Refocusing: minimize distractions

Occasionally in life frustration will set in for a reason that may not be apparent for quite sometime. For me I had this building frustration for a couple days in a row and I wasn't sure why. This morning I figured it out Thanks to a random conference talk that I found where Uchtdorf told me what's what.

If life and its rushed pace and many stresses have made it difficult for you to feel like rejoicing, then perhaps now is a good time to refocus on what matters most.

So I began to question what I was doing and what mattered most. We all have goals of what we hope our lives to be like. I guess what happened is the activities I was giving time to were not those that were contributing to the goal of what I want life to be like. Not that any activity in and of itself was bad, just that it was distracting me from doing something better with my time.
In one of my classes we were talking a lot about how certain things in the media are distractions from what is really important. I think that's what was making me so frustrated- spending lots of time doing things that were not important to me. So as part of refocusing myself I am setting weekly goals for myself. This week I am starting with controlling how much media I spend my time on.
I found this program called 'stay focused'- you type in all the sites that you constantly find yourself wasting time on (some blogs, facebook, pinterest) and once it knows those sites it times how long you are on them. You only get 10 minutes a day to spend on time wasting sites. Once your ten minutes are up it says ...

Other inspiration was gotten from an article I was shown once by a friend called 'Focus' by Leo Babauta.

It contains some serious good stuff if you ever want to read it...click here. It's free, it's somewhat long, it's inspirational. 

Some great quotes pulled out...

There are days when I wake up and refuse to turn on the Internet, and sit still with my cup of coffee in the hush that fills the hours just before dawn. I’ll listen to the quiet. I’ll reflect on life. I’ll lose myself in a novel. Some days I’ll sit down and write, just my thoughts and the quiet and the gentle tapping of the keyboard. And it’s beautiful.

It’s not technology we should be afraid of. It’s a life where we’re always connected, always interrupted, always distracted, always bombarded with information and requests. It’s a life where we have no time to create, or connect with real people.

I also realized that so many turn into movie nights and nothing else. Why the need for so many movies? So another of my week goals is to not watch any movies. Not even this weekend. Think of something more creative to do, or if you can't and everyone around your wont, go to something productive instead. Don't get me wrong, I'm not giving up movies entirely- just taking a break for a week.
 There is no need to be pulled into media constantly. Not that it's a bad thing, there are just better things I could be doing.

So as part of what I hope to be many weeks of goal setting- this week is dedicated to minimizing distractions in the media. We'll see how it goes.