Dealing with digital distractions; what to do when discipline isn't enough

And this is why, in my experience, discipline can be an ineffective way of changing habits that are deeply entrenched. We all have habits that we've lived with for years, and we can't just change them overnight. It takes time, and discipline alone is not the best or most effective means of doing that. You're listening to the Circle C Project. Foreign welcome to the Triple CE Project, the podcast that helps you gain clarity, boost confidence, build courage so you can live lifeless. I'm your host, Ryan Spence, the big lore dropout, life coach, author, speaker, lover of hoodies, hip hop, and big, hairy, audacious goals. If you're tired of living the life you think you should want and ready to start living the life you want, this podcast will help you get from where you are to where you really want to be. So now with friends, I invite you to grab a drink, take a seat, allow me to guide you towards living a life that's lit. Hello. Welcome to episode 37 of the Triple C Project with me, your host, Ryan Spence, lawyer, author of the Triple C Method. Gain clarity, boost confidence, build courage so you can live life lit. Also a yoga teacher and a bit of a public speaker. I do a lot of things if you know anything about human design. I'm a manifesting generator, and once I found that out, it answered a whole lot of questions for me. Why I can never stick to the traditional advice of stick to one thing. It's just not me. I like many, many, many things. I had a great holiday. I don't know about you, but sometimes you just get used to, just keep going on, keep going on, keep moving. And isn't until you stop that you realize how exhausted you actually are. So it was a very welcome break over in Ibiza. I loved it there and I cannot wait to go back. I'm actually hatching a plan in my head as to how can I spend more time in Ibiza. Anyway, enough about me and my holidays. That's not what you're here for, although I hope it is. I hope you like to hear a little bit about what's going on. I feel that it helps you to get to know me a little bit better instead of just being this distant voice on a microphone somewhere in the universe. Today I'm going to talk about distraction. And distraction can come in many forms, and distraction takes us away from the thing that it is that we're trying to do, the thing that's in front of us. But before I get into it, I wanted to say the difference between distraction and procrastination. Because you may think, well, they're the same thing, right? I say not. I say there is a slight difference between the two. And I want to get that clear. I've already done an episode on procrastination, which, as usual, I can't remember the episode number. But if you go back, you'll find that. And this one is going to focus on distraction. Now, procrastination, I say that procrastination is when you know what you need to do, but you just don't want to do it. So you'll do anything else but the thing you know you need to do. That's procrastination. And there are reasons why you do that, which I've spoken about in a previous episode that I just mentioned. But distraction, I say distraction differs because distraction can occur when you know what you need to do and you actually want to do the thing. It's something which you actually are looking forward to doing, but things just come up to take you away from that. And distraction can come in many forms. It can be sitting in your room, working, working away, sitting in your office. Someone walks in and you just start a conversation. I used to do this, used to happen a lot in big law. People would walk into my office, shut the door, and you'd know you'd be in for some juicy little gossip or tidbit or someone who'd done something completely egregious, as is sometimes the case, and you turn away from what you're doing and you'd have that conversation. That's distraction. It can be when you. Sometimes you're just sat and you start off by thinking. Usually when you're writing, for example, you're thinking about a particular word or how you can phrase something, and then before you know it, minutes have passed and you gazed into space and you're daydreaming away. That's another form of distraction. And you're not focusing on the matter in hand. And the other one can just be similar but slightly different, where you just follow every random thought that pops into your head and before you know, you've gone down these series of rabbit holes that are completely unrelated to the thing that you're supposed to doing, the thing that's in front of you. But I'm going to talk a bit more detail about what I feel is the biggest distraction for most people these days, including me. And that's digital distraction. And we all know what digital distractions like. I'm sure it's when you, for example, you go online, so you're going on to do some research or to go to a particular website, or to pay a bill, whatever it might be. You've got an intention for going online and before you know it, you've either completed that specific purpose or sometimes even not. But you've clicked on a banner ad or some clickbaity article or some celeb gossip, or you're clicking on a news item about the latest political shitstorm in wherever it is that you live. And time passes and you're doing something completely different to what you went there for. And the thing that you were supposed to be doing just doesn't get done. You got distracted. Or