Dealing with Distractions

If we want the very best that God has for us, we can not afford to be distracted. If we aren't careful, we can easily miss our blessings. Let's tackle distraction and give our productivity a boost.

Grab your copy of "Slow and Steady: Biblical Wisdom from the Hare and the Tortoise" (I'm a Turtle 2nd edition) on Amazon!

Join the FREE Jesus Women Community at https://patreon.com/jesuswomen and access the community chat, freebies, and weekly devotionals!

Transcript

I want to share a mini excerpt from my book to introduce the topic today. This is from the third chapter.

“This journey that we are on is hard. We need to be like this turtle who did not stop, did not lose focus, and did not get distracted. He set his eyes on the finish line, and we need to do that, too. There are so many messages out there that pull at us. There are so many goals that we could set that are not God’s will for our lives. It is so easy to choose the easier paths and settle for less than everything God has for us in this life. If we desire God’s very best for us, we cannot afford to be distracted.”

They key to focus is to master distractions. Have you been trying to focus more? Have you ever tried really hard to focus on something and it seemed like every time you got really set your mind on it, something would distract you? Don’t you hate that? How about when you are starting to feel so on edge that if one more person makes one more sound you’ll just snap? LEAVE ME ALONE! WHY CAN EVERYONE JUST LEAVE ME ALONE? I’M TRYING TO CONCENTRATE! I need to get this done! Right? We’ve all had those moments.

Let’s talk about focus. If you want to reach your goals, you have to focus. You need to be intentional with how you use your time, and you have to manage distraction. What are you focusing on? Have you been focusing on the wrong things?

So, in this excerpt, I was talking about how sometimes our goals don’t align with God’s plan for us. We could be close or we could be totally off from the direction God is wanting to lead us, even though on the surface our path looks good and positive. You have to be careful to discern God’s will. Proverbs 3:5-6 NLT says,

 Trust in the Lord with all your heart
     and lean not on your own understanding;
 6 in all your ways submit to him,
     and he will make your paths straight

The key to this direction is submission. You have to submit to God’s will, and you can find God’s will in His word, it’s obvious. Anything that you are considering will not be contrary to God’s word. You can’t be distracted by shiny things that take your focus off of keeping God at the center of it all. Christ should be central. The way that you tell if the path you are on is right is if it leads you closer to the Lord, causes you to need to lean on Him more, and it takes your focus and puts it on Christ. Everything else, even yourself, your spouse, your kids, none of that should be the center of your heart, that’s we’re God belongs. We serve the Lord through taking care of ourselves, in loving your spouse; taking care of your kids is worship, too. The point is that your heart needs to be surrendered to Him and His will. When something else becomes the focus, that’s distraction.

Distractions come in two different ways. There are external distractions and internal distractions. External distractions, things that happen around us, include your phone ringing or vibrating, loud noises, other people interrupting you, and things like that. Internal distractions are basically your thoughts. You know that you need to do something, but you wonder if you shouldn’t do something else first. You don’t feel like doing the laundry so you decide to the dusting instead. It’s time to get that project done but you are checking your email and social media first. A majority of our distractions are a result of our thoughts. Internal distractions are more frequent than external ones.

So how do you manage internal distractions? Well, first, most of what we do is subconscious anyway. The first thing that you need to do is identify distraction when it is happening. Procrastination presents itself as a distraction. In the moments when you plan on starting something or continuing a project and you find yourself thinking, “let me just check my messages really quickly first,” or “let me grab a snack,” I want you to notice that. Are you procrastinating in that moment? Can you stop yourself and come to a place that, even if it is just for a few minutes, do the thing that you said you were going to do? Focus is all about managing those distracting thoughts. In order to focus well, you need to be honest with yourself about your mental and emotional relationship to the tasks in front of you. Would you rather be doing something else? What is it? Can you schedule a time to do that, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, in an hour from now after you handle what you need to do? The trick is if you identify the key tasks that you need to handle that you dislike the most, you can almost reward yourself for doing them by getting them done first and putting those more enjoyable tasks afterwards, or putting a break or something you enjoy afterwards. Here’s a tip: Use your procrastination muscles to your advantage and put off your message checking and scrolling and snacking until after you get something important done.

You have to know what you need to focus on. You have to have clear cut priorities in a ranking order, or everything will just seem equally important and you’ll find yourself switching tasks, multitasking, running back and forth like a squirrel, and you never seem to get anything done. That’s not how we are called to live. There is a specific order to things. There is a priority order and it is important to makes sure that you follow that order. A lot of the time we get distracted by things that we think are important. Sometimes we are doing something that does need to get done eventually, but there are higher ranking tasks that should be done first. We have to be careful of what I call “productive procrastination.” Productive procrastination is when you stay busy doing things that seem like they are important when you are actually avoiding something else that you just don’t want to do. The task you are avoiding needs to get done, and it’s probably better for you to take care of it first, you just don’t want to. This is where emotional discipline comes in. We can’t trust our emotions! Like I mentioned in the previous episode, your emotions are more than likely to steer you wrong, and you have to discipline yourself to use wisdom even when you’re not feeling it.

Productivity, focus, and staying in God’s will for your life requires strict prioritization. I have a freebie for you this week. It’s a four quadrant template that you can download and print out or you can copy the format and make you own. It is a very simple way to organize the tasks you have in front of you and it can help you just quickly set things in priority order. It’s simple, the hard part is following it and disciplining yourself to stick to priority order. It a habit that you have to establish. I’d love for you to check out this tool. Sign up for free at patreon.com/jesuswomen to get access to that freebie, previous episode freebies, and community chat. Receive my weekly devotional in your inbox as well. I’d love to connect with you. Subscribe if you haven’t already, and remember don’t quit get equipped!