Distortions, destructions, disruptions? Ah, DISTRACTIONS. Sorry, I got distracted… This is my first ever blog article, so let’s just see what happens…

As some wise people on the internet pointed out – you should write a blog about topics that you’re passionate and knowledgeable about. And that makes sense – you are likely to be more experienced and knowledgeable about something that is an important part of your life and that you spend time thinking about on a daily basis.

So, I’ve decided to start my blog with a series of articles about productivity. As it happens, I know a thing or two about it.

The first article is about a subject that most of us know too well: distractions.

Have you ever found yourself in the afternoon realising that not only you haven’t done anything productive, but you cannot even name one thing that you’ve actually done? But, but, but you were busy all these hours. Well, you’ve most likely become a victim of distractions.

Why do we get distracted?

I won’t tell you the exact science behind the reasons why we get distracted, however, here’s my understanding – all living beings in nature try to conserve energy and only spend it if there’s a benefit to it. And humans are no exception.

The human brain consumes up to 20% of all body energy, despite being only around 2% of body’s mass (internet fact). No wonder we feel exhausted after a tough day at the office although we’ve hardly even gotten up from our chairs. Our brain will subconsciously try to avoid anything that consumes excess energy.

You may or may not have heard of the term ‘decision fatigue’. It’s a real phenomena that describes how the quality of our decisions deteriorates after a long session of decision making. People tend to make poorer choices in the evenings than they do in the mornings, well, I certainly do. And that is no surprise as decision making is not easy, especially if there are many factors and variables at play. In fact, decision making is similar to learning – it is quite energy consuming. And no wonder these two processes are the most common victims to the villains named distraction and procrastination.

OK, cool. But is it necessarily a bad thing?

Distractions are not always harmful, in fact sometimes we even enjoy them. That being said, even when you’re distracted from something you ought to be doing, there’s a little monster in the back of your brain telling you that you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing. You may keep ignoring that little monster, but it grows and eventually evolves into a full-blown anxiety. And how productive are you after having spent time on meaningless things, worn down your ability to focus and now anxious about the task you need to complete? That’s right, you’d rush to get things done ASAP, will likely make mistakes, cut corners, etc. All that followed by a slightly bitter taste of guilt.

Look, I’m not saying that this is what happens to everybody. Some people do ad-hoc type of jobs where they have to react when necessary and are completely harmonic in doing random things in between. And that’s fine. However, if you want to grow and get better at what you do, you will have to learn, make decisions and step out of your comfort zone in general. And distractions can be a blocker in your way of achieving great things.

Why does it keep happening to me?

Now, imagine two situations:

1. You’re out with your friends Go-karting, all excited about the scoreboard, having great conversations and much fun.
2. You’re alone at home, you’ve got the whole day to yourself. You are determined to write that essay for the university that’s due in a couple of weeks about a subject that you’re not at all familiar with.

In which of these situations are you likely to be more distracted? I’m sure most of you would be completely consumed by the event with the friends hardly thinking about anything else, being present and just losing track of time. You’re likely to not even check your phone for hours (crazy times we live in, huh).

And on the contrary – when faced with a task that is difficult, requires making decisions and making the brain ‘think hard’, you are more likely to be distracted by every possible thing there is – your phone, computer games, social media, cat memes, start to learn to play guitar, read 100 interesting facts about badgers, re-organising your wardrobe, calling your aunt that you’ve not spoken to in 5 years.

So, you see, distractions in most situations are something that doesn’t just happen to us – we let them happen to us. You may want to blame the colleague that ‘made’ you chat for 30 minutes at the coffee break. You may blame your phone that beeps throughout the day or your laptop with apps throwing notifications at you all day long. The bitter truth is – you most likely WANT to be distracted.

However, the good news is – you have more control over your distractions than you might think.

So, what can I do about it?

Let’s make it clear – there can of course be distractions that you have absolutely no control over, e.g., company policy that states that you have to be available on your work phone at any time during the work hours. However, other types of distractions can be eliminated or at least reduced. Let’s talk about the things you CAN do.