perhaps even more common than that is social media. You go to put up a post on your social media account, maybe you're putting a post about your holiday that you're on, or you've just been on something great that's happened to you, or you're just sharing some funny meme that you, you saw somewhere that somebody sent to you. And then before you know it, you find yourself just doom scrolling random shit 30 minutes, an hour later and you're like, what the fuck happened there? Where did that time just go, what am I doing? I know you know what I'm talking about. So that's digital distraction. And I want to talk to you about that in the context of a client. A client who I was working with had recognized that digital distraction was an issue for them. They were outwardly successful, they had it all together, you know, I mean, they, they got shit done, but they never felt like they were moving forward. They were kind of like walking through quicksand because there never seemed to be enough time in the day to get everything done, never mind have time for themselves outside of work. And they had enough self awareness to realize that that was partly down to digital distraction. That was a part of the problem. And by part of the problem, talking about obviously the aspect that they can control, we all have jobs or situations, which is literally a draining. And there's always these we have to do, but there are certain aspects of that that we can control. And they had recognized that digital distraction was a part of the problem, but also something that they could control. And so I asked them if they tried anything to solve this problem before and they said they had, which was great. And that's what you'd expect from someone who has a certain level of self awareness, that they would recognize a problem and try to find a solution. And what they had been doing, what they had been trying was to instill discipline, to instill discipline, to counter the digital distraction. And what that looked like for them is that they would try to leave the phone in another room and then sit down to work. And that way they felt that they wouldn't be distracted by the pinging of the phone, by notifications, or just it would be a little harder. There'd be a little bit of friction in terms of actually picking it up because they'd have to get up, go to another room to get the phone. Okay, and you know, sounds good. People do that, and it works for them. But what this particular person found was that although it worked for a little bit, it. It didn't solve the problem. And actually they were fighting a losing battle because the phone would be in the other room. But in their mind, they'd be thinking about the phone being in the other room, and they'd be battling with this willpower to keep rooted and sat to the spot and focus on the thing that they were doing. But they couldn't fully focus on the thing that they were doing because they were thinking about the phone in the other room. So even though the phone wasn't physically there in front of them, it was still distracting. And eventually they give in, go and get the phone, and just go back to their old habits. And this was frustrating for them. It doesn't mean it's frustrating for everybody, but it was particularly frustrating for them because it wasn't what they wanted to be doing. They didn't want to be wasting, as they saw it, all of this time. And this is why, in my experience, discipline. Discipline can be an ineffective way of changing habits that are deeply entrenched. We all have habits that have. We've lived with for years, and we can't just change them overnight. It takes time. And discipline alone is not the best or most effective means of doing that. Why is that? Well, I say that because to me, discipline is a push factor. What discipline does is it pushes you away from something that you enjoy. The reason you're doing these things is because they bring you some level of comfort, some respite. I mean, a break from the mundane, whatever it may be. So there's a certain level of enjoyment in the action that you're taking. Even if you believe deep down that it's not healthy for you, it's not working for you. So what discipline does is it pushes you away from something that's enjoyable. Now think about a time when you've tried to. You try to invoke willpower and discipline to break a habit, and then think about how that worked for you. If you're anything like me, probably didn't work that well, you know, you probably kept it up for a while. No short while. But in that while, the whole process just made you feel deprived of something and at times probably made you miserable because you were. And then you eventually just gave in and went back to your old habit because you enjoyed it, you found comfort in it. There wasn't any real reason you could think of to kind of stop doing it. Here's an example. Key one is alcohol. So for me, I like drinking. I mean, I used to like drinking and I wasn't necessarily class myself as a huge drinker. But on a night out, you know, I mean, I would go large with the best of them and there'll be times I'd wake up the next day and be like, oh, I don't want to do that again. And I think about, well, maybe, maybe I could cut down on my alcohol consumption or maybe I could just stop altogether. Why not? And so I would occasionally just try to do that and say, I'm not going to drink for the next 30 days, whatever it may be. But I was relying on willpower to see that