“How do you feel about turning 35?” my partner asked me. I told her I hadn’t really thought about it. Life had been too busy. The question made me realize I hadn’t captured any birthday reflections in several years. The last ones happened when I turned 30. I don’t believe in sharing ever more life lessons each year, but being halfway through yet another decade felt like an important milestone. So I reflected, wrote down some ideas, and shared them.
That article took three afternoons to write. About six hours, give or take. Did it bring me any closer to publishing my next book, clearing my massive article-import backlog for the blog, or making more bucks to pay for website operations? Nope. But it helped me solidify five principles I want to live by for the rest of my life. I call that a useful distraction.
Yesterday, I stumbled on a novel drafting contest for new fiction authors. Grand prize? $50,000. Even runner-ups will receive $5,000. The pitch is straightforward—5,000 words—and the deadline is clear. I kept the tab open. What if I throw one of my fiction ideas and three more afternoons at this? Will it get me to a submission-ready draft? I don’t know, but I’ll try and find out. If the effort-reward ratio gets tilted, I can always abandon ship.
I told my partner about the writing contest at night. I could already hear her words: “This is yet another distraction.” To my surprise, she didn’t say them. I brought up the matter and said: “I think it’s a useful distraction. I want to write more fiction sooner or later. So why not try it in a setting like this? Where it’s time-boxed and may come with some benefits.” She agreed with me. “That’s why I didn’t call it out.”
You’ll always give in to distractions from time to time. Useful ones often only change the timing of an action you’d have taken sooner or later regardless. You can’t reflect on a birthday years after it happened. The snapshot of your mind would never be the same. And if you want to write fiction, there’s rarely a bad time to start.
Useful distractions have another benefit: They crowd out unproductive ones. Sure, I might have spent my afternoons on more book writing. But I ensure to do a little bit of that every morning anyway, so they could just as well have gone to watching TV or playing video games. Useful distractions are inspiring. They make you put in more hours.
Work hard. Stay focused. But leave time for the fun stuff—especially when it makes sense. Embrace your useful distractions.
