What Distraction Costs Us

In our last post, we shared a small story about Stephie: the missing button on a shirt, the odd shoelaces, mid-movie. Things she noticed simply because she was fully present.

Most of us aren’t. And it’s not because we don’t care. It’s because our attention is being asked to do something it was never built to do.

The Cost of a Divided Mind

Research shows we switch tasks every few minutes on average, and it can take up to 23 minutes to fully refocus afterwards. That’s a significant amount of our energy leaking away not just from our calendars, but from our conversations, our creativity, and our connection to what actually matters.

When we’re distracted:

• Ideas are missed
• Misunderstandings multiply
• Achievement can feel hollow, even when the task is “done”

And it shows up in our relationships too. Even brief moments of distraction in conversation can reduce trust. People sense when we’re not fully with them, and over time, that sense of being unseen can quietly erode the connection we have with them.

This understanding comes from Vee Haslam, creator and steward of the MOJO Practice™, who has written extensively about presence and distraction. As Vee puts it, presence isn’t about perfection. It’s about noticing when we’re not as fully connected as we’d like to be, and choosing to meet that with compassion and curiosity, rather than self-criticism.

A Different Way to Understand Distraction

This understanding comes from Vee Haslam, creator and steward of the MOJO Practice™, who has written extensively about presence and distraction.

As Vee puts it, presence isn’t about perfection. It’s about noticing when we’re not as fully connected as we’d like to be, and choosing to meet that with compassion and curiosity, rather than self-criticism.

That shift matters.

Because the moment we stop trying to fix ourselves and instead start noticing what’s actually happening, something begins to change.

The Gift of Simply Noticing

Here’s the part that matters most and another insight from Vee’s work with the MOJO Practice™: we don’t need to fix distraction. Simply noticing it is already an act of presence.

From there, we get to choose. We might:

• Pause
• Check in with ourselves
• Reschedule
• Take a few slow, deep breaths
• Acknowledge the natural human moment of a passing distraction, without judgment

These are small moments. Easy to overlook. But they are the same kind of micro-moments Stephie seemed to live in naturally. For the rest of us, they’re something we can practise.

“Where you place your attention is where you place your energy.” — Dr. Joe Dispenza

When we intentionally pause with presence, we don’t just reclaim our attention. We reclaim our energy, our clarity, and our connection to what deeply matters.

A Question Worth Sitting With

Next time you catch yourself mid-task, mid-conversation, or mid-thought, try asking: 

Am I truly here, or somewhere else in my mind?

It might be feeling your feet on the ground beneath you. It might be a few slow breaths. It might simply be noticing that your attention drifted and that’s okay.

What might shift if, instead of pushing through, you simply allowed yourself to be here, now?

We’d love to hear how you practice reclaiming your energy. Get in touch with us and your reflections might find their way into our future posts.

This is the kind of noticing Stephie lived naturally, and the kind of practice Vee Haslam has spent years training in purpose-driven leaders through her MOJO Practice™.

To make this practice accessible anywhere, Stephie’s Choice Australia invites you to experience Your Pocket MOJO™. It turns this very act of noticing into something trainable, one to five minutes at a time, designed to regulate your nervous system directly from your phone. 

In our next post, we’ll explore how Your Pocket MOJO™ supports this in real time and how these micro-moments can begin to shift the way you move through your day.