The Good Things That Happen When You Minimize Distractions

Online education offers a glimpse of what’s possible—particularly for introverts—when common distractions are reduced or even eliminated.

It’s too easy to underestimate the power of focus.

Let me say that in a more backhanded way—one that is also much more precise …

It’s too easy to underestimate the power of lack of distraction, lack of interruption.

It’s too easy to overlook, in other words, the damage distraction does and the toll interruption takes on you, especially if you’re an introvert who thrives on the opposite.

It’s also too easy to overlook the indisputable efficiency that results when focus actually rules the day, and distractions and interruptions are minimized or eliminated.

Never was this truth more 
apparent to me than during the 2020-2021 school year, during the global pandemic, when I had a semi-front-row seat to 
a learning lab I never expected to 
encounter …

Namely, online education.

In my own home.

The Battle with Distractions

My wife Adrianne taught her kindergarten class that year online.

And almost exclusively from the basement of our house.

The families of her students had all signed their kids up for online learning—i.e., it hadn’t been thrust upon them, as it had been when the COVID-19 pandemic took full hold in the spring of 2020—and they had committed to sticking with it for the entire 2020-2021 academic year.

Adrianne and I had made the same choice for our own three kids who were still home at the time. Our then 15-year-old and our two then 13-year-olds were also enrolled in our district’s online learning program that year. So I was able to observe the three of them and their experiences, too, in the online learning environment.

I’m not here to advocate for or against online education as an instructional mode that should/should not be universally adopted. That debate, as they say, is “not my area.”

I will say this, though …

While online education isn’t for everybody—it has its problems, as everything does—it is most definitely for somebody(ies)!

How so?

Again, I don’t have the experience or the expertise to make a blanket judgment. Nor should I do so. All kids are different.

But of this I’m certain …

I now know what education can look like when the usual distractions and interruptions are almost entirely kept at bay—and easily dealt with when they do crop up.

I like much, if not most, of what 
I see, especially as an introvert who thrives on focus (and gets hobbled by interruptions and distractions).

And I’m not alone.

A New Teaching and Learning Environment

Ask any kindergarten teacher in America, including Adrianne, what a regular in-person classroom is like and you’ll probably get euphemistic responses like “busy” and “active.”

This, of course, is teacher code for “challenging.”

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, mind you. The kids are interacting with each other and the teacher, forming and building relationships in the process.

And the kids themselves are learning how to learn, learning how to behave, learning how to communicate, learning how to navigate ups and downs. It’s part of what education is all about.

But it’s almost impossible for it not to include pace-slowing distractions and interruptions.

Unless, of course, your classroom is online.

When Common Distractions Fall Away

Let me give you a very simple but quite realistic example to illustrate the point.

Five-year-old Johnny is getting upset because his nose is runny. So he lets it be known—loudly, during story time in his in-person kindergarten classroom—that he can’t find the box of tissues three feet away from him on the nearby counter.

The teacher’s attention must thus divert away from the book—and her listening audience—to Johnny.

The same goes for the rest of the children: They all inevitably turn away from the teacher (and the book) and toward Johnny and his nose.

Repeat several times throughout the story session, with Johnny and/or with other kids, with runny noses and/or a host of other emergencies.

And, of course, repeat dozens, maybe a hundred times a day in different in-person-classroom contexts.

Now imagine that Johnny is part of an online kindergarten class.

He’s online live, with 10 or 15 other kids as well as the teacher, but his microphone is muted unless and until the teacher calls on him.

So when he starts fussing about needing a tissue, nobody hears him except the parent or grandparent sitting next to him.

Johnny still gets what he needs, thanks to Mom or Grandpa.

But in the meantime, the other students and the teacher continue with the story they’re reading together.

Interruption-free.

The students and the teacher thus get far more out of the experience. And it runs perhaps half the amount of time it might normally take in the in-person classroom, with all of its interruptions and distractions.

Repeat this sequence throughout the day and the result is far different: Teachers can teach more, and learners can learn more, in less time.

The teacher (like Adrianne herself did virtually every day) can then use the “found” time to set up more one-on-one interactions with students (also online, of course) than he/she ever dreamed possible.

That’s what I saw in my own house in 2020-2021.

And it’s just one of the many scenarios I could describe—without even delving into 
my kids’ experiences with online 
education.

The True Power of Focus

Again, I share all of this with you not so much to talk about the pros and cons of online education, but 
to use what I saw in an unusual context in a highly unusual time to remind you—and myself!—of what’s possible when 
interruptions and distractions are 
all but nonexistent.

What happens when you can 
focus—when you can really focus?

You’re more effective when it comes to the task at hand, for starters.

But you’re also more efficient, which saves you precious time and energy—time and energy you can then invest in other things.

And, just as importantly, in your interactions with other people.