on distractions | no nonsense. 014.
Yooo….
Late one again, I know. I’ve been trying to record my first scripted video and let me just tell you, it is much more time consuming than I thought it would be. More on that here.
But look, even though it’s a late one, now you have it in your inbox for some nice Sunday morning reading/watching :)
I thought this week’s topic, distractions, would be nice follow-up to last week’s newsletter/article because distractions go hand-in-hand with work vs. rest and the “unconscious middle.”
Enjoy :)
1 choice you have to make
what’s that choice? read this: how to find direction in a world of distractions (video included)
2 quotes on distractions
Distractions. Stoicism. Marcus Aurelius.
You had to know this was coming…
“Do external things distract you? Then make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile; stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions. But make sure you guard against the other kind of confusion. People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time- even when hard at work.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.7.
Next is a quote from the Netflix documentary, “The Social Dilemma” - a must watch if you are alive today in modern society.
“We’re training and conditioning a whole new generation of people that when we are uncomfortable or lonely or uncertain or afraid, we have a digital pacifier for ourselves that is kind of atrophying our own ability to deal with that.”
More quotes from this documentary here.
Watch the full thing here (I know this a link to Netflix, which is usually a distraction, but you can choose to use this for good by becoming more aware of how attention is a modern currency.)
3 clips on our world full of distractions
Be strong willed. | Conor McGregor via @wifiaesthetics
Conor McGregor. Say what you want about the guy. He has gotten it done countless times. And he knows a thing or two about removing distractions to focus on himself.
When you allow yourself to get distracted from your path, even if its a very small promise you’re breaking with yourself, it adds up.
Don’t let the distractions infiltrate your mind.
Why People Are Unhealthy In 2024 | Mikhaila Peterson via @icedcoffeehour
“People are getting sicker and fatter and more miserable…It’s environmental. It’s what you’re eating, it’s what you’re exposing yourself to. Because it wasn’t here 150 years ago like this.”
3 Ways to Make Social Media Better for your Brain | @emonthebrain
Great account for all sorts of psych tips.
For this one, these are things we should all know to do at this point. But it’s a nice reminder.
Avoid social media as soon as you wake up
Turn notifications off.
Limit scrolling.
And she also linked the study referenced. Dropping it for you here: Doomscrolling Scale: its Association with Personality Traits, Psychological Distress, Social Media Use, and Wellbeing
how we doin??
Been a while since I’ve done one of these. And I know I promised you last week. So here we go…
First things first, I made a new commitment.
I’m going to upload a video every single day until I hit a full year of daily uploads on April 2, 2025.
All sorts of videos coming your way. Talking head, edited, screen sharing, maybe even some BTS/Vlogs, we shall see.
More on that here.
Stay tuned, make sure you subscribe you don’t miss a beat.
Speaking of which…
Youtube: 92 subscribers 🎉 honestly this is pretty crazy to me. like it makes sense because i’ve been doing daily vids and the chop ups, but still. kinda crazy.
Twitter: 170 followers - had a few tweets pop off this week. starting to figure out the rules of the game. more on that soon…
Newsletter: 54 subscribers - steady as ever. don’t worry, i have a plan for this. they say “if you build, they will come”…well i’m building a couple different things. and they will come, i have no doubts about that.
Instagram: 63 - patience people. patience is everything.
Keep showing, and good things will happen.
So you know I ain’t lying…
The numbers will come.
And some did….I’ve been cross-posting my articles on Medium and Substack as well as here on this website, just to spread my reach. And so far….I’ve made…a whopping total of….
$1.06
Big dawg. I know.
$0.80 from the amazon associates link I mentioned a while back.
And now $0.26 from Medium Partner Program.
Quick note on getting paid from Medium: theoretically, anyone can just come here to read my articles, but Medium has readers who are looking for things to read already, so if they pay for Medium already, there’s no paywall for them, so I figured I might as well paywall them anyway. Anyone who doesn’t have Medium can just come here to read if they so please
And yes, you’re allowed to cross-post Medium articles on blogs like this, even if paywalled. I checked. And it makes sense…
Because it’s all about attention.
They want their readers to stay on Medium. So if someone’s paying to read already, I might as well get paid for giving them something worthwhile to read in exchange for their attention.
That’s all for this week. See ya next time (or on YouTube any day this week)
-Ry
