Distraction Fool

Have you ever watched a 30 seconds video, and felt your mind screaming, “Hell yeah, we need to do that”?

It’s the “Monkey Mind” in its full swing. I see an astrophysicist talking about relativity and black holes, and my monkey mind goes like, we need to learn everything about space right now. I see a runner completing 5k at Sub-20, and suddenly, I am a pro athlete starting my training. I see a coder, a swimmer, a couple talking with their eyes, I want to be all of them, all at once. This list goes on and on, like MMA, coding, skating, singing, badminton, chess, swimming, content creation, etc,.

Why is there this desperate urge to be everything at the same time? I used to think this was just high curiosity and my hunger for learning. I convince myself with this old quote that goes like “Jack of all trades is a master of none, but often times better than a master of one.”

But recently, I realized that was a lie. I wasn’t becoming Jack of all trades. I was just becoming a “Distraction Fool”.

I recently had a discussion with a friend of friend, named Neha, about this exact thing. I told her how I went only to search for a C programming book and, within twenty minutes, found myself digging through Linux kernel development with absolute no intention of going there.

We even made a phrase, “Curiosity takes us to things, and the same curiosity distracts us from it.”

It sounds poetic, but it’s a trap. As she pointed out, if curiosity is that shallow, is it really curiosity? Or is it just an escape?

That keeps me thinking, escape from what? We love the “highs” of the start. The beginning of the new hobby is a pure dopamine. You buy gears, you watch the tutorials, you imaging the future version of yourself who is amazing at the same thing. But then, the science of learning kicks in. We will fall victim to the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

Dunning Kruger Effect imagined by Google Gemini Nano Banana

When you start something new, confidence shoots up. You are on “Mount Stupidity”. You feel great. But eventually, as you actually start doing the work, you slide down into the “Valley of Despair”.

This is where the work gets hard. This is where you realize that you don’t have enough strumming practice to strum along with a song. This is where the code you write breaks. This is where your body ache.

Most of us, myself included, hit this valley of despair and bail. Then monkey mind scan the ground of the next shiny thing and this pattern repeats itself again and again, just to stay on that initial “High”

We bounce from peak to peak, never realizing that learning only happens in the valley. As I remember from my journal long back, “It’s not that I tried all the things, it’s that I never have ever risen from the valley of despair.”

If you are constantly in the “peak of stupidity” phase in ten different skills, you aren’t Jack of all trades. You are just distracting yourself from the pain of growth.

So, how do we calm the monkey mind? How do we stop being a “Distraction Fool” and actually learn and understand something, where it’s a linear algebra or a habit of running?

Through my discussion with friends and my learnings, I found some ways that provide useful.

1. Pick one mountain to climb: You cannot do everything. Period. Jot down every interest you have on a piece of paper. Then, rank them based on what matters to you the most. It’s not that we won’t visit those hobbies at the bottom, it’s just that we deprioritized them as of now.
2. Never Set a Pace You Can’t Keep: The Monkey Mind loves intensity. It wants to run a marathon on day one. Intensity burns out, but consistency survives. Slow down to a pace that is sustainable.
3. The 5% Rule: When the task feels intimidating, break it down to simpler steps. Don’t try to conquer the mountain. Just do 5%. So when you hit the valley of despair, negotiate with yourself to find the next smallest possible step, and keep pushing step by step.
4. Stay in the Valley: When you feel the urge to switch tabs or check your phone, realize that this feeling isn’t boredom. It is “learning pain”. Only who stays there and learn further, would be able to go further in their learning. Reappraise your brain that this is difficult, but I got to do this to get where I want to be. If it feels uncomfortable, you’re probably doing it right. Remember everyone you admire online stood exactly where you are now, the difference is that they didn’t quit when the work stopped being exciting.
5. Avoid Creative Jealousy: Shiny object syndrome, often disguise as curiosity and hunger to learn, but in reality they are fueled by Instagram reels and Youtube shorts, where we feel behind comparing the finished product with the product in progress. You don’t have to delete Instagram or Youtube, you just need to understand that there were thousands of hours of efforts behind everything you see. It’s also better to have a timed window where you allow yourself to scroll through short videos.

As Neha said, curiosity shouldn’t be a leaf blowing in the wind, it should be a tree with deep roots. We can have many branches, but they must connect to a solid trunk.

Hero is Made

So, the next time you hit the Valley of Despair, don’t look for a helicopter to help you out. Don’t look for the next dopamine hit. Build a tent. Stay there. That is where the hero is made.