Why did my phone light up? This question runs through my head hundreds of times a day. Drawing my eyes away from whatever I was previously looking at. Did someone text or call me? Did someone send me a Snapchat or tag me in an Instagram? Did someone on my Fantasy Football team get injured? Did the Oregon Ducks just sign a new recruit? Did my phone even light up at all? Or is my brain just tricking me because deep down, buried in my subconscious I wanted it to? I don’t know, I’m not a scientist. Personally, my phone is my biggest distraction. There are times where I find myself picking it up, opening it, and then closing it for absolutely no reason. Immediately afterwards asking myself, why did I just do that. I have found that this type of behavior tends to become more frequent when I’m doing tasks that I do not particularly want to be doing; i.e. studying.
I have actually done a pretty good job of not getting distracted by my phone while working on this post. However, I think that is because I would not be able to live with myself if I let myself get distracted by my phone while writing about getting distracted by my phone. It is kind of funny because I am actively aware of how distracting my phone is to me, yet I do nothing to change it. I guess it’s not really that funny. Though, I don’t think this is a problem that only I suffer with. It seems like everyone is glued to his or her phones nowadays. I ride the city bus into my office every day and it is nowhere more apparent than there. Almost every single person has his or her head down, staring at their phone. So why are phones so distracting? I personally think it comes almost from this digital FOMO (fear of missing out). When my phone lights up and I can’t check it immediately I think I feel like I might be missing out on something important.
Just like you, I find myself in constant need to check my phone.While many do experience FOMO and I do like to know what’s happening on social media, I know that I tend to check my phone out of habit and do it subconsciously. Sometimes I even find myself scrolling through twitter and not even knowing what I had just read. The fact that we check our phones so much that it has become second nature is quite crazy and almost scary. For the most part, checking my phone isn’t a distraction because I am usually bored or watching TV, but it does become one when I am trying to focus on work.
I’ve said this elsewhere, a few times by now probably, but I think that focusing on a particular moment of digital FOMO, when you catch yourself mindlessly checking in, would make an excellent distraction blog post. Consider the situation or context when it happens, and whether you can resist the urge … could be very revealing.