Distraction days

One of my biggest takeaways from Indistractable was that you should align your time with your values. That requires you to intentionally allocate time to the things you care about. Spending that time doing something other than what you said you were going to do is the definition of a distraction. A subtle implication of that statement is that you can't actually be distracted unless you were intending to do something to begin with.

If you're anything like me, sometimes you have days where you set a solid plan, only to find yourself doing something totally different an hour into it. You've been distracted. But the thing is, you still get useful stuff done and feel pretty good about the day.

I think having too many of those days is bad. You're essentially yielding control to your lizard brain, which is like leading your life via random walk. But I'm wondering if occasionally having those days may actually be helpful, especially if you've built the habit of being intentional with your time.

Maybe you do that thing you've been meaning to do, but haven't really wanted to do. Sure, you should've planned to do it, but you didn't, and now it seems more palatable than the thing you planned on doing, sooo...

Or maybe there's that thing you've been meaning to explore and you can't get it out of you head. So the best thing to do is just get your fix and move on with your life. Maybe the exploration will be fruitful. Maybe not. But at least you'll know, and if it is you now have more information to integrate it into your life.

Perhaps there's a way to be intentional about serendipity. I'm not really sure. If there is, it seems like a bit of an oxymoron. It also seems way less fun than playing hooky on occasion.