After finishing a three week series on productivity, I focused on joy last week—a relief for all of us. But what we all want, even more than productivity, is peace.  

But we all know how rare that is.

The battle isn’t just against procrastination, it’s also against distractions that promise inner peace but can’t deliver.

Let’s say you conquer Resistance and Passion and use them both to your advantage, to serve a Purpose bigger than yourself. Ideal!

You’re still going to have to change diapers, answer the phone, deal with drama, etc. etc., and you’ll never be without distractions.

And yet, one of my greatest desires is to lose myself in the work I am doing. To be at peace, while running flat-out.

We’ve all had that experience. Scientists call this momentary experience “Flow”, this state of being where you are so focused on what you’re doing, so absorbed in it, you don’t feel the passing of time.

If you’re an athlete or artist, you know the feeling. 

If you’ve ever lost yourself in a great movie or book or song, you know.

If you’ve ever looked at the clock and said, “Oh my goodness, look at the time,” then you may have experienced it too.

In the state of “Flow”, time disappears, and then when the experience ends and you find yourself back on planet earth and you hear the ticking of the clock, the pressures of life hit you again.

But you have a renewed sense of courage and energy.

It is refreshing to lose yourself, even if for a minute.

It grounds you and gives you peace.

But here is the rub: to lose yourself, you have to work really hard to focus and block out other very interesting and very tantalizing distractions, and that is hard work. 

So to be mentally refreshed, you have to work harder than ever before. 

To lose yourself, you have to fight yourself.

And there is no solution for this. There is no hidden secret, and this is why so few are good at it.

We are all longing for it, but most of us don’t experience it unless it sneaks up on us.

Discipline helps, as does training your mind at regular intervals. The more you do it, the more naturally it comes. 

But the most powerful motivator is the pudding: the proof of the pudding is in the tasting. When you have tasted this refreshment that comes from a quiet, focused mind, you’ll never be happy with something else.

That stillness haunts you, and you are torn between your love for that quiet mind, and your love of being distracted. After all, when faced with the prospect of mental work, we all love to be distracted.

So what? This isn’t a three part series, nor do I have answers, but this is, in a way, a love-letter to the mind warriors out there who face this battle.

We all struggle with procrastination, kicking our mind in gear, but we all struggle with distractions too, especially those that draw us away from the joys of the life of the mind.

“There remains with us the feeling that all poetry and all intellectual life were once the handmaids of the holy, and have passed through the temple.” ~Jacob Burckhardt

At work, at home, in the studio or the study, we all have access to the temple.