In our latest episode, Joe and I discuss our themes for the New Year.1 (Our New Year begins on March 25 as was the custom up until the late eighteenth century.)
My theme for this year is focus. I’ve been struggling against the endless waves of distraction for a long time now, and I need to do something to arrest the slide. Moving to micro.blog was one way to avoid distractions of social media whilst still having an online presence. I use Mastodon because it’s algorithm-free meaning that I can follow people without getting spammed by adverts. I’ve frozen my Instagram account, deleted my Twitter and Facebook.
And I am enrolled in an online course run by Cal Newport and Scott Young called Life of Focus.
I’m trying to separate this from ‘productivity’. I think it will – and, indeed, already has, made me more productive. But it’s not solely about that. It’s about making time to do things which I find satisfying and fulfilling and which, for one reason or another, have disappeared from my life. It’s about replacing shallowness with depth.
Anyway, that’s the background to my theme.