A couple of days ago, I made the decision to do something about my constant need for distraction and its subsequent effects on my inability to focus and do hard things for long periods of time. The approach to dealing with this bad habit is not novel, but it has worked for me on multiple occasions to build good habits, so I have gone to the same source this time around as well. Yup, it's the habit man, James Clear.
What I have also found is that this approach of doing the simplest version, or doing one thing to be a little bit better at a thing, works for all aspects of life, especially for those tasks which are new and novel to you.
Fixing my biggest time sink
So let's get to it. What am I doing? I've made the habit less obvious by removing the remote to the TV (yes, I watch YouTube on TV) far away from the couch. The table in front of the couch only has books on it now. This is the crazy bit: in the evening, I'm allowed to watch one movie. I'm calling it the movie of the month, and...I watch the same movie the entire month. This month it is King Arthur. I like Guy Ritchie movies; he has layers to his stories. I've already watched it twice in the last two days. This should be interesting. The reason for this insane idea is that I want it to be boring to watch something on the TV, in the hopes of using that energy elsewhere.
Right off the bat, I've noticed a few things already. There is some reason why I am distracting myself. I find that I get anxious for no apparent reason at times. Something to look into. I've been so bored that I've been taking naps and going to bed on time. On the plus side, my reading has gone up by quite a lot. It's far too early to have all that energy shift to work, but I will be nudging it in that direction. I want to love my work, not just my side projects. After all, I will be benefiting from it, as I own the software.