Chapter Twenty-Seven. Distracted by Distractions

The blank page. The empty canvas. The vacant screen. Some people find the moment before creativity so unbearable that they quit. Rather than endure the uncertainty of making something new, they look at their phones. And that’s just one of many things vying for our attention. Unable to take it all in, we split our attention into small fragments to handle everything that is coming our way.

Worried what we might miss, we continually search, scour, and scan. We check our devices nonstop, never turning them off. Linda Stone calls this “continuous partial attention,” and it leads to worry and an artificial sense of constant crisis that permeates our lives. So we feel overwhelmed. And with so much to process, we are forced to become experts in not going very deep.

Almost every form of art requires focus and thought. I like to think of art as occupying the space between the noise. I love how the renowned musician Artur Schnabel reflected on his craft: “The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes—ah, that is where the art resides.”

To create art, or to make life a work of art, is to get beyond the surface and to connect in a deep and meaningful way. As Aristotle argued, “Art isn’t about the outward appearance but the inner significance of things.” The best art connects, resonates, and makes us feel. It stirs up our senses and provokes change. And I’m not just talking about art in the traditional sense. Art isn’t only painting, photography, or dance. Art can be anything that’s done with the right intent. You can restore a car or make a sandwich as if it were art. And sure, there are “capital A” and “lowercase a” art. But that isn’t the point. The point is that most of us have abandoned art because we have wrongly believed that it was the domain of someone else.

Art isn’t just for them; it’s also for you. Regardless of your age, gender, or skill, you have artistic potential. Artists aren’t only those with cameras, pens, or brushes in their hands. There is an art to relationships, commerce, war, telling jokes, and grilling in your backyard. The author Seth Godin nailed it when he said, “An artist is anyone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. An artist takes it personally.” Creating art is not about materials but about your aim. And the greatest work of art you should pursue is making your life more than it is.

If Aristotle was right and “we are what we repeatedly do,” then we are in trouble. Deep trouble. All these distractions are killing our creativity. As the Buddhist teacher Judy Lief suggests, “Distraction is the very foundation of ego, the way we protect ourselves against both the pain of life and the open space of awakened mind.” When we are bored, frustrated, angry, or sad we reach for our phones. This cuts us off from key emotional states that could potentially help us create. And it might be that all this distraction is holding us back from creating our best work and leading better lives.

It doesn’t really matter to me how many times a consumer checks her favorite social media site. But it does matter to me if you are a creator. If you are a student of the creative life—and if you want to be a creator—you should care as well. For creators, the more distractions there are, the less significant the work is. If you want to create something worthwhile, you have to step out of the fray and practice your craft—the cook to the kitchen, the scientist to the lab, and the writer to the page. Otherwise, the habit of distraction can even change the way you think. Neuroscientists tell us that repetitive actions form habits and that habits mold the very structure of the brain. The more we practice a habit the stronger it becomes. As the scientists like to say, “Neurons that fire together, wire together.” After multiple years of giving in to distraction, imagine how strong the nerve wires have become. The neural pathways are hard to resist.

When we are distracted we stare at the world with vacant eyes. And it used to be that a vacant stare meant that you were ill. Now it just means that the phone in your pocket buzzed. Socially, being partially present has become OK. We all switch-task, so we don’t mind it so much when others do as well. When families sit down to eat, some do so without looking each other in the eyes. When one person pulls out a phone, others can do the same. And who’s to blame? It’s hard to resist all the distractions in our frenetic and fast-paced lives. Life is more complicated than it used to be, at least that’s what we tell ourselves. But it isn’t true.

Charles Dickens was a struggling author who couldn’t “hear himself think,” so he hired a carpenter to help. On the entrance to his upstairs study, he had the carpenter install two thick doors. Dickens knew that nothing is more dangerous to the creative spark than distraction and distress. So he blocked out the noise by creating a barrier that was twice the size of most.

A few thousand years earlier, Buddha was worried about his followers and their fragmented minds. So he taught them ways to cultivate mindfulness that comes from within. Whether we go back a few hundred or a few thousand years, distractions have always been present.

The humorist John Cleese (of Monty Python fame) said, “We don’t know where ideas come from, but we do know that they don’t come from a laptop.” For Cleese, the key to creativity is to get into a “creative state of mind.” The best way to do this is to create space and time that is free of interruptions. He calls this the “tortoise enclosure” of the creative mind. Cleese explains, “If you’re racing around all day ticking things off lists, looking at your watch, making phone calls, and generally just keeping all the balls in the air, you are not going to have any creative ideas.”

In order to generate more creative thoughts, we need to climb up a simple ladder and retreat. Away from the responsibilities of day-to-day life, the creative mind flourishes. We need to take time to relearn how to concentrate and think. That’s one reason that meditation has become such a widespread practice in the western world. Alain de Botton sizes the problem up this way: “Relearning how to concentrate is one of the great challenges of our time. To sit still and think, without succumbing to an anxious reach for a machine, has become almost impossible.” And it’s not just concentration that we need—we need focus, clarity, mindfulness, and empathy if we want to become more creatively alive.