Distractions - FRAZZLED
Mon, 2 Dec 2024
0:01 - Kelly Swingler
Hello, hello and welcome to another episode of Frazzled with me your host Kelly Swingler. Today I want to talk about distractions. Distractions right and how these can cause us to like be utterly, utterly, utterly frazzled. Right that's that's where we're going today. If you are joining me on video you may see I have a new addition, a little frazzled which is a little gift that I sent here. So Frazzled the podcast. If you are listening, maybe just have a quick look on the YouTube channel at the video. I've got this gorgeous, gorgeous Frazzled the podcast neon light. Let me have a play with this actually. I've got different light colours. I've gone for almost kind of branding, right? In terms of the orange. But look at these, we've got blues, we've got purples, we've got oranges, we've got more purple. In fact, I quite like that one. That says it's red, but that's orange. There we go. So, hello, hello. Welcome to another episode, as I said. So, distractions. I think this is one for lots of us, right? But I think particularly at this time of year, so at the point of recording this, we've just started December, we are seeing, I'm definitely seeing, I have been doing for the last couple of weeks, right, I think it's even a little bit longer than that, since we got into the like final quarter of this year, it's just been panic wrap, and I'm seeing more and more people who were really like really trying to get so much stuff done, but everybody else is really like dumping last minute stuff on people and constant interruptions and constant distractions and, and all of that stuff. So I suppose today, let's maybe see if we can eliminate some of the distractions that we have. Right. And I mean, by distraction, let's talk about just the things that are like stealing our time, energy, focus and attention. Can you hear that? If you can't, there's a ridiculously loud plane flying over my house. Louder and louder and louder. We say we're uncut and edited. Barbie's like, do I press stop and start again? The answer is no. And again. From a values perspective, I have always said that Brazzled is uncut, unedited, unscripted. I don't just say it, right? I do it, and I live it, and I breathe it. But sometimes when things like that happen, I need to change it, right? I need to do something about it because this isn't right. That kind of defeats the object, doesn't it? But again, as I'm sat here, Can you hear me? It's going to be one of those that this should be one that we start again. I've just realized I've just checked my sound, right? And it says it's coming through my microphone, but my microphone's all the way over there. So maybe the sound quality will improve now at the same time that we've stopped hearing planes go overhead, right? But this is, this is part and parcel of it. If we're doing uncut and edited, this is what we get, right? Things are not always perfect or seamless. Or any of those things and potentially, right? How timely was the really, really loud plane that had gone over the house when that was all I could hear when we're talking about distractions, right? That's a distraction. And what happens when we experience distractions, right? Is that where, you know, does our energy and attention go to the distraction? Or are we able to keep ourselves centered, focused, grounded, focused on what it is that we are doing? Do we sometimes ignore the distraction? I suppose that comes back, doesn't it? Do you remember that video during 2020 of the guy that was on BBC News? I think it was BBC News, wasn't it? And the baby comes in on the baby walk. And the nanny kind of rushes in afterwards, right? And I mean, he was doing his best, right, to pretend that what was going on in the background wasn't going on in the background, but actually the rest of us can see it. And so sometimes, like, at what point do we acknowledge that the distraction is stealing our energy and attention when everybody else maybe can kind of see what's happening? So at what point do we kind try to ignore it? At what point do we lose some of our energy and attention? But how much of it, whatever it is in the way that we're doing it, right? How much of that is causing our stress levels to rise? How much of that is causing us to get to that point of feeling frazzled? And what is it that we can do about it? Over the next few weeks, I'm sure the distractions are going to mount, right? Whether it is last minute questions, whether it's last minute priorities, and let's talk about when we say priority, let's talk about what that actually means, right? Priority for who? Just because it's a priority for somebody else doesn't mean it's a priority for you. We've got all of this stuff going on. And I'm still seeing organizations that talk about the 10 priorities that we need to get done. That's not how a priority works. A priority isn't 10 things. What's happening with emails, notifications, social media posts, the FOMO posts, right? Maybe the events that you're not going to. Got all of those things. So let's today kind of try and unpick some of what those things look like, right? And let's see if we can find some, I don't know, some solutions, some fixes. Let's see what we can kind of change, right? So the first distraction that I want us to talk about today is notifications. Notifications. I have on my phone no notifications, she says, and then a bit of a text message. It's a DPD text message. So what I do have, I have texts, phone calls and WhatsApp that flash up on my phone, mainly because they are the only ways really that my family, my partner, my kids, that's how we communicate. I have no notifications for any of my social media platforms. I have no notifications for my emails. I have, well, I'm trying to think what else I have on there now. I think I have a banking notification So any transactions that go from my bank, whether it's money in or money out, will come up as a notification. Any updates, if