through. So what I was doing is I was using discipline and willpower to push myself away from something that actually I quite enjoyed. Hanging out with my friend Sickly in Singapore. And end of the, end of a day, you'll sat out on a, in a nice bar, sun is shining, and you have a nice cold beer which then turns into another one and then maybe a cocktail or maybe a few glasses of champagne. Yeah, I'm not going to go through my, my, my nights out and drinking history. That is not the topic of this podcast. But you get the picture. You've probably been there yourself. So you're trying to push yourself away. You know, I mean, you're, you're, you're trying to use willpower to stop you from doing the thing which you really want to do. But what actually helped with stop and drinking was when I started training for my boxing match in 2019. If you don't know about my, my boxing career, one bout, one loss, you can read more about it in the book. But when I started training, I quit for three months and it wasn't a problem. I didn't miss it. And it wasn't discipline that allowed me to quit with relative ease. It was something else. What allowed me to avoid that, to stop doing that, was me asking myself this one question. Hey, I'm interrupting myself to give you this short message. Now if you're Listening to this pod, you're likely looking to change your life. Here's the thing. Transformation doesn't happen by doing what you've always done. It happens when you change your thoughts about what's possible for you. My book, the Triple C Method, helps you do that by giving you the tools and strategies to stop living a life of lethargy and start living life lit, described as a transformational toolkit. And the book I wish I'd had when I decided to leave corporate the Triple C Method will change how you see yourself and how you live your life. Available now as paperback, ebook and audiobook read by yours truly. Head to iamrinespence.com book or over to your favorite bookseller to grab your copy today so you can stop living a life of lethargy and start living life lit. And the one question that I would ask myself is this. How is what I'm doing now getting me closer to where I want to get to? How is what I'm doing now getting me closer to where I want to go? And that one question, it changed everything for me. Because then suddenly, in relation to alcohol, I wasn't depriving myself of something I really wanted to do. I was looking at the fact if I drink now, if I have a drink, how is that helping me get to where I want to get to, which is to be in the peak condition for this fight. And the short answer was that it wasn't. He wasn't doing that at all. And getting in peak condition for that fight was a far stronger draw for me than anything else. So that question acted as a pull as opposed to discipline, which acted as a push. And I always find that you're more excited and you're more committed when you're running towards something than when you're running away from something. That's my experience. That's how I see it. And so I offered this question to the client. I said to them, instead of using discipline, instead of trying what you've already done and it not really working, it feeling like you're depriving yourself or something, what if every time you found yourself scrolling through your phone, every time you picked up your phone to look at something, you asked yourself that question, how is what I'm doing now getting me closer to where I want to go? And it was beautiful because I saw a light bulb shine bright in their brain as I offered this question and they just reframed the way that they thought about what they were doing. And the beauty of this question lies in its simplicity, because and also lies in the fact that you can apply this to any situation you know. If you're binge watching Netflix till the early hours of the morning, if you're prone to shoving a family pack of tortilla chips down your throat of an evening, I don't know who would do a thing like that. If you're used to hitting snooze on your alarm in the morning instead of getting up to get your morning workout in, whatever it is that you're doing and you feel you don't want to be doing, that you feel isn't serving you, instead of trying to instill discipline, instead of using willpower alone to stop you from doing the thing, just get that moment of awareness as to what you're doing and ask yourself in that moment, how is what I'm doing now getting me closer to where I want to go? And then sit and ponder the answer to the question. And look, this is not a podcast. This is not a message telling you, don't scroll on social media. Don't binge watch Netflix. You've got to be productive. You've got to eat healthily all the time. I'm not telling you that about the bullshit. This is life, you know, I mean, life's for living. We've got to enjoy ourselves and actually rest, enjoyment, respite, zoning out in front of the TV sometimes, you know, they can all be helpful in getting you to where you want to go, because we need to switch off sometimes. We need that downtime. We need some enjoyment in our lives. So it's not about looking at the act itself and saying that act is bad, because there are no bad acts. You know, I mean, it's all about how you frame them, how you see them. It's about looking at what you're doing in that moment and asking yourself that question in that moment. If you're sat on the sofa in the evening with your significant other, watching a show that you both