Your Best Focus Isn't at the Coffee Shop

Hot take, especially for the people from San Diego.

If you think that your greatest focus comes from being at a coffee shop, it’s either A, because you’re lying to yourself, or B, because you’ve never experienced genuine focus

Now, I’m not saying you can’t focus at a coffee shop.

But the reality I believe is that most people try to avoid genuinely focused work environments because they tend to be very quiet, and people don’t like quiet

However, I also get it because I like working at coffee shops sometimes for specific things But usually it’s an avoidant behavior.

The thing is, at least I’ve identified this for myself, my avoidance can be masked by behaviors that are sometimes seemingly positive.

For example, the coffee shops.

Sometimes, rarely, it is actually more productive to be in one because there are other things going on in my life, and the environment of the coffee shop, for some reason, stimulates me in a way that my office might not

Usually I believe that is a lie to yourself, but sometimes it is not

Or another example is that I have a tendency to use drives and walks, like driving places and walking places, as ways of calming down when my mind is anxious or running.

That, in its own right, is not bad.

I find those to actually be fairly healthy or positive coping mechanisms.

But sometimes these drives and walks are actually just me avoiding the thing that I should be doing not me taking care of myself or doing something positive and healthy.

What’s up?

My name is Flint Mitchell from iAlign.

I went from a life of stagnation, procrastination, scrolling, and feeling behindto a life of clear, consistent, confident action and freedom.

I can look back at all the places I’ve lived, and I’ve lived a lot of places at this point, and there’s always a route that unconsciously I would start to drive when I was there.

And it would be the route that I would go to when I was feeling nervous or I needed to decompress or take a quick break.

For example, I lived in Santa Cruz, California for a couple years, great surf.

And I lived in the Seabright area, which is kind of centrally located, and I would drive down to the main road next to the ocean.

I would drive over to Pleasure Point, I would pass this specific beach that I would surf pretty often, and then I would go to the Cat & Cloud Coffee to work because I was trying to be in a more productive environment.

I was just lying to myself

I would act as if I was working.

I would work,but the reality is my productivity would be fairly low, if not on the floor,Because all I was really doing was avoiding the silence of my house where I normally would work in my office

And then what would I do?

Repeat it.

And that is the key issue here.

It’s not one fake productive self-care-ish afternoon that harms you.

It is the consistency of it, if you do that one afternoon, it’s pretty harmless.

But stack three months of it where you do it three or four or five times a week, all of the sudden you hit December, where we’re approaching, and you have no idea where your entire year went.

Where was all that effort you were supposed to put in?

So do you find yourself avoiding things by going for drives or going for walks or going to coffee shops to work?

Thinking that it will be positive, but then you actually get there and for whatever reason, you realize in the moment you’re actually quite distracted.

Like the windows are open and it’s late summer, so you’re kind of swatting flies away from your coffee

Or there’s babies crying or dogs barking or the noise just gets too loud beyond the like level of stimulation you believe is right for your productivity.

Once again, every once in a while, completely fine if it is a way that you’re actually helping yourself to continue being productive when you’re otherwise incapable of doing so.

But the more that I did this consistently, I tricked myself into believing that was actually how I was being productive, when the reality is I had tricked myself into a false reality where my productivity was at the floor

Because the way that I thought that I focused best was a fucking lie.

And that’s harmful because over long periods of time, if your productivity is at a floor because you’re lying to yourself about how you cope in a positive or healthy way, you will eventually get to the end of the year and realize you didn’t do much.

And I’m passionate about this because I have experienced it and I want other people to not.

And as more stress stacks on top of us at the end of the year as our work deadline’s approaching Q4, the stress of the holidays shows up, and we’re behind, what will we do?

We’ll go more often to the coping mechanisms we believe will support us to be more productive and focused.

But those are the ones that we lied to ourselves about.

And so we go to them more, and our productivity and our efficacy just stays on the floor.

It’s a really vicious negative feedback loop

Because during the end of the year, we do genuinely need more support for ourself.

But if the coping mechanisms that we believe help us are actually not helping us, And we go into a stressful place at the end of the year, we will use them more often because we’re enduring more stress, and they will not help us.

If you’re using the wrong tools for the project, you’re not gonna do the project well.

And this is a lesson that I had to beat into my brain, this is not me talking down to anyone.

I speak with emphasis on this because I watched myself do this for years and I knew it was wrong, but I never took the time to truly correct it, and I lost so much productivity because of it.

And honestly, because I lost productivity, what ended up happening is the work that I would have to do would stretch into more periods of time, and then I would lose time on my hobbies and with my friends and my family, and just being at peace and content because I would feel behind.

And then I would beat myself up because I was like, ” But I’m using these positive coping mechanisms.

I’m going to the place where I focus best.

Why am I not being productive?

Is it something wrong with me?” This whole cycle because we’re using the wrong tools

Because during the end of the year, we start spending more and more time handling our emotions just as natural, spontaneous, or predictable stressors show up

And as the end of the year approaches, we will either A, spend more of our time using tools to support ourself and managing our emotions, or B, basically suppress those emotions.

But the end result of using the wrong tools or suppressing our emotions is the same place.

We end up overthinking, fatigued, avoidant scrolling, it happens long enough and with enough intensity, we end up blowing the fuck up.

And then what happens?

We get to the end of the year, or we get to middle of January, and we blink and we look back and we go, “Where the fuck did the holidays go?

What happened?

How did I not get anything done, and why was I so stressed the entire time?”

The thing is you can only win the negotiation with yourself on which positive healthy coping mechanism to use if your resilience is higher than your stress.

Once your stress bypasses your resilience, which is your preparation for the stress, then you will default to whatever coping mechanisms or to whatever tools you use during the year to cope with those emotions.

And so if you believe that working in the coffee shops or going for the drives, going for the walks nonstop every single day is actually helping you, you won’t be able to win the negotiation.

Because sometimes right now, I’m sure you do, you think about it and then you go, “Actually, yesterday I was distracted. Maybe I should just work from my office today.” That was the right decision.

In November and December, once the stress is higher than your resilience, your preparation, you will just default to the one that feels most comfortable.

But the one that feels most comfortable is not necessarily correct or would feel the best or be the most productive or make you feel the most at peace?

So right now, sometimes you can hear your mind make the case of the coffee shop or the drive, and you can overrule it ’cause you need to be productive.

But in middle of December, with a full calendar and travel coming up and financial anxiety and maybe a tinge of loneliness or sadness that just naturally shows up sometimes during the holidays, all of that stacked on top, The case just gets made and you’re already in the car driving around

Whatever tools you’ve defaulted to by the middle of November or especially into December, they’re already going to be decided.

They’re already decided for you weeks later once you’re depleted

And all that will do is lead you back into the negative feedback loop

Anyways, I’m Flint Mitchell from iAlign.

I hope you found this valuable.if you did find this valuable, I would love if you would share it with just one person.

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Peace.