there's any updates that need doing that, will come up as a notification. And I do have, I think I've mentioned this to you all before, but I also use an app blocking app. I use an app called Opal, which switches off whichever apps that I choose really, but it switches off my, my sort of stop all blocks. It blocks whichever apps I set for specific times of the day. So in terms of current blocks, I think on this one, I'll double check whilst I'm kind of talking to you, but I think the most I've got one, I think that it's blocked from like 10 till four. That might be just weekends. Let's have Let's have a double look. So the blocks that I have, I have weekdays, my apps blocks. I can't from my phone. The things that I've stopped are like shopping apps, house apps. I'm still a bit of a kind of right move geek. I love, I just, I love looking at really expensive houses. No, like right move. I'm always looking at houses. That stops. So think like shopping, houses and social media blocked between the hours of 10 and three on weekdays. I then cannot get on any of my apps, unless it's like a meditation app. I don't always use an app, but sometimes it's nice to be able to have it. So my music and my meditation. I think I've got a couple of exercise ones as well. They block between eight at night and 11 o'clock at night, and then I'm usually fast asleep anyway. And then I have a block that goes from eight in the morning until 4 p.m. On a Sunday. And I will then kind of switch it off and change what I wanted to do. Last week, I was at my friend's very first event, and then I had my book launch on Friday. If you've missed that, where have you been, firstly? So for those couple of days, because you can in advance stop the blocks as they go through. So for those couple of days, I knew that I would want to be posting and sharing and being able to kind of comment on posts or whatever as they came up. So on those days, removed the blocks, allowed myself to, like gave myself permission, right, to engage on social media and do what it is that I wanted to do. But for the rest of the time, it's a no. I don't want to be on there. I don't want the distraction of it. And whilst, and this is, I think for me, this is a bit of a catch-22 for any of you where social media is really, you know, a way, a very effective way of where you, of how you work, how you maybe, you know, if you're self-employed or you've got your own business, maybe if you are employed, but maybe social media like is a really big part business growth or how you get your message out there, it definitely is for me. But at the same time, I cannot afford mentally or emotionally to spend as much time as I do on social media because it does me no good at all. I mentioned a few weeks ago, I think I mentioned to you all a few weeks ago that I'm kind of having a big flare-up. So as a result of two periods of burnout, I live with these three chronic health conditions. And I've been kind of in flare-up mode now for quite a few weeks, over a month probably now, with one of these conditions in particular. It's really impacting me. And like, I'm just constant, constant, constant pain. It's impacting how I'm sleeping. It's impacting my, you know, how I feel physically. And when those things happen, then starts to impact me mentally and emotionally. And when one of those conditions that I live with is a chronic mental health condition, I don't want to be at a point where my mental health is being affected. And it's almost like I have to kind of work doubly on keeping myself happy, healthy and sane throughout winter, regardless of what I do for the rest of the year. But I think as soon as the clocks change, This, you know, it all kind of goes. But when I'm in that, the last thing really that is any good for me whatsoever is scrolling on social media. And I'm sure we can probably all relate to this, right? I see even like some of my best, best, best friends that I see on the, so I'm like, well, they're doing better than me. They're doing better. And I go into this huge comparison mode and that's, me like I am definitely something like I celebrate people, I lift people up, I want to like huge cheerleader and yet if I find myself and that's my telltale right if I'm looking at some of my best friends and I'm like oh my god like I don't get off socials right because that is not a healthy place for me to be in because like takes me away from where I am I go into that comparison mode I start feeling less than I start to feel inadequate. And all of that stuff, all of that noise, all of those feelings are distractions that take me away from my priorities, right? They take me away from myself. They take me away from my values. They take me away from life in general, right? It becomes a huge distraction for me. And that's just not what we want. But I also know like some of you have got those notifications on all of the time, every single email, every single social media post, every single like, every single comment, what is that doing for you? That's my question when it comes to that, right? What is it doing for you? That's just your socials, right? There's other stuff that I want to talk about today. In addition, as I suppose, following on maybe from our socials, I want to talk to you about desktop notifications. I use one app for my interactions and everything that I do in the Burnout Club and the Burnout Academy. And I have been, and it might even have come up whilst I've been recording some of these podcasts, like the video ones that I've been doing, this really kind of like ding. I'm like where is that coming from I thought I've been checking my settings. The settings all appear to be silent. I've been making sure my focus is on my computer and yet I've still been getting these notifications through. And just as I was about to come and record this episode this morning, it started doing it again. It's like ping. I'm like where is that coming from I've gone into my settings. I found another bit in my