Tuning out the noise

so many things are happening right now!

It’s too noisy. It’s getting worse.

My smartphone buzzes and my email pops up and my Twitter beeps. Everything makes noise, competing for attention. People around us barely rank as a distraction anymore, but they’re still there too.

Next year: my watch tells me I have a new Facebook notification.

The year after that: my glasses alert me to an incoming blizzard.

It’s too noisy and it’s getting worse. We need to learn new ways to cope.

Here are some things that have worked for me:

• Put your phone on silent and flip it over. Keep it out of sight as long as you can. It’s amazing how non-essential it quickly becomes.
• Close everything. Keep the bare minimum programs and tabs open that you need to accomplish the one task you’re working on.
• Screen detox. Take time everyday to get away from screens. I turn mine off at midnight every night. Read, or do the laundry, or have a conversation. Something about screens kills focus and makes you feel like crap.
• Take breaks. Stop working and walk around every hour or so. Install Breaker to help with this. Our minds aren't built to sit around for 8 consecutive hours working on the same thing.
• Cut your information intake. Unsubscribe from every blog and newsletter you don’t absolutely love consuming and look forward to receiving. Non-essential information is too abundant now to let it into our lives unfiltered.

These things stillfeel unnatural to me — less natural than checking my phone. That’s the problem. I force myself to do them. But some are slowly becoming habitual.

The noise is killing our focus and we need to find strategies to cope.

Old realities mean we habituated ourselves to working Monday through Friday, 9AM to 5PM.

New realities will force us to re-learn how to focus and work.