios and think about your distractions when you know that you will not be able to actually indulge in them because of your other responsibilities or worse that you will feel guilty afterwards and run the enjoyment for both your distraction and your current goal. You are not even allowed to think about how you will make up for this sacrifice and reward yourself by fervently indulging yourself in your distractions as that too is a way you trick yourself into deviating away from your milestone. By never even engaging in the battle, you not only avoid losing it but also win the overall war. The next time that you find yourself in a similar situation, try to follow this approach and you will find how easier it is for yourself as well. Although you will still put in the effort to actually reach your goal, it will be much less taxing than forcefully trying to choose and stick to one path among multiple others laid out in front of you. Good luck!