settings that hadn't even checked. Like it was kind of hidden somewhere, but it was the bit that was about the sound. So notifications is in one bit and then sound was in another. Turn the sound off. For weeks that has been a distraction. And not just the sound of it that's been a distraction, but it has then taken my thought process. But where is that coming from, right? It's caused frustration. The distraction has started to cause frustration. This, right? So I then be finding myself going off, like off down a rabbit hole, searching in the app again, like why is it doing this? I'm spending too much time looking at my own notifications, my sound, what's turned on, what's turned off, where am I going? So every single time that that sound has triggered, it has sent me off down a rabbit hole somewhere. Distraction that I do not need. I don't, unlike some of you, I know some of you that are working, I know you are getting Teams notifications, Slack notifications, however many other things that you're using. I know some of my friends in terms of their, or even, you know, some of my clients, right, in terms of their CRM systems, or in terms of some of their project management systems, just in terms, like for some, but just, I use with my, like we use Monday, right, monday.com to plot Um, and lots of other people tell me that I should be moving onto that. I'm not, I'm not here to plug, uh, any platforms. Uh, but I think that's just one that is for me is easy to use. Easy to navigate, just like simple, but again, I had to turn the notifications off because even in my inbox, in my emails, and this is part of what the system shoes for, right? If there's an update, if there's a reminder or something needs to happen, it's an email in your inbox, it's an email in your inbox. I don't want my inbox being filled with emails because again, for me, that's a distraction. If I do go to check my emails and I have set times of the day where I'm in my emails, but if I'm there like, oh my God, I've got 500 emails that I need to work through and 499 of them are notifications from the system that is supposed to be keeping me more organized and helping me be more organized and keeping me on top of For me, that's stuff I don't need. And then the distraction and time it's taking to delete those 499 emails or look at them or go, I don't need it. For me, I genuinely want to minimize as many distractions as I can. I do that with set times of the day that I'm on my socials, apart from days like book launches or keynote speaks, keynote speaking gigs, where I want to be interacting as quickly as I can with the comments, right? I don't want people, I don't want to feel, I stopped myself, I was like, I don't want people thinking I'm, it's not about that. I don't want to keep people waiting. If people have been generous enough and kind enough to share thoughts and feedback about events that I've been at or things that I've done or said on the stage, to be able to respond to those things as quickly as possible. That's my want. So in those particular days, I factor that into my energy for that day. But it's not then something that I want to kind of carry on with days and days and days and days after. So there's that part of it. But I have set times of every day where I'm in my emails, where I'm in my WhatsApp, where I'm in my social media. Anything outside of that for me is a distraction. And I can lose myself for hours in some of those distractions. So again, how can you minimize some of those things to stop you being that, because again, right, a lot of the time, the distractions are causing more frustration, which is then leading to more stress, which is causing us to feel more stressed. More frazzled, which ultimately then is moving us away from who we are. It's pulling us away from like our values, the way in which we want to work, our energy, our time, our attention. And it can then be a contributing factor towards burnout because we start to step away from who we are. So anything that we can do to change that, I just think is brilliant. I also, there was something that came up and I did, this was again, right, another distraction. Something came up as I was having a scroll through Instagram that was talking about clutter. And actually how clutter, not only is it a distraction, but it can steal our mental energy. If we've got, I don't know, a pile of clothes that need putting away, or there's a pile of papers that we need to deal with, or there's something that is causing like clutter or mess or any of those sorts of things. There was something that I did and I then got distracted. Looking for the research reports around it and everything. I'm not going to go into a huge amount of detail with this today, but basically, if there is a lot of clutter, it causes us mental distractions. And it's the amount of time that has something to do with our sight. And then when we see it, the messages that get passed to our brain, they're basically constantly telling us we need to do something with this stuff. I, and I say this with like full like tops of my bookcases, but like a lot of the rest of my house, like I have clear surfaces, like clear window sills, I have clear countertops, I have clear cabinet tops. I've got elements of it, like I love photographs, I've got kind of clusters of photographs, I've got clusters of pictures on my wall, but as much as possible, I want clear. In terms of my wardrobe, I've got it sorted, that's all my jackets, that's all my trousers, that's all my jumpers, that's all my tops. And I've, like, even that, like, is color-coded as much as possible, because if it's not, and I'm trying to find something, again, the different colors, the different layouts, everything, is a distraction that I don't need, because I can get, oh, like, I completely forgot I had that, whereas in my head, actually, how I, right, I wanna wear that thing today, I go find that thing, because I know where it is, I don't need to get distracted with anything else.
