The phone rings. Immediately, no matter what you are doing, you stop, pick up the phone and answer? only to find out that it was a telemarketer. You know that a call at that time has every chance of being unimportant, yet it seems impossible to resist picking up the phone when it rings.  

Why is that?  

It's because of a small part of your brain, called the reptilian brain, or primitive brain, that we have in common with most animals. The primitive brain's function is to keep you alive, both by taking care of all the automatic functions you need to live, such as heart beat and breathing, but also to keep you alive in the face of danger. As part of this latter task, it assesses any unexpected element in your environment and triggers the fight-or-flight response when it deems it necessary.  

Here's the rub, though: this part of your brain doesn't think, it just reacts instinctively.  

Until the very recent past (think the pioneers crossing the Rockies toward the West Coast, for instance), unexpected sounds and movements were usually a sign of immediate danger, such as a bear about to pounce on you. So your primitive brain learned to react to every sound or movement as if it was a potential danger, forcing you to stop what you are doing, assess the danger, then resume your task if it was a false alarm.  

Today, an unexpected sound or movement is much more likely to be the phone ringing or an email arriving in your mailbox than an oncoming bear, or even a car barreling towards you. Yet your primitive brain doesn't make the difference between true danger to your life and the phone! So every single time the phone rings, it triggers its alert system, makes you pay attention and assess the danger, if any.  

Add to this alter system some cultural and psychological elements such as the fact that until voicemail boxes, it was the rule to answer the phone every time it rang, because you could miss something important; or the fact that it makes us feel wanted or important when someone calls; and you have a recipe to make it extremely difficult not to pick up the phone when it rings.  

Yet this has a huge cost, as any of you who is constantly interrupted by calls and emails can attest? It's distracting, slows you down, and sometimes even gets your adrenalin going for no reason whatsoever. So turn off the phone every once in a while to get what you need to done, knowing that any important call will result in a voicemail!  

Yours in Daily Mastery,
Karin

PS: If you're not sure how to master all your interruptions, either email me or click here  to see Daily Mastery's teleclass Eradicate Your Interruptions  . It gives you strategies to "cheat" your primitive brain into not reacting unnecessarily to sounds and movements, and to minimize your interruptions to you can be more focused and have more time.