“By prevailing over all obstacles and distractions, one may unfailingly arrive at his chosen goal or destination.” – Christopher Columbus
Attention is the most valuable currency in our current day and age. Most social media networks are free to join.
Have you ever wondered what they are selling if it is all free?
The answer is simple. They are selling your attention to the highest bidders. Your engagement and attention on the platform are very valuable to them. It is what advertisers are collectively paying billions for.
Guess what?
You are not getting a cent of it. You are the product. The commodity. And you are getting sold daily.
Unfortunately, you do not benefit from this arrangement, and it is by design. If you are starting a business, you MUST be worried about noise.
Noise is the stuff that distracts you.
It is social media notifications that keep alerting you to pointless posts and updates. It is the Netflix shows where entire seasons are dumped upon you all at once so that you sink into a binge-watching state and vegetate in front of the TV.
It is YouTube with its never-ending content. Or the news outlets with all their outrageous fake news.
The ‘noise’ NEVER ends. If you let it into your life, it will consume you. Millions of people check their mobile phones the moment they wake up. It is as if they are slaves to their phones.
Where their attention goes, their energy goes.
- Saps your energy
As an entrepreneur, you MUST be aware of where your time and energy are going because these are finite. You only have so much energy every single day, and no energy drink is going to increase it.
In order to give your best in your business, you must conserve your energy for the tasks that matter. Noise does not matter! The important work you need to do is what matters.
Yet, people get sucked into their social media and waste hours daily.
- Can be depressing
When the noise that engulfs you is constantly negative (and these days it is), you may end up feeling depressed or agitated. It is almost as if the world is going crazy with the crooked politics and the inane things that are happening today.
While this may be true, you have very little control over them. By fretting over what is happening, you are wasting precious energy that could be used on more productive tasks which will improve your life.
Countless people spend at least 2 hours a day on social media, but they will not exercise for 30 minutes. Which do you think will serve them well in the long run?
As an entrepreneur, you will need to constantly juggle your time between your family, your health, your business, and so on. There will be a hundred and one commitments. You have no time for distractions. You have goals to achieve!
- Constant dopamine hits keep you addicted
The constant notifications, likes, and heart emojis you see on Facebook are designed to give you little dopamine hits. Over time, you will get addicted to the way social media makes you feel.
This is why people feel lost and annoyed when they do not have their phones with them. As an entrepreneur, you do not want to be in a position where you need to check your social media every 15 minutes. Rather set specific times in your daily schedule specifically for this purpose.
Avoid getting addicted to the dopamine hits. Go on a digital detox and break the cycle. When your love for these distractions ends, you will discover that you take more pleasure in your work.
You will enjoy doing what you do and your business will get better because you are pouring your heart and soul into it.
- Impedes progress
The distractions always seem more fun than the ‘boring work’ you need to do. That is why people turn to their mobile devices rather than do what they have to.
They know that they need to complete their tasks, but they do not. The pleasure derived from the noise drowns out the voice of accountability. The end result is that procrastination sets in, and nothing gets done.
Your progress gets delayed or never happens. Only when you starve the distractions can you feed your focus… and when your focus multiplies, so will your effort and output.
Then you will progress, succeed and achieve your goals. You MUST shut out the noise.