21:09 - Kelly Swingler
So today I genuinely like, I suppose, again, like an invitation, all of these episodes, I nearly said articles, but all of these episodes really are, I suppose, just an invitation, right, for us to look at what it is that we're doing. Because many of us, I know, are getting really pissed off and really fed up with the amount of distractions that we have, right? We get really annoyed by all of the notifications, but we don't think to turn the notifications off. We get really distracted by the interruptions, but we don't think of doing that stop the interruptions. We get really sick and tired of trying to focus on one thing and then seeing all of the tens of thousands of emails that are coming, notifications from different platforms and different systems that are supposed to be there to help us but then become a bigger distraction. We get distracted by the clutter, the stuff, right? We're all being told we need more of everything and yet it just becomes a distraction. I am loving at the moment, again, I come back to social media, But I'm loving, I saw one this morning as I was kind of putting a post, a post out because I have been, I've got a three-page spread in a magazine this month. Brand U Magazine is what it's called, Brand U Magazine. I've got a three-page spread in there this morning, which I'm loving. Just went to post that on my Instagram stories. And again, like this feed has come up, but like normalizing normal Christmas, right? This is my tree with minimal baubles. This is my normal, I think, what was it? It was like a Cadbury, like a Cadbury advent calendar, like normalizing normal advent calendars. That bloody elf's about, I get it, isn't it? My sister-in-law is already sharing in the family group about what the bloody elf's up to. But again, right, is it a distraction? It's stress, honestly, this bloody elf stresses my sister-in-law out. Every single year. And yet my other nieces wouldn't even know what the elf was. How much of the stuff that we do is we do it because we genuinely want to do it? How much of it is so we can just post pictures every day to try to make ourselves out to be the best parents in the world? How much of it is to keep up with the comparison and the distraction of comparison and comparing ourselves to everybody else. How much of the notifications and distractions and clutter and stuff do we have because we are trying to compare ourselves to others? We're not really like, do I really need? And this was again, this was one for me. I have a Stanley cup. I have a cream Stanley cup. There was a huge thing about Stanley cups, right? And I'm one of these people that is terrible at remembering to drink anyway. So I am one of these, like one of these knobs that constantly carrying, uh, carrying my water around with me daily to like, uh, all day, every day, right. To sip it. Um, I have recently started to have glasses of water on my desk. And by the end of the day, I've still got like a glass of water on my desk, but it's something different about my little cup and just being able to sip it through a straw. But I was, I, um, this had been in the dishwasher yesterday. I went to fill it, uh, for, I went to bed and as kind of taken it as I went to bed. I found my pink Stanley cup because again, social media, it's like, we've got some nice colors. Here's a neon one. I was like, I need a neon one. I got distracted last because I'd always thought these were the same size. Turns out my pink one is almost double the size of this one. Had absolutely no idea. The thought process, the energy that that took last night. So I was like, I wonder how much bigger it is. And that was because I was overtired. I was overstimulated. I was still kind of recovering, if you like, from the hangover of last week in terms of book launch. I got totally distracted on comparing the sizes of my Stanley cups. Bloody ridiculous, right? I don't need two, but I clearly got sucked into it whilst I was in a scrolling mode because at that moment in time, I was convinced that I needed an addition. You don't need more than one. Bloody Stanley Cup. Like, how often are you getting distracted by the stuff and the clutter? I keep trying to clear out, right? I keep trying, like, I've got this kind of, I'd love, I'd love a capsule wardrobe. I haven't got a bloody capsule wardrobe. Firstly, I can't decide on one colour. I can't decide on one style. And then I just, yeah, and here's, maybe we do this as an I'm gonna, I'll do this as the next one. I'm gonna, my clothes I'll do as the next, the episode for next week. But I'm conscious of time. I've rabbited a lot today. I don't know if this episode has been any use whatsoever. Maybe I have, I've been getting distracted as I've been talking about distractions. Maybe that is the lesson, right? How often, how deeply do our distractions cut? But yeah, like hopefully that's an invitation. What is causing you to feel distracted? Distractions, how is that adding to frustration? How is that adding to your stress levels and all your calm? How are all of those things being impacted? So that this week has been distractions. Let's talk about clothes next week, shall we? Clothes and clutter maybe, maybe stuff, but let's talk about that, all that stuff. And yeah, that for this week is frazzled. Distractions as I get repeatedly distracted talking about distractions. There we go. That's today's episode. Hi, I'm Kelly Swingler. I'm the birdontologist. I am actually a very consummate professional when it comes to this stuff. I always wonder when it comes to the podcast because again, unscripted, unedited, although that's how I do my keynotes as well. But there you go. Has it been useful? I've absolutely no idea. I'll be back with you again next week.
