FBM Musings: Distraction Course Correction
With the start of a new season, we all have a desire to improve our fantasy baseball game. We promise ourselves resolutions to change only to immediately get distracted and stray off course.
What can we do about it?
Enter author and Georgetown computer science professor, Cal Newport.
His writings focus on deep work productivity and attention management in the digital world.
Outside of work, Newport’s own practice of deep concentration comes from an unlikely source: baseball radio broadcasts.
He’s a huge baseball fan, and tries to listen to at least one game per week. Newport has mentioned that listening to a ballgame provides him the practice of sustained concentration needed for deep work as opposed to the cognitive switching of visual stimuli.
Inspired by Cal Newport’s “Mid-Year Course Correction" protocol, here’s a focused 3 step framework to create less distraction and improve success in your fantasy baseball season this year.
1. Bring a Book
There are many ways to keep you thinking about the fantasy game without having to always be glued to the current news. This suggestion is going after those smaller temporary moments of boredom. Waiting in line at a store, at your lunch break, grabbing a coffee, waiting for kids/spouse to get ready as you idly stand.
What’s your default? Doom scrolling.
I know this may seem impractical at first. Those bored moments drive your impatience to grab the phone for the current news on injuries and roster moves. Even more importantly, those are the moments when you can make those all “important” social media comments/likes.
The book suggestion here is aimed at a practice called dopamine fasting. You are trying to reduce overstimulating impulsive behaviors. That resets your brain’s reward system by allowing it to downshift and relax. Over time this rewiring leads to de-cluttered, more focused brain.
Adding a pause as you race through the day can be a good thing. You’ll have better cognitive ability to assess the really important fantasy managerial decisions that impact your team.
⚾️📚 Book Suggestions
My first suggestion would be to grab The Baseball Forecaster or The Process. You’re not going there for player analysis, but for the research abstracts. Each one of those books is a treasure trove on how to think better, and create more opportunities to win at this fantasy game.
The only slight negative is that these physical books are a little on the larger size, so carrying these outside the home is maybe not as practical.
Here are some other suggestions for more compact travel sized books that all have a range of information and entertainment value in the fantasy baseball world.
Fantasyland: A Sportswriter's Obsessive Bid to Win the World's Most Ruthless Fantasy Baseball League by Sam Walker
Fantasy Expert: A Baseball Memoir, Historical Tell-All, and One Stat Geek’s Personal Journey Through Heaven and Hell by Ron Shandler
The History of Fantasy Sports: And the Stories of the People Who Made It Happen by Larry Schechter
Winning Fantasy Baseball: Secret Strategies of a Nine-Time National Champion by Larry Schechter
Please comment on what fantasy baseball or baseball related books have provided you with a source of value and entertainment.
2. Deep Clean Your Social Media Engagement
There's a lot of news to absorb, and it can be overwhelming. We often feel compelled to mentally engage with every piece of news reported, fearing we'll miss out (FOMO) on crucial player and team updates. I understand this anxiety. Baseball is a daily game, and there IS news every day. However, that doesn't mean we can't be more efficient with our time.
🛠️ THE X Tool
X marks the spot for news, but it can be a time sink. So, how do we leverage this powerful news tool without tumbling down a rabbit hole?
The answer lies in Lists.
Lists remain an overlooked feature, even though everyone recommends switching from the "For You" tab to the "Following" tab. The next level of optimization is utilizing Lists. Whether set up as private or public, Lists help streamline your scrolling by grouping accounts by their specialty—injuries, starting pitchers, bullpens, team news, favorite analysts, and more.
While I follow many people on X, I interact most frequently with my tightly curated List groups of trusted sources for fantasy baseball news and analysis.
Once you've created your Lists, you can pin them to the top of your X timeline. This works especially well on your phone, allowing you to swipe easily between Lists and scroll with more intention.
For more strategic searching, you can find player news specifically from your private or public Lists using this search string:
[player name] list:[1234567890] (replace with your X List ID from the URL)
What other Tools have you found helpful to clean your social media engagement?
3. Reduce Management Overload
Everyone loves to draft teams until it's time to manage them in-season. Without setting boundaries, it's easy to commit to too many fantasy teams, succumbing to the dopamine rush of drafting—like a participant in a Skinner box, waiting for the sound of a Fantrax Horn or an NFBC "You're on the clock!”
Whether due to social pressure to join more leagues or FOMO about roster shares, overcommitment can leave you drowning in team management. The quantity of leagues hurts your in-season management of FAAB, setting lineups, and ultimately your monetary return on investment.
🇯🇵 🗄️ The Kanban System
While limiting the number of teams is the most optimal strategy, a fantasy baseball version of a "Kanban system" might help those who can't reduce their commitments. Kanban, Japanese for "visual card," is a visual management scheduling system for manufacturing. It uses visual cues to prompt necessary actions and keep processes flowing efficiently. One of its main goals is limiting excess inventory and communication bottlenecks in the production line—in other words, reducing management and production overload.
The rough fantasy baseball equivalent of a Kanban system exists in the league import features offered by Rotowire My Leagues and the BaseballHQ League Sync. These tools allow managers to import all their league rosters from multiple fantasy websites into one centralized location. Once imported, you can track and filter free agents using either platform's projections and rankings, as well as monitor player ownership across multiple leagues. While these tools don't automatically make roster changes—you'll still need to visit the actual NFBC, ESPN, or Yahoo websites—they streamline player evaluation management. Though I haven't personally used these tools, they're worth considering.
How else have you reduced committing to too many teams?
I equate productivity… to a combination of two forces, organization and intention, united toward increasing the quality of your life. - Cal Newport
I hope these suggestions help you subtract distractions and add focus as you work toward a more productive fantasy baseball season in 2025.
Thanks for reading.
Take care.