really enjoy, asking yourself, how is what I'm doing now getting me closer to where I want to go? Can be lots of things. It can be, well, I'm getting the rest that I need. It can be, I'm spending quality time with my partner. You know, I mean, there can be lots of reasons why you can ask that question. Yeah, it's getting me there, and this is how. And you can continue enjoying what you're doing if you're binge watching Netflix in the middle of the day when you've got a part of work to do and things that you should be getting on with, then the answer to that question might be slightly different. But only you will know if what you're doing is helping or hindering your progress. But here's the caveat. This technique, this question would only work if you have clarity. This is why clarity is key. Because to know if what you're doing is getting you to where you want to go, then obviously you have to know where you're heading. You have to have clarity on what it is that you want. You have to have clarity on the vision, the life that you're trying to create for yourself. Because then you can answer the question, how is this getting you there in relation to where it is you're trying to get to? If you don't know where you're getting to, then there's no reason to ask the question. And you'll just keep doing things just from autopilot or because you feel that you should, or because somebody told you to. There'll be no real intention, no real rhyme or reason to the actions that you're taking. So how is it. How is what I'm doing now getting me closer to where I want to get to? To have that question, that powerful question work for you, you need to have clarity on where it is you want to get to. And if you've never really sat down and thought about where it is that you want to get to, if you've never painted a picture of the life that you want, if you don't have clarity as to what a living a life that's lit looks like for you, then it's great that you're here listening to this podcast. And also, I want to offer you something else if you listen to the previous episode. Triple C101 is available now, and Triple C101 is simple. It's a short mini course that covers the three aspects of the Triple C method. Clarity, confidence, and courage. So, talking about today's episode and clarity. If you don't have clarity as to what is that you want, the place to start is with figuring out your values. Triple C101 core module 1 is all about clarity. And not only do I tell you what it is, why you need it, and how to get it, I give you one simple exercise that you can do immediately after watching the video to help you start to get that clarity by figuring out what your core values are, looking at where you're not living in alignment with those values, and then figuring out what you need to do to move yourself into alignment, to realign yourself with the values that Core values that make up who you really are or who is that you want to be. It's a really powerful exercise. It's something that I've done myself, that I periodically come back to, and it's something that I share it with my clients as well to great, great results. So Triple C 101 will give you that. Also, there are exercises in relation to confidence and courage, as you would expect. So if you need help getting clarity, if you want to start using this powerful question, how is what I'm doing now getting me closer to where I want to get to? And you need to know where it is you want to get to. Start with clarity and start with figuring out your values, where you're in alignment and where you're not in alignment and how you can get realigned to get you from that life of lethargy towards living a life that's lit. The link is in the show notes or you can head to the link in my bio on Instagram or drop me an email. You can find me@heyam Ryan Spence.com and you get all the deets to join Triple C. That's it for me this week. I hope this has helped you look at distractions through a slightly different lens and also giving you a key takeaway as to how you can start to deal with those distractions so they can stop derailing you from the path that you want to be on. And that's it for me until next week. As always, stop living a life of lethargy and start living life lit. Thanks for tuning in. But before you go, the weight of limiting beliefs is heavy. It literally weighs you down and keeps you stuck in that life of lethargy. I know. It's why I stayed in Big Law for so long, and it's why so many of my clients don't believe they can do the things that they want to do. But what causes those limiting beliefs? It's a lack of confidence. Lack of confidence in the belief that you can do the things that you want to do. And I've got something for that. It's my confidence journal. It's six journal prompts that I created that I've used to help me get from where I am to where I want to be. To help to give me the belief to do the things that seem outside of my control, outside of what I can do. If this sounds like you, you need to get your hands on the journal. Best thing about it, it's free. All you have to do is head to iamrinespence.com hit the button for Confidence Journal and get your copy today. It's going to help you start to reframe your thoughts and get you thinking about what you can do instead of focusing on what you can't do and shed that load of limiting beliefs that you don't need to be carrying. See you again next week. And until that time, stop living a life of lethargy and start living life lit.