Banish Writers Block For Good By Eliminating What Doesn’t Matter
Doing this will not only help productivity but ease anxiety.
The other day I walked into a 7/11 and saw something unfortunate. All the slot machines were taken with people playing. No one who is playing these slot machines looks like they’re having fun. They all looked like they were zombies.
I see the same face on people when they are doomscrolling on their phones. Occasionally, you’ll see people on their phones and they’ll chuckle a little bit at something funny but for the most part, people look miserable doing it.
Internet companies want to keep you hooked, they want you to have a wide variety of interests and an algorithm that will change with that. Just the other day on YouTube, I looked up something about Pokemon because I couldn’t remember how something went in the game that I played when I was a kid. All of a sudden, my YouTube feed was filled with Pokemon content.
Learn to gain control of your life and focus on the things that matter. Every action on the internet has a reaction whether you realize it or not. The algorithm is curating around you. Your brain is going off focus on the thing that the algorithm curated. Everything you do on the internet is an attempt to pull focus away from whatever it is that you intended to do in the first place.
Spreading Yourself Thin
With the internet, almost all the world's knowledge is put to the tips of our fingers and any subject is accessible in seconds. It sounds amazing but there were a few downsides that weren’t thought about. All the safeguards of our brains to be able to truly zone in on something were lost.
How often do you look into a topic that you find interesting then within 5 seconds of it becoming challenging you move on to something else?
Even in the beginning stages of writing this article, I texted my fiancé then immediately after, I started to check Instagram. Then the Instagram feed prompted me to think about, “I should write about this subject instead.”
The irony is that this derailed my train of thought when writing an article about focus.
Potentialville Mindset
“Potentialville” is a term that I made up when you think you could do something someday but you either feel that you don’t have the time or tools yet to do it.
The problem you fail to see is that you must first eliminate something from your life before you can add. You will never have the potential for anything without eliminating something.
There’s no such thing as “free time.” We fill every second with something and to do something else means eliminating something you intended to do.
Being efficient with your time can be a massive shift in your life. Those 10 minutes that you waste on your phone and check social media may seem harmless at the moment but they add up.
When I checked how much I was on my phone a large chunk of it was either going down an internet rabbit hole on my browser or listening to YouTube in the background.
Those segments of time may not seem like a lot because how productive can you be in 10 minutes? But if you shifted those little time windows around, you might be able to squeeze an hour into your day.
Think of it differently. Imagine if you didn’t think of your time as “time to kill” and used it to make small steps toward something meaningful. Those little moments could add up to something big.
The concerns which fail are those which have scattered their capital, which means that they have scattered their brains also. They have investments in this, or that, or the other, here, there and everywhere. “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” is all wrong. I tell you “put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket.” Look round you and take notice; men who do that do not often fail. It is easy to watch and carry the one basket. It is trying to carry too many baskets that breaks most eggs in this country. He who carries three baskets must put one on his head, which is apt to tumble and trip him up. One fault of the American business man is lack of concentration. — Andrew Carnegie
Put All Your Eggs In One Basket
I don’t like the term “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” because it tells you to play it safe.
Maybe you should put all your eggs in one basket but make sure you have the right amount of eggs in it.
Often when we put eggs all in one basket, we pay a lot more attention to the eggs that we do have. The stakes are a lot higher.
When you spread your attention across multiple realms, you inherently sacrifice the attention you put on something else. There is no escaping sacrificing something.
Ask yourself these questions:
What do you spend most of your time on? (There are a lot of tools like screen time on your phone or even blocking out your calendar).
What is something in life that can you cut out? (Video games, streaming, social media?)
How much time do you spend on your phone? Is it 3–4 hours a day? More?
Is what you are doing right now benefiting you?
Set a goal to go only a week without any social media apps on your phone and turn off all notifications (except for maybe calls and texts).
You’ll be shocked how little you miss them. The only thing that you will notice is the impulse to check them in the beginning is strong. After I deleted almost every app on my phone, I impulsively typed Instagram into the search.
If you have an iPhone, turn off all the apps for Siri App Search. This will add a little extra friction when you want to check an app.
If you’re working on your computer, put whatever you’re working on in the full screen, and do not leave that screen until you are done. Tim Ferris’s technique for writing is to add “TK” next to lines that he needs to revisit because he can search it easily in the finder.
Applying This To Life
Sit down and ask yourself what your interests actually are. Grab a pen and paper and write down everything that you find interesting. Now, narrow that list down to three things. What would you have to choose?
Those should be the interests that you mainly focus 80% of your time on. You can dedicate the other 20% of your time to following your curiosities but make sure you are intentional about doing that. One technique that I use is to save everything to a list. Your phone browser typically has a reading list feature, YouTube has a list of features to watch later. If I’m ever online and see something that catches my curiosity, I’ll save it for later. I have time dedicated to consuming that kind of content.
Ever since I have started following these rules for myself, writing has become so much more efficient. My new writing routine is to put my phone on “Do Not Disturb” set my computer at full screen on my writing app and go. I’m not allowed to stop writing until the time I dedicate to writing is over.
Seeing results from doing this doesn’t happen overnight. When you first start doing it, you will still have all those random thoughts floating around in your head. It takes some time for it to normalize. After it normalizes, writer's block will feel like a thing of the past.