distraction Archives - CLIPPING CHAINS

May 6, 2024May 4, 2024

What Two Writers Taught Me About How to Think

In 1949, a college junior named Barbara Beattie wrote a letter for a school journalism assignment. We can only speculate on Beattie’s youthful expectations: Was she so naive to expect a response, or were these different times? She’d written playwright Arthur Miller at a time when the Broadway run of his most famous work, The Death of a Salesman, was in full swing. He had every reason to ignore a college student’s inquiries into the “formal genesis” of his now-legendary work. What Beattie received–a sprawling and deeply thoughtful essay on man’s common and timeless tragedies–must have impacted her greatly. After all, she’s kept it for seventy-five years. Beattie’s daughter found the letter when helping her mother, now 94, move out of her home.

February 6, 2023February 5, 2023

The Power of the Four-Hour Work Day (even in retirement)

We live in a distracted world where depth of investigation is discouraged. Despite increases in scientific spending, the number of publications, or the amount of PhDs being awarded, major discoveries in science and engineering have declined significantly in recent decades. The new-music market is shrinking, and old hits are dominating. We are working more days and longer hours, but US productivity growth is way down. A society that produces meaningful output is a healthy society, but meaningful output is arguably on the decline in many fields.

I argue that distraction and “noise” are key inhibitors to a healthy and progressing society. In the nearly three years since I quit my job, I’ve been forced to examine my strong tendency toward distraction. What follows is a discussion of methods that I’ve found incredibly useful in retraining my brain for deep and focused work and why that matters so much today. Our peak potential resides in no more than four hours per day.

June 10, 2019April 3, 2020

Digital Minimalism: Give Me Back My Brain

We’ve all seen the dramatic shift to mobile technology in the last decade. This explosion of digital information is making us freaks and zombies. I’ve just finished reading Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport. The message here to get back our brain is so important that I started writing this post before I even finished the book. And I’ll be the first say: I struggle to optimize my digital life. So, I come to you humble and broken from my own digital beat-down.