Why Are You So Distracted?

Get Things Done.

Energize Your Productivity.

Top Tricks of Highly Successful People.

These and countless other slogans and click-bait tweets and YouTube videos claim and exclaim what can be yours if you follow their advice.

But the reason why you're distracted and struggling to get things done may have a simple and easily identifiable cause: your personality.

Why do we get distracted?

Although there are many justifiable reasons why people get distracted from moment to moment — crazy and deadly weather, daily mass shootings, the crimes-in-real-time of psychotic politicians — there tends to be a central theme to the general distraction we all may suffer from on a daily basis.

See if any of these scenarios sound familiar:

1. You have a report due at work but it feels like being asked to pull your own teeth without anesthetic to find the motivation to get started.

2. There is a deadline looming ever closer to write a creative advertisement for a product you feel no connection to, and that blank page is staring back at you and it hasn't blinked in three days.

3. The garage is an absolute mess and you've been putting off getting it organized for months (technically speaking, it's needed to be done since you moved in six years ago, but who's counting?)

4. For some reason, perhaps because a Jedi waved their hand and played a mind trick on you, you agreed to give a presentation at a neighborhood association meeting and the thought of talking in front of a group of near-strangers for 10 minutes makes your skin crawl.

What do all of these have in common?

The Truth about Motivation

First, let's get one truth out of the way. For every scenario listed, there is someone who would eagerly and enthusiastically jump in and get it done without delay or hesitation. And they'd probably do a very good job of it, too.

Here's a second truth. For all intents and purposes, there is no one person on this planet who would be as eager (and qualified) to tackle all four scenarios with equal enthusiasm.

What does this mean?

We all have skills that we have learned through training and other means. Each of us has had a unique set of experiences that have helped shaped and guide our life-path to bring us where we are today.

Each of us also has a particular psychometric or personality profile that is innate and unchanging. It took form essentially at birth and represents what could be described as our personality's DNA.

It is this combination of experiences, training, and hardwired personality that makes you unique.

The innate, unchanging nature of your personality profile is what determines the things you instinctively enjoy and don't enjoy.

Sure, fears can be overcome through specialized coaching or even psychological therapy, but it's the inherent joys and pleasures you take in some activities over others that are represented by your psychometric profile.

For instance, some of us are naturally creative while others are analytical. This is the common trope of being right-brained or left-brained (which isn't really a thing, by the way, but the point is still valid). We didn't choose to be that way, and trying to train ourselves to be creative when we're naturally analytical, or to be analytical when we're naturally creative is like trying to play billiards with a rope (it can be done, but it's not easy).

Trying to train ourselves to be creative when we're naturally analytical, or to be analytical when we're naturally creative is like trying to play billiards with a rope.

It is your personality's DNA that determines if you have the kind of psychology that makes writing reports an enjoyable and natural activity rather than a chore.

It is your personality's DNA that makes organizing the garage something that provides satisfaction and takes little effort at all.

It is your personality's DNA that makes writing a creative ad something you look forward to, not dread.

It is your personality's DNA that makes speaking in front of a group of strangers a worthwhile and pleasurable experience.

And it is your personality's DNA that makes the rest of those activities feel like you're being punished.

If you are wondering why you find yourself being easily distracted when it's time to accomplish a particular task, take a look at your emotional hardwiring to understand why.

Take the Core Values Index™ psychometric assessment, the most reliable and accurate personality test on the market today. It will identify within you the particular ratio of four personality types — what we call core values.

It will be your ratio of core values that spell out why some things are a joy and others are a chore.

Core Values Index™ and CVI™ are trademarks of Taylor Protocols, Inc.