There are jobs, and there is work that relies on the professionals checking. We want our surgeons, pilots and firefighters to check and double check. That isn’t the kind of checking most of us do now. It seems that we’ve unintentionally made a career out of checking. We spend many hours a day checking notifications, newsfeeds, incoming and emails, retweets, likes and comment threads.

What’s the point of all this checking? What are we looking for? What are we measuring? How is it helping us? How many times has checking uncovered a genuine emergency that needed an immediate response? We all know the answer.

While these micro-moments of distraction may seem inconsequential, we do pay the price for choosing to check. Our progress, contribution, and impact will always be measured by what we said and did, not by knowing exactly who said and did what. We differentiate ourselves by doing.

We didn’t get to where we are today by looking over our digital shoulder. We got here by paying attention to where we wanted to go.

Image byIvan Rigamonti