Albert Einstein on Distractions

Listen to Make Daily on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Youtube.

Welcome to Make Daily! This episode contains an idea, reflection, and a simple action you can take on your creative project today.

The world is noisy and your dreams deserve attention. Use this minute to shift your focus back to what you want to get done today.

Idea 💡

“Reading after a certain age diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theater is tempted to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.”

— Albert Einstein

Reflection 🤔

To frame what Einstein is saying in a more modern lens, I took his quote and replaced a few words:

“Scrolling social media after a certain age diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who scrolls too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time on YouTube is tempted to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.” — Albert Einstein in 2022

It's easier than ever to mindlessly live through others on the screen. Why go through the struggle of doing something yourself when you can watch others do it instead?

Left unchecked, living this way will destroy your productivity. You can't make anything of value until you shut off the distractions and focus on your work.

Action ✅

What is distracting you lately? Remove it for 10 minutes and focus on the work today.

About the creator 👤

Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist,^[7] widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory of relativity, but he also made important contributions to the development of the theory of quantum mechanics. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect",^[12] a pivotal step in the development of quantum theory. (Via Wikipedia)

If this email helped you, please share Make Daily with your friends!

It's a new day, let's make something cool with it.

See you tomorrow,

Alex