Okay, so I wanted to share something I’ve been messing around with lately. It’s about focus, or rather, my lack of it sometimes. Found myself constantly getting pulled away from what I needed to do. Emails, phone notifications, sudden urges to check the fridge – you know the drill. It was getting frustrating.
I read somewhere, or maybe just thought about, this idea of a ‘self control image’. Didn’t really know what it meant, sounded a bit abstract. But I thought, maybe having a visual cue could help somehow? Worth a shot, right? I wasn’t looking for some complicated psychological trick, just something simple I could actually do.
Trying Things Out
First, I tried the fancy stuff. Closing my eyes, picturing a serene scene, trying to mentally ‘see’ myself being focused. Honestly, that didn’t work for me at all. My mind just drifted off even more. Too much effort, maybe?
So, I decided to get really basic. I looked around my desk. What could I use? I landed on this small, smooth, grey stone I picked up ages ago. Just a plain, boring stone. Nothing special about it. I decided this stone would be my ‘thing’.
Here’s the actual process, dead simple:
- I put the stone on my desk, right where I could see it easily.
- Whenever I felt that pull – the urge to switch tasks, check my phone for no reason, get lost in thought – I made myself just look at the stone.
- Sometimes I’d pick it up. Feel its weight, its texture.
- Didn’t attach any big meaning to it. Just used it as a physical anchor point.
What Happened
It felt a bit silly at first. Like, really? Staring at a rock is going to help? But the weird thing is, it kind of did. Not in a magical way. The stone didn’t zap me with willpower.
But looking at it, or holding it, created a pause. Just a couple of seconds. It broke that automatic jump from ‘I feel bored/restless’ to ‘grab phone/open new tab’. In that tiny pause, I sometimes had the space to think, ‘Wait, what was I doing? Oh yeah, that thing.’ And sometimes, that was enough to get back on track, even just for a little while longer.
It’s like it short-circuited the impulse just long enough for my slightly more sensible brain to catch up. Didn’t always work, of course. I still drift off, still get distracted. But it definitely reduced the frequency. It gave me a little tool, something physical and immediate, to push back against the automatic distractions.
So yeah, that’s my little experiment with a ‘self control image’, which turned out to be just a boring rock. It’s just my experience, what worked for me in a small way. Simple, maybe a bit dumb, but hey, it helped a bit.