4 Practical Tips for Minimizing Distractions
This post is part of my How to Actually Get Things Done Series, which covers these four principles for productivity:
- Take control of your time
- Know your priorities
- Minimize distractions
- Take time off
This post digs into principle #3. Check out the other posts in this series:
I always tell people that distractions are the enemy of productivity. Distractions cause you to lose focus, and can make you feel scattered, tired and overwhelmed.
You have to actively work against distractions in order to stay focused and use your time how you want to use it. The good news is that many distractions are actually controllable, and therefore preventable.
Let’s dig into some practical tips for how to minimize distractions so you can actually get things done:
1. Prioritize inbound things coming your way
- Digital communication is so immediate that it can trick us into thinking that the Slack message/email/phone call/text message that we just got is more important than the thing we were working on. It’s very likely that thing is NOT urgent. Depending on your job, it’s very possible that most things that come your way throughout the day are not urgent, and can wait until you finish what you’re doing.
- It’s up to you to control your response to these things.
- One way to do this is to prioritize the “thing that just came up” along with the rest of your tasks for the day. For example, if I get a Slack message while I’m focusing on writing a doc, I might ask the person “when do you need an answer?” and that will help me figure out if I need to tackle it right then or if it can wait.
2. Prevent the distractions altogether
- Another way to control your response is to simply prevent yourself from getting distracted altogether while you’re focused on something else.
- For some of us (hi, it’s me), we can’t control our urge to compulsively check email, Slack or our phones. It’s a productivity killer, so my favorite trick for avoiding this when I need to focus is to tell my team that I’m signing off of Slack to focus, update my status, and close the app entirely. It’s by far one of the most effective ways to ensure I focus on what I actually need to do.
3. Reduce visual noise
- Reducing visual distractions is a huge part of increasing focus.
- Visual information is being sent to your brain and that’s using brain power THAT YOU NEED for focusing on the task you prioritized. So stop wasting your brain power on those 10 tabs you have open (there’s no way you’re using them all right now).
- Other ways to do this include hiding your dock (for Mac users), so you’re not drawn to that red dot signaling you have new messages, or minimizing/closing browser tabs that you don’t need to look at right now.
- When you look at your screen, you should only see the thing(s) you need to complete the task at hand.
4. Hack your desktop for tomorrow
- Before you leave for the day, leave the thing open that you want to come back to first thing in the morning so you don’t get distracted by something else.
- A hot tip here is to close Slack/email/other distracting things and leave your to-do list up so first thing in the morning you’re able to get a clear picture of your priorities for the day.
I hope you found these tips helpful and that you’re able to feel more in control of your time by minimizing distractions — whether at work or at home. Next week we’ll dive into how to take time off. I’m always happy to chat about time management, productivity and prioritization! Hit me up on twitter @alikrausman.
