No soul on this Earth wakes up in the morning and say “I am going to ruin my life today”. Or "start developing this horrible habit” or “I will not at all try to exhaust whatever is in my capacity to become a better human being. People always want to be a good person and have a purposeful life. But there is someone else in this game we call Devil. He is admittedly clever enough not to waste his time trying to persuade us from intending good which is natural and automatic for everyone to doing evil or the things that are not auspicious for us. Hence he uses “distraction” as his primary mechanism to divert and ultimately lead people to their doom. And this distraction can take the form of something benevolent when the Devil comes wearing God’s hat. You might sit to complete the last part of your today’s work as an example only to “find out” that when you met your colleague this morning, you were in rush and could not greet properly and remember after all you have to be a nice person and develop strong connections with people around you, your loved ones, your colleagues…

Therefore you invite them for lunch or text them to ask for their well-being. Unconsciously you switched from something whose importance is known to be high to something less important in that context. Your intention is weakened and that is not even the worst part. The worst part is that through repeated distractions like these, you gradually train yourself to prefer having good intentions over actually completing good actions. Each time you’re pulled away from what you’re doing toward planning something else “good,” you practice being satisfied with the thought rather than the deed. Over time, this becomes a pattern: you become someone who thinks about doing good things, who has wonderful plans and noble intentions, but who rarely follows through with focused attention.

This is more dangerous than it sounds. The pleasure of thinking you’re a good person—of having kind thoughts and ambitious plans—is intoxicating. It requires no risk, no effort, no real test in the world. You can sit comfortably in your head, surrounded by your good intentions, feeling virtuous. This false sense of goodness is as addictive as any drug, precisely because it’s so easy and costs nothing.

But here’s where distraction becomes truly insidious: once you’re accustomed to seeing yourself as fundamentally good (without that self-image being tested by consistent action), you become vulnerable to self-justification. When you want something badly enough, you can convince yourself that it’s okay to cut corners, bend rules, or hurt others to get it—after all, you’re a good person, so surely your ends justify the means. “Everyone does it,” you tell yourself. “It is just how the world works.”, “I will make up for it later with some good deed.” The harmful starts to look beneficial. The poisonous starts to taste sweet. What you know is destructive becomes the only thing that brings relief.

This is the anatomy of addiction—whether to substances, to social media, to cutting ethical corners in pursuit of success, or to any pattern that erodes your integrity while whispering that you’re still essentially good.

The defense against this pattern is deceptively simple: decide what you’re going to do, then do only that thing with full attention until it’s finished.

Treat each task like an examination where wandering thoughts cost you marks. When you sit down to work, work. When you spend time with someone, be fully present with them. When you’re eating, eat. Protect the integrity of each moment and each intention by refusing to let your mind scatter toward other “important” things you should also be doing.

Reflection has its place—but after you’ve completed what you set out to do, not during. When you reflect afterward, you’re in control of how to adjust your intentions going forward. During the action itself, your only job is to be fully present to what you’ve chosen.

This requires practice. You will fail repeatedly. But each time you catch yourself being distracted and pull your attention back to the task at hand, you strengthen your capacity to will and enact good. You rebuild what distraction has eroded: the integrity between your intentions and your actions, between who you think you are and who you actually are in the world.