‘NO TV’ - the anti-distraction mantra
Four letters worth more than scores of self-help books
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Why’s it called ‘Oscillations’? I explain it here.
In my late teens/early 20s I sailed a type of sportsboat called a 1720. They were fast and fun, part of what was then a new style of racing (asymmetrics, for the sailing crowd reading this) which many people didn’t quite have the hang of at the time.
As a result, when the wind picked up, thing got a little more… spectacular on the racecourse, especially when the fleet compressed at turning marks, with boats jockeying for position in close proximity, all while carrying out their highest-risk maneuvers: hoists and drops and gybes.
When you put less experienced crews in high-stress situations where they need to make quick decisions and change sails and direction fast, wipeouts were inevitable, and also highly entertaining, assuming you weren’t too close for comfort. For the non-sailor, these out-of-control spinouts are called ‘broaching’ – where the boat heels over to one side out of control, the rudder loses grip on the water, and the boat turns aggressively toward the wind. It often results in gear breakages, sometimes man overboard situations, and for the crew involved, they almost always slide down the leaderboard. They are one of the few things about sailboat racing that make for reasonably good TV. They are the epic fails of our sport. They are also contagious, because they are the ultimate distraction.
One of the better crews at that time – a boat consistently near the top of the fleet where competence begat safety - saw the slapstick mayhem of lesser crews as an existential threat, even when they were usually safely out of range of the carnage. They weren’t worried about the threat of collision. They were worried about the thread of distraction.
To counter the threat, they wrote two words prominently on either side of the boom on that boat, a highly visible mantra to keep their team focused.
‘NO TV’
‘No TV’ meant no rubber-necking, no gawking, no paying attention to the entertaining mayhem. Don’t be distracted. Stop looking at the losers, lest we become them. They are dead to us. Focus on what matters. Focus on greatness. Focus on US.
In high-stress, high-stakes moments, putting a single foot wrong can mean losing control; even a second of distraction can cause you to see all your hard-win gains slip away. Having a short, shoutable mantra to snap you back to reality is a great tool. In the 20 years since, I’ve never seen anything more concise than ‘No TV’. (The power of concise communication is becoming a theme for me). No TV. NO TV!!
Eliminating distraction is the focus of vast reams of self-help and management literature. One of its best-known tropes, hugely popular in startup culture, is the ‘stop doing’ list. In business terms, it means not allowing mission creep in your business – be clear on what it is you can do well, avoid doing anything non-core. Know what you do, but know and adhere to what you do NOT do. No TV.
On the racecourse, you win by reeling in the people ahead of you, and you do that by paying attention to the signals for speed, like telltales, or incoming gusts, not by being distracted by the people creating chaos all around you. In business, you win by reeling in customers, and you do that by paying attention to their behaviours and patterns, not by being distracted by the share price roller-coaster or most recent workplace drama of competitors. No TV.
Of course, business isn’t the only realm where this mantra is relevant. Sometimes ‘No TV’ means just that. Turn off the television (Or TikTok, or Twitter, or the news) and spend your time doing the most high-value thing. Maybe it’s getting exercise, maybe it’s hanging with your kids, maybe it’s going to sleep earlier, maybe it’s reading that book or writing that newsletter post or taking that course or finally selling that damn screenplay you wrote for Brendan Gleeson. Maybe you just need to touch grass. Whatever it is: No TV.
And next time you tell your kids, ‘No TV’, and they ask why, you have a long-winded adult metaphor to bore them with. No TV.
