100 years ago, when you got to work in the morning, the only thing to do was work. There was no radio, no tv, no internet, no Facebook, no distractions. [1]

When you got home to your family you could be present – no radio, no tv, no internet, no Facebook, no distractions.

When you wanted to go to sleep – you guessed it, no distractions.

Today, no matter where we are, no matter what we do, we are faced with ‘the Scroll’.

The Scroll

The Scroll isn’t just the never-ending Facebook newsfeed. It’s our digital age. Since the Scroll makes money by buying and selling our attention, the Scroll is always-on, and it’s designed to be as addictive as possible.

“No one wants to admit we’re addicted to music. That’s just not possible. No one’s addicted to music and television and radio. We just need more of it, more channels, a larger screen, more volume. We can’t bear to be without it, but no, nobody’s addicted.

We could turn it off anytime we wanted.

…

Old George Orwell got it backward.

Big Brother isn’t watching. He’s singing and dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you’re awake. He’s making sure you’re always distracted. He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed. He’s making sure your imagination withers. Until it’s as useful as your appendix. He’s making sure your attention is always filled. And this being fed, it’s worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what’s in your mind. With everyone’s imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.”

Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby (2002)

The Scroll is distracting us from being the person we want to be.

I’m terrified that I’ll look back on my life at age 85 and realise that I never Flourished because I couldn’t conquer my own distractions. I’ve got no problem with trying and failing, or with others being better than me. I just can’t bear the thought of being defeated by myself.

“The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.”

Plato

Let’s not get ridiculous. I’m not going to suggest that in our digital world we must delete all our social media accounts, find a Nokia 3310 at a thrift store and start living in caves again.

I am suggesting that we just need to prevent ourselves being distracted from our self chosen purpose.

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”

George Bernard Shaw

When we sit down to work, we should be all in and we should experience the joy of a flow state that allows us to get meaningful work done.

When we get home, we should be able to thoroughly unwind, to experience the bliss of decompression.

We should be able to feel the rush of endorphins from daily exercise; the warm embrace of being fully present in good company; the tranquility of falling asleep on time without any stress; the invigoration of waking up fresh and alert, ready for another day of purposeful living.

When facing down the Scroll, rituals are our secret weapon.

A ritual is an act that sends a signal, often of a transition. Rituals don’t have to be habitual or routine, but they can be.

A habit is something we do on autopilot. We’re on reptilian brain … Stimulus -> Response, no Thought involved. Sometimes we’ve consciously programmed the habit, mostly we haven’t. The Scroll is an addictive habit by design.

A routine is a collection of habits that are grouped together, with one habit in the group triggering another.
An innocuous routine might be: ‘take a shower, brush teeth, put on deodorant, get dressed.’
A Scroll routine might be: ‘read WhatsApp message, check Facebook, click through to news article, watch embedded video, snap back to reality 20 minutes later.’

A graduation ceremony and a wedding are examples of non-habitual, non-routine rituals that signal a change. These are great moments, and these rituals signal a transition in our lives.

Rituals don’t have to be big, once off moments though.
Small rituals that can be turned into daily habits and incorporated into our routines, and in so doing rituals can help us conquer our distractions and walk the path toward our best-self.

Usually these kinds of rituals signal a change of mental state.

For common examples we can look to the often odd rituals that athletes have at match time; wearing socks inside out; the strange balancing act before a penalty kick. These are rituals that that athletes have chosen, rituals which tell their brain to transition from distraction to focus.

Just like athletes, we can choose rituals for everyday life that signal to our brains it’s time to change mental states.

We can have a ritual when we arrive at work that tells our brain it’s time to focus, one when we get home that tells our brain it’s time to relax, and one at bedtime that tells our brain it’s time to sleep.

A ritual can be anything. They have no inherent meaning, only assigned meaning. We can choose ‘putting on headphones playing AC/DC’ to be our ‘time to work’ ritual. But we could also choose ‘sit at desk coffee’.

It really doesn’t matter too much what trigger we choose as long we we repeatedly associate Trigger Action (a) with Mental State (a).

This is an application of conditioning from behavioural psychology.

Over time, performing Trigger Action (a) will become a habit that automatically induces Mental State (a). That’s how athletes are able to perform at their best on ‘any given Sunday’. They don’t just hope that they wake up in the right mental state on game day, they trigger the right mental state.

People who meditate will often use certain music, or a certain way of sitting, to trigger a specific mental state.

We can use rituals to our advantage to trigger any state we want. When we get home from work we can use Trigger Action (b) to trigger the ‘decompress from work’ mental state. And we can choose Trigger Action (b) to be anything we want, for example ‘change out of work clothes’, ‘cup of tea in favourite chair’, or ‘walk in garden’.

One trick to making an action into a ritual is to be mindful during the process.

If we just run through the trigger mindlessly, we’ll succeed in creating an habit, not a ritual.

So be consciously aware of the new Mental State while performing the Trigger Action, especially in the beginning. Over time the Mental State will become a conditioned response.

Another trick is to make the the Trigger Action as sensory rich as possible in order to create a very strong connection. I try and include as many of the 5 senses in a ritual as I can. For instance my bedtime routine begins with the following ritual:

• Turn off the white overhead lighting in my house,
• Turn on side lamps that have red light globes,
• Light candles,
• Light a scented oil burner,
• Turn on my ‘bedtime routine’ music playlist.

That little routine changes my environment so dramatically, and engages my senses so thoroughly that my brain just says, “oh right, I know what’s happening – sleep time in 30 minutes, better start winding down”.

Yes, sure, it’s eccentric, especially the red light globes. Does my house look like a crack den from the street. Probably. Do I care. Not a damn.

I end my day feeling calm, I fall asleep easily, and I wake up ready and rearing to go.

PostScript;

I use red light globes because I think it tricks my body into believing it’s sunset. Who knows. There are enough people shouting that white / blue light is bad anyway.

I use an oil burner rather than incense because I don’t like smoke.

I use lavender oil in the burner because it supposedly calms the nervous system and induces high quality sleep.

I light candles because it’s an action, creates a visual change in atmosphere, and because I can then blow them out as second ritual to signify the end of the ‘get ready for bed’ routine.

I play low tempo, tribal beats to get a kind of meditative, trance like vibe going.

Maybe none of this stuff actually works in the hard-science sense. Maybe I can’t trick my body into thinking it’s sunset. Maybe it’s all placebo.

The thing with rituals is that it’s all placebo anyway. Wearing your socks inside out doesn’t actually make you lucky on match day.

We’re just conditioning our body to be in a specific state for a specific situation.

[1] 100 years ago …

In 1922, regular radio broadcasts for entertainment began in the UK.
During the 1950’s, television sets became commonplace in homes.
By 1980, the era of off-the-shelf personal computers had arrived.
In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched “TheFacebook”.