Change your mindset

We already established that you are most likely to be distracted by things that you don’t want to be doing but that you have to do anyway opposed to things you enjoy doing. If you are not able to get rid of things you don’t like doing, you might as well start to like doing them. 

You might say that this is impossible or too hard but in fact it isn’t. You don’t have to lie to yourself, but there are tactics you can use to change your mindset towards certain things. Firstly, the devil is not so black as he is painted. In other words – we’ve created negative associations with certain things that are not necessarily true. What you can do:

• Try to see the thing as it is and exclude your negative feelings towards it. If you understand why you feel about it negatively, you’ll be able to rationalise that negativity away.
• Think of the aspects of the task that you actually like.
• Create positive associations with the task, e.g., you can think of cute ways of rewarding yourself when completing the task.

By starting to feel more positive towards the task, you’ll be less willing to procrastinate before doing it and distracted while you’re at it. You might even get into the ‘flow mode’ and do the task without thinking about how much you like it or not.

Now you should be more successful at implementing the suggestions below:

Improve the flow

You probably know the feeling of being in the ‘flow’ – you’re fully focused on what you’re doing, not thinking about anything else apart from the task at hand. This is the most productive state. 

Sometimes there are situations where you’re doing a task and feel like you’re going two steps forward and one step back. This breaks your focus and wastes a lot of your energy while you’re trying to get your focus back.

This can happen for various reasons, one of them is lacking the clarity of what it is you need to do and why you’re doing it and how to do it. By clarifying these aspects, you’re likely to be able to see the path to the completion of the task better, save energy and be happy by ticking off another checkbox in your ToDo list.

There is a number of methods you can use to improve your flow:

• Split a large task into smaller, well-defined tasks,
• Make sure you have all the tools at hand to do the job. In other words – prepare well before you start the task.
• Improve clarity by defining the ‘why’. It will help you with the decision making when performing the task.
• Have the next ToDo item lined up, so that you can easily transit into the next task
• Eliminate distractions that break your flow (see next section)

These are just a few suggestions that you can use to improve your focus and to reduce your willingness to be distracted while you do what needs to be done. You will definitely find more ways to improve your focus when asking yourself – what is it that helps me focus better?

Distractions feed procrastination

OK, what does it mean? Have you ever experienced a situation where you are avoiding a complex task because you know you’re going to be distracted and thus not able to properly do that? I feel you.

Complex tasks require time to get properly focused and an uninterrupted span of time to get the task done. Getting into the focus mode eats a lot of your mental energy, and I would argue that getting focused is an even more energy-consuming process than staying focused. And each time you’re interrupted (distracted), you have to get that focus back. Not surprisingly your batteries are soon drained.

So, what happens? You will most likely end up with a ToDo list that contains those ugly, complex, difficult tasks that you’ve been pushing back again and again. They may not be urgent, but they’re important enough to make you feel bad about yourself for not doing them.

Can you do something about it? Sure you can!

Eliminate notifications

My friends and family know that if they need to urgently reach me, the only way to do that is to call my cell phone. That is because I’ve turned off all the sound and vibration notifications for my chat apps. Truth be told – an incoming call is the only thing that makes my smartphone do anything.

Any notification that draws your attention will likely break your focus of whatever you’re doing at the time. In fact, notifications are the main distraction in our modern world and are like a cancer to our attention span. 90% of the notifications are absolutely useless and in no way require your immediate attention. If you’re shovelling through the pile of notifications’ garbage to find any important ones, it may be a sign that you need to change something.

Less notifications means more uninterrupted work. You can still check the notifications, but you’ll do that at the time of your choosing.

Some ideas of what you can do:

• Disable apps from sending push notifications, unless you really need to be seeing them. Again, you can check that app when you’re free to do that.
• Disable sounds on notifications on your smartphone.
• Have any chat apps / social media notifications turned off.

You can do the above permanently or you can do it at the span of time when you want to be uninterrupted. More about this in the next section.

Focus mode

‘Deep work’ is a fantastic book written by Cal Newport. It argues the significance of being able to do deep work, the rising demand for professionals who have such skill and the success that is accompanied by it. As the name indicates, deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task.

