Minimizing Distractions

The most glorious time for me to get work done is when no one else is at work. I can put on some music, get my 3 screens and standing desk all ready to go, get my mindset right, and start being productive. And then a friend texts me, a new song I haven't heard starts playing that I want to check out, I need to get a drink of water, or ESPN wants me to know about the next great Fantasy Football move I should make. And each one of those knocks my attention off track, and probably seems more interesting than whatever task I'm trying to accomplish. And each one can take 20 or more minutes to recover from!

One of the hardest things to do is turn everything off. What are we going to miss? What if a critical email comes in, or a phone call about something that happened to one of my kids, or I miss out on a great trade opportunity all for the sake of getting some work done? All that could happen, but how often do they really? If you put your phone in another room, close your email for one hour, and have water and snacks at your disposal with you the world will keep spinning.

Use your calendar feature and turn on Focus time, so people cannot schedule meetings for you, and you can block interruptions. Put your phone minimally on focus mode, and ideally somewhere you cannot easily get distracted by it. Close the email tabs, and if your work then makes you send an email, do that and then get back to action without stopping to peruse whatever other emails came in. One of the biggest productivity hacks I have used is setting calendar reminders to myself in the morning and afternoon to check my email, and closing my email the rest of the day. It is amazing when you do this for a couple of weeks to realize how NOT urgent most messages really are. And you can take care of all of them at one time, rather than multiple.

Even better I would jot down the people that had a question via email for me, and then go take a loop around to talk to them. Then we have better conversations, I'm visible to them, get some movement in, and handle more issues along the way. Batching emails and then conversations can free up so much time to make sure the critical work gets done. Getting away from all these "tools to help productivity" that ultimately slave us to inattention to any one particular task can seem quite frightening at first, but take the plunge and find out.

If you are unwilling to go all in, try one thing first. Turn on focus mode on your phone, turn off notifications to social media posts, close your email, or set up focus times on your calendar. See how that one feels for a bit, then add and add. Try starting with your biggest distraction, and then work your way from there.

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