“Distractions destroy
action. If it’s not moving towards your purpose, leave it alone.” — Jermaine
Riley
Almost everything around
you is designed to steal your attention.
That’s why it’s essential to
learn how to shield yourself and develop your ability to focus
on command.
You will need to fight
off five types of distractions, and below you will find different ways that
will help you do exactly that.
What
are your biggest distractors?
Before we dive into the steps
you can take to defeat distractions, first, you need to pinpoint what distractions
you have on a daily basis. By distractions, I mean anything that can pull
you away from the activity you should be doing.
Open a digital note, or take a
piece of paper and write down what are your biggest distractors, and what you
can do to solve them.
Let’s dive into different distractions and most
efficient ways you can overcome them. Note that some of these suggestions are
preventive, while others are in-the-moment ways you can reduce, or completely
remove distractions.
Biological
Distractions
Our ability to take care
of ourselves physically is a type of the distraction that is often overlooked,
and it shouldn’t be.
·
Find the right amount of sleep — this is by far the biggest reason why
people are unproductive. To solve this, don’t follow the standard 8
hours of sleep. Instead, find the right amount of sleep you need, and
the optimal time to go to bed and wake up. Then gradually reach those
times, and optimize from that point.
·
Take naps — The best way to solve random attacks of
drowsiness is to take a 30-minute nap. This isn’t meant to recoup for sleep,
but to give you a chance to refresh your body and re-center yourself.
·
Plan/prepare your meals in advance — Hunger and loud stomach is one
of the biggest distractors, so having your meals planned and prepared
will save you from disthe traction of thinking in the moment what you will eat,
where and when. Plus you can have healthy snacks (nuts and baby carrots)
near you can help you solve this.
·
Don’t overeat — This usually slows
us down and makes us sleepy. Because of this, try to have a
smaller plate and eat until you’re about 70–80% full.
·
Hydrate — Dehydration can cause headaches, dry mouth
and can distract you from the work at hand. Try to always have a bottle of
water near you, you can even add a bit of lemon, mint, ginger and cucumbers if
you want to additionally spice up your metabolism and raise the level of
anti-oxidants.
·
Be careful of caffeine/sugary foods-drinks — This is something you
should be careful about, because they are a great way to raise your energy
level up, but you can experience energy crashes after the effect wears off.
·
Pay attention to your posture — Sitting down, especially in a bad
position can cause all sorts of problems on a long run. So make it a habit
to take 2–3 minutes of your day, couple of times and stretch. Especially your
lower back.
·
Take walks — As someone who’s in front of a computer every day, I
strongly suggest that you get up every hour or two, and take at least couple of
hundreds of steps — even in the office. This will not only raise your
energy level, but will help you lose a couple of extra calories — and I have a
feeling all of us need this.
Mental
Distractions
Consider mental
distractions to be any thoughts unrelated to the task at hand.
·
Schedule your day — not knowing what your priorities
are for each day is one of the biggest reasons most people lose a lot of time
by determining what they should be working on. That’s why each night you
should set priorities for the next day, so you have more control over what you
want to execute. You don’t have to pinpoint every single
minute, instead try to have 3 big things you want to finish each day.
·
Low distraction periods — Utilize time when distractions
are naturally rare — such as early morning, when the sounds are low, no
colleagues, traffic and so on.
·
Recalibrate — A lot of things happen before the work itself —
from traffic, to interacting with other people, something might worry you, so
it makes a lot of sense to take a few minutes, leave that behind, and see
what’s the first thing you want to focus on.
·
Breathe intentionally — perhaps the
most common recommendation is that deeper breathing which utilizes
the diaphragm and abdomen more can encourage a more relaxed and confident mood.
·
Pinpoint your inefficient hours — Everybody has their own
natural working rhythm. If you don’t already know it, I suggest that you
track your energy and efficiency levels to see what time of the day you have
the highest output. Personally, my most inefficient hours are from 14h to 16h —
no matter what I do, I just can’t keep my head up. Ergo, the nap.
·
Take breaks — After a while, no matter how much efficient work you did,
it happens that you are staring at the screen without actually being focused.
So getting up and taking a 5 minute break can give you a chance to refresh and
come back to your task with more focus.
·
Use Guiding Questions — Questions are a great way to
reach the logical part of our brain and let it naturally find the right
answers. Here are two that could be useful: Is this worth my
time? What should my focus be?
·
Have deadlines — For each task you have,
estimate how much time it will take you to finish, and stick to that as a
deadline. This will give you a positive pressure and increase the level of
efficiency.
·
Meditate —
Next thing you can do is meditation, which is a great way to refresh your
mental state, and if nothing, just to zone out and catch your breath. This
also drastically reduces your level of stress.