In other words that is work done when in the focus mode – a span of time when you’re focused on specific tasks uninterrupted.

Here are some suggestions for working in focus mode:

• Get rid of all the notifications (see the previous section).
• Unless you have flexible hours, confirm your focus mode schedule with your team. Let them know that you’ll be in a DND mode and only accessible in a case of emergency.
• Put away your phone. You’ll be able to hear if someone calls, but it shouldn’t be at hands reach to tempt you to check social media, apps or games.
• Close all the apps / browser tabs that are not relevant to the task.
• Make sure you are comfortable at where you’re working.
• Prepare ahead of time (tea, some snacks)

You’ll be amazed what you can accomplish once you introduce focus mode in your routine. Your brain is a muscle in a way (not anatomically though), and like any other muscle it weakens if not trained. One of the great benefits of going into focus mode frequently is that you’ll expand your attention span – you’ll find it easier to get into focus mode, will be able to stay there longer and will be less prone to be distracted.

Working at Wisebee

Here at Wisebee we understand the importance of a healthy work environment. The nature of the business we’re in ensures we get to do all kinds of interesting and exciting things. This also means that we get to learn constantly and have to step out of our comfort zones. To be able to do that, we need to have plenty of individual focus time and any unnecessary distractions would just slow the progress and leave us overwhelmed.

So, here’s a peek into how we do things at Wisebee.

Meetings and communication

Some say that communication is the key. That’s true, but so is getting things done. Having too many meetings will make days fragmented, so we keep the number of meetings to the minimum. We have one general Scrum meeting first thing on Monday where each team member briefs the others on the status of their tasks. Then we have a short team meeting first thing on Thursday just to discuss anything that needs to be discussed – blockers, clarifications, questions, etc. We try to keep these meetings short and to the point. If we want to discuss new ideas or brainstorm, we usually do this as part of these two weekly meetings.

We do have a team chat and we use it from time to time, however, we don’t spend our days chatting away. Even when we need to get information from someone in the team, we don’t expect it to happen right away. When one has planned their work properly, not getting a piece of info from someone that instant shouldn’t be a blocker. 

Planning the work

We use JIRA to manage and track tasks and even new ideas. It is encouraged to have all tasks well documented. This reduces any unnecessary questions like ‘what is this about?’. Because we keep the number of meetings to the minimum, it also disciplines us to find out all the necessary information during the meetings we have. That way we get to the point where everyone knows exactly what needs to be done and also are well informed about what other team members are doing. 

Focus mode

Because we work in a way that we don’t get distracted much, most of our working day can be spent in focus mode. So, we actually get a lot of stuff done. Occasionally someone from the team might go in full focus mode to get complex tasks done and would not be accessible for a period of time. As long as the team knows ahead of time, that is absolutely fine.

Conclusion

We all get distracted from time to time. And that usually happens when we’re doing tasks that we don’t particularly enjoy because we spend a lot of mental energy doing them. A distraction is a convenient way to get out of an unpleasant state, so we unintentionally surround ourselves with distractions.

There are three approaches for you to reduce distractions and help you get more things done:

• Change your mindset towards the task. Don’t focus on why you don’t want to be doing something, focus on why you want to be doing it. Make sure the task is well defined, structured and you know what to do and why you need to do it. Sometimes all you need is to know the first step and take it.
• Implement focus mode. Prepare for doing work in focus mode where you know you’ll be focused on a single thing at a time without distraction. This too is a habitual thing – the more you do it, the better you’ll become at it. It’s a way of telling your brain – we need to do this and we will do this and there’s no way around it.
• Change your environment. Just get rid of the potential distractions. Most of the notifications don’t need your immediate attention anyway. Don’t let the notifications control you, be in control of them! Make it difficult for yourself to be distracted. Introduce extra steps you need to take to get distracted, for example, turn off chat, install an app blocker on your phone.

When you’ll be less distracted, you’ll find yourself in much more harmony. You will actually be able to catch up with things that have been sitting in your ToDo list for ages grinning at you. If you ever feel like things just happen to you, reducing distractions will definitely put you back in control, at least in some aspects of life.