Distraction Nation

Aren't we all a little ADD?

photo by Carmella Guiol

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been immersing myself in all things ADHD and learning more about how my brain works. It’s been an overwhelming experience, reevaluating my whole life with this new information.

I’ve been trying to parse out – what’s ADHD and what’s my personality? What’s ADHD and what’s society, culture, the water we’re swimming in?

Is ADHD the reason why I struggle so much with social media and smartphone addiction? Or are we all a little bit ADHD these days?

We live in a highly distractible world. I don’t think you have to have an ADHD diagnosis to struggle with the pull of the internet and all its flashy baubles. It’s a question of intensity, I guess. We’re all on a spectrum of distractibility — some more than others.

And yet, all the books I’ve been reading about ADHD do address at length the particular challenges of having ADHD in our modern internet era. One of the better-known books, ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life, is written by acclaimed professional organizer Judith Kolberg and Dr. Kathleen Nadeau, renowned ADHD clinical psychologist. When they revised their book in 2016, the authors added several new chapters to include “organizing digital information” and “coping with the ‘black hole’ of the Internet.”

In Phil Boissiere’s book, Thriving with Adult ADHD, he has this wisdom to impart about managing your relationship to your smartphone: Improve your self-control. He offers this exercise to help strengthen the self-control muscle: text several friends, turn your notifications and ringer volume way up, put your phone facedown, and don’t pick it up when it beeps, buzzes or rings.

I’m sorry but I’m going to have to call bullshit on that one.

First of all, this idea that our addiction to our phones is simply a matter of lacking self-control is maddening, especially for people with ADHD. Our phones are designed by teams of scientists who understand how to tap into our neurology in order to make them more addictive. Having ADHD means that I’m impulsive and I have trouble prioritizing tasks and staying focused. These are simple facts.

The approach that I’m trying to take with my ADHD is this one:

how can I work with my ADHD brain instead of against it?

I know that I could do this exercise as he suggests and maybe not look at my phone for half an hour. But I promise you that my attention will still be on my phone and those messages that are waiting for me. My attention will not be focused on the task at hand and the quality of my attention will suffer as a result.

What are ways that we can work with our digital addictions instead of against them?

For me, I try to designate blocks of time that are specifically for focused attention, where my attention won’t be split by all the sparkly distractions beckoning from the phone and the internet.

Sometimes, I must take extreme measures.

I have an old dinosaur of a laptop from a million years ago that I use for all my focused writing time. This laptop is never connected to the internet. I have a newer laptop which is where I do all the internet stuff: emails, banking, Wikipedia wormholes, etc. I try to keep the internet laptop and my phone out of my room when I’m writing, but I’m not always successful. Yesterday, I decided I needed to remove myself from all access to the internet, so I went to my writing studio and left my cell phone at home. In this little room in my neighbor’s basement, I have nothing to do but write, and if I’m not writing, I must sit with my boredom and stare it in the face. I literally leave myself no other choice.

The most productive time in my life as a writer was when I lived in a house without internet and I hadn’t yet switched over to a smartphone… Oh, how I miss those days! These days, I might decide to power my phone off for hours at a time to give myself space from the phone’s constant siren’s call. My landline remains as a link to the outside world, should my family or friends need to contact me, but I have removed the easy access to the internet and its many black holes that I so readily fall into.

Perhaps you don’t need to take as extreme measures as myself. Perhaps apps like Freedom work for you, or perhaps you’re able to switch more easily between deep, creative work and internet distractions. Maybe the neurotypical brain is better at going between those worlds.

In learning about ADHD, I am also learning about many “hacks” or strategies to help me focus and stay on task. Many of them I have done haphazardly over the years, not knowing they were tried and true ADHD strategies. I think some of them may be helpful around digital addiction whether you have ADHD or not.

Here’s a fun one: before you pick up your phone, speak out loud the reason why you are reaching for your phone. So often, we pick up our phone and immediately forget what we were planning to do on the phone. Saying it out loud first gives your brain a better chance at remembering before you get bombarded by all the apps, notifications and noise.

My ADHD brain will jump at any chance to be distracted. Transitions are difficult, and time management is a constant struggle. Sure, I can try to fight against the neurology of my brain, or I can simply accept its limitations and set up systems that meet me where I’m at.

Life is hard enough as it is; why make it even harder?

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