•Excerpts Of Pastor WOLE OLADIYUN’s New Book
Kendrick’s Junior Secondary School Certificate Examination results had just been posted by the school principal and contrary to everyone’s expectation, he got the best result: he scored straight As in all the 13 subjects he sat for and that set him many miles above his closest pals in the class. Well, this did not sit well with his friends who couldn’t help but wonder how he did it.
There were 7 of them in his clique and in their classmates’ perception, they were quite playful, and unserious. While the other students would be in the school library studying and preparing towards their examination, Kendrick and his group of friends would be on the school field playing football. Some of the teachers had even labelled them, “The jolly 7.” Ifthey were not cracking jokes in the class, they would be singing and rapping or they would be on the field doing one of the things they knew how to do best: play football. No one ever saw them with books except when teachers were in their classes. The truth is they were viewed as average students. They always got straight Cs in their papers but for Kendrick to get the best results in the whole JSS 3 External Certificate Examinations?
Something somewhere did not seem right! What they all did not know was how calculating Kendrick
was. He found what worked for him and he stuck to it. Kendrick found studying at night easier than during the day. More so, his elder brothers who were university students helped him with his studies. He would study with his brothers at night and play with his friends during the day. His friends were not aware of his style hence their shock when he took the whole school by storm. .
Elizabeth ran a gift shop in a good location. She had run this business successfully for two years and it was growing tremendously. As a result, her social capital was also increasing. She has acquired more friends and consequentially, she has started to receive a lot of invitations to social functions. To meet up with all these new demands, she had to employ two salesgirls and include wholesaling to her already profiting retail business. She also added production and importation of gift items to it. Her business was booming!
For about four days ofthe week, she would hang out with her new friends for lunch or attend one function or the other: they always had causes to celebrate. Unknown to her, her salesgirls had started to sell gift items at reduced prices to customers who were willing to buy without the items’ packages. For instance, a cooler that ought to be sold for five thousand naira would be sold for three thousand naira if the buyer would be willing to take the cooler and leaye its carton behind. That way, Elizabeth’s salesgirls would share the three thousand naira between themselves and leave the empty carton on the shelf for their boss to assume the product was yet to be sold. Her salesgirls were wrecking her business while she was focused on building her social network. It took her a while to realize that her business was failing when it became a bit difficult to pay salaries and reorder goods to sell. When she could not pay their salaries for two months consecutively, her salesgirls resigned one ‘after the other and she had to temporarily, or so she thought, return to status quo. She had to reduce her social engagements but by then, a lot of harm had been done to her business. Then gradually, she realized that almost all the cartons on the shelves in her shop were empty.
Daniel worked in one of the new generation banks. He had been at the branch for about three years before his next cubicle colleague, Helen, was posted to the branch and it did not take long before they became friends. Helen was ‘chatty: she always had a trending gist for him, or a question to ask, a clarification to be made, or a party to invite him to. For once, Daniel found resuming to work something to look forward to. Helen kept the office lively for him and that seemed like a welcome idea until he realized that balancing his account at the close of business was becoming hard for him. If it was not that he had overpaid a customer, it would be that he had entered a wrong information about a transaction. . Customers’ money was beginning to miss in his care, and his supervisor hadstarted to doubt his integrity. Peace seemed to have eluded him and he could no longer look forward to resuming at the office.
Rigid focus is an elixir to ignite success while distraction extinguishes success.
What is Distraction? Distraction is whatever takes your attention away from your set goal, be it temporarily or permanently. It is whatever makes you lose focus and gets you to deviate from your objectives. Simply put, distraction is a habit, or a thing, or a person that diverts your focus away from your priority.
The word Distraction is derived from the Latin words, dis- . “apart” and trahere, “drag”. Literally, you are distracted when you are dragged away from the task at hand. Distraction is a spur that drags your attention away from your primary interest and pitches it with, mostly, an interest you have no business being concerned with at that moment. In other words, distraction is diversion, confusion, interruption, disturbance, or interference.
Daniel’s distraction was Helen. Elizabeth’s distraction was, unfortunately, her new level, while Kendrick’s
friends’ distraction was their inability to yearn for more. They could not birth clear goals in their studies because they were contented with being mediocre. And unlike Kendrick, they could not decipher what strategy would work for them, rather, they were contented with just being “tag along.”
Distraction is not healthy! It is that thing, that person, that matter, that addiction, that weakness that effortlessly halts your attention from an anticipated area of focus thereby hindering or delaying you from achieving a desired result.
Distraction will always lead your attention far away from your main target. Now, whatever prevents you from concentrating on what matters, whatever interrupts or interferes with your flow, focus and concentration, whatever hinders you from achieving your goal, whatever makes it difficult for you to reflect or pay attention, whatever amuses you so much that you cannot focus on your tasks, whatever state or situation gets you distressed or livid, whatever redirects your devotion to a less important matter needs to be dealt with decisively.
You must understand that distraction is triggered by your unwillingness to pay attention to the task at hand or by the appeal of something outside your set goal. This will in’ turn ‘empower’ you to lose focus of the major while you major in the minor or the unnecessary. It will likewise make you to unequally position your schedule, and unless you deal with it deliberately, you won’t be able to set your heart right on the task in your hands.
Distraction can be various and can be due to multiple reasons. You can be distracted due to uninteresting work schedule or because you have short attention span. It can come from internal or external sources. Internal distractions can be because of fatigue; fear, hunger, hopelessness, pressure, physical pains, overthinking, and the likes while external distractions can come from social media, television, noise, bad economy, wrong company, competition, impatience, religious activities, peer pressure, and the likes. Multitasking: being all over the place, can also be considered a form of distraction. All of these can cause loss of interest in the primary mission depending on how intense they are as distractors.
However, the greatest distraction of the 21st century remains smart phones: it is not all who own and use smart phones that are as smart as their smart phones. Most times, its users do not have an idea of how much time they spend scrolling’ up and down their screens! They just while away their time assuming time was waiting for them.
You must be deliberate to starve your distractions and feed your goals. Whatever is starved; underfed, will eventually die while what you pay attention to; what you build up, what you feed, will grow.
Now, irrespective of whatever situations life may throw at you, staying focused remains the ultimate antidote for distractions. The ability to stay focused and remain so is the central skill you need if you desire progress in life, and this can only come when you intentionally eliminate your distractions: when you keep your eyes on the ball and you do not lose sight of the goal post. Thus, if what you are focused on is not moving you towards your goal, let go of it.