·
Track time — I challenge you to this for a day, and you will be amazed
how much time is wasted, and how. You can use TOGGL, or Eternity app (IOS). Both
are free for basic version which is more than enough.
Environmental
Distractions
When we are not as invested in
the task at hand, we often act as CROWS; we look for anything shiny around us
that will distract us from doing work.
·
Work in a quiet environment — If possible, even for
an hour or two, remove yourself from the busy office, where you are surrounded
by people and find a small corner to work in.
Or something similar. Usually when people cannot see you, they are less likely to look for you.
·
Declutter — Take a look at your home/work area and eliminate trash,
everything that is unpractical and distracting.
·
Organize —
Have primary and secondary work area. Everything that you use on a
daily basis, place on the primary work area, and everything you use on a
weekly/monthly basis move to the secondary work area (such as
books, cables, printer, photos, staplers, and other items).
·
Follow this simple rule — Every object should have its place.
Once you finish using it, immediately return it to where it belongs. This will
not only keep everything organized but will help you find items when you need
them.
Digital
Distractions
This is probably the most
time consuming, and diverse type of a distraction.
·
Declutter your computer — When it comes to using your computer,
for the offline use I suggest you keep your apps and folders organized, and to
the minimum. Everything that’s not used on a weekly — bi-weekly basis
should be deleted or moved to an external drive.
·
Declutter your phone — I suggest you delete every app that doesn’t
contribute any of your goals, and it’s just a waste of time. Then place on
the first screen applications you use on a daily basis, and move everything
else to the second and third screen — making it more difficult to access.
·
Move your phone out of reach — Then, whenever you work, place
your phone out of the arms reach, turn off the internet so you don’t get
notifications.
·
Customize your notifications — I suggest that you turn off locked
screen notifications. This will reduce your visual distractions, because
most of us pick up the phone, the moment we see a new notification. You
can keep the notification for calls, but for social media and emails keep it
off.
·
Go offline — Yup, if nothing pops up, nothing can distract
you.
·
Limit your internet use with software/extensions — For your computer, you
can install software called SelfControl (source) a free Mac
application to help you avoid distracting websites, for Windows the alternative
is Cold Turkey (source).Or you can
install extensions called StayFocusd (Source) or
Gofuckingwork (source) — both are free and
work well.
·
Set rules for email use — When it comes to emails and social
media, I suggest you create rules for yourself to check them only at a specific
time of the day. Plus, I respond to them the moment I read them, so I don’t
have to read them twice, and lose time.
·
Set rules for social media apps — Try not to open social media apps
for the first hour or two. This will decrease the external stimuli, and will
help you focus on your thoughts, so you can have hia gher level of control over
your day.
·
Install Newsfeed Eradicator — It’s an extension for
Facebook, which completely removes the social feed, and replaces it
with inspirational quotes.
Social
Distractions
Now, this is something
you don’t have that much control over, but you can still do a couple of things
that might help you reduce them.
·
Communicate your working style — Each person has their own way of
working, and it makes a lot of sense to set aside a couple of minutes of your
time, to set expectations with your colleagues and family. People usually
respect this when you ask them politely and respectfully, so there is
nothing to lose.
·
Use your headphones — Music is by far the best way to enter
the state of flow, and maintain one. But if you don’t like listening to
music, you can just wear headphones and people will assume that you are
not to be disturbed.
·
If interrupted, say: “I’m focused right now, but I’ll get back to
you when I finish the task at hand” or you can scream suddenly, this will
make them less likely to interrupt you next time.
·
Block your time — Try scheduling a meeting with yourself,
and treating it as such. In my previous company, we used public calendars,
and I would have 2–3 blocks of my time schedule, as if I have a normal meeting,
and when people see this, they assume I am already busy.
·
Say NO to meetings — that don’t have an outcome,
agenda and facilitator defined. I usually ask what is the desired outcome,
and in case one isn’t created, I ask to be excused until they need me to
discuss my area of expertise. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but for the
times it does, you will save time which you can invest in something else.
·
Schedule meetings in a row — There is nothing worse than having
meetings spread all throughout the day, because you barely have an hour of your
time to do some focused work. So if you can, try to schedule meetings you have
in a row, so you can at least have some time to execute some tasks.
One
more thing you should keep in mind
Distractions are just one side
of the coin. The other side is the cost of activity transfer. Which
means that every time you focus on a task at hand, and something breaks that
focus, you need to invest a couple of minutes to regain it again and enter the
state of flow.
Because of it, you need to
learn how to remove as many distractions as possible, and minimize them from
appearing, so you can maintain the state of flow for as long as possible.
This alone will skyrocket your
productivity.
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