Make Time
We are living in a world of distractions. Whether it is our Television, Smartphone notifications, or even our family members. Everyone tends to distract us for their unusual requests especially when we are at Deep Work. In his book “Deep Work” Cal Newport gives us an insight that it takes you time to build a focus on certain things. If you have noticed when you are working on something whether it’s writing, reading, or even playing video games for more than 30 mins, your concentration deeply attached to the game or the thing you are doing. You need an ultimate concentration to reach that level of concentration whether it’s 10 or 20 minutes. If you get distracted on the 21st minute or if you quickly switch your task on your 21st minute, your concentration level is back to zero. All over again, you need to work to get back to the level of concentration. It’s like only being fully conscious of your task, ignoring the world.
I am not a fan of the Pomodoro timer technique. 25 minutes is very short for me when I am coding or learning some skills. Usually, I record my time with an app for 2 hours each. After 2 hours I leave my desk to take a quick break which is usually 15–20 minutes. Again back to deep work. So, this is an article about how I am able to concentrate and how I’ve learned over years. How I manage my distractions and how I beat procrastination.
Learn to track your time even your distractions
Tracking your times gives you the ability to store data of your own time on your little storage for your highlights. We don’t keep track of our time, how much we were focused, how long we were studying, practicing, or developing our skill, or how much time we have wasted on the Internet infinity pools rather than being productive.
For example, I usually do 5–6 major tasks a day. So I use an app Flip to keep track of every minute when I am practicing, studying, reading, writing this story, or even the distractions. I gather small information on this app every day to visualize the time I wasted and the time I was productive. Suppose after a long session on a study I want to see a video on Youtube, so instead of slipping with the algorithm, I keep track of the video, how much I’ve wasted this time with distractions. If I have gone way beyond my measured time then I need to argue with my mind, “Due to this video, I ‘ve wasted this much time today” so that my brain tweaks a change on its algorithm.
Control your Smartphone
Most of us don’t have multiple devices to track time and get updated on Social Media. Probably, we use the same distracting device. Often we are get distracted or get dragged by our notifications while we try to work on our phone or do productive things on our smartphone.
When we research things on the Internet. We are grabbed by the algorithms on our smartphone whether it be the Friend suggestions notification from Facebook or Your friend has posted a photo on Instagram or “Watch it before it’s gone” posts on Twitter. Our mind is always curious, it seeks for environmental changes, it’s the part of our brain’s history. It finds these things interesting so we can’t control what we are recommended.
So, before negotiating with your brain saying “Oh, it’s urgent. I have to look at this post”. Learn to block all the apps. Yes, it’s daunting to be ancient or sage. Or you are worried you will miss out on the trend or the news. Understand, anyway the important news will always find you.
Rather use your smartphone to increase your productivity
Each app begs to be used so that it always keeps spamming you with some or other notifications that can be distracting. Some apps are even fishy, they trick your brain to be clicked on the notification. Smartphones are built to be light and portable, easy to use they don’t require much of our time. One-touch, we find every treasure on our hand to get used to. One tap our favorite video is on our palm, one tap we get connected with our friends, one tap we get to see the world. You must’ve used your smartphone so much that you wouldn’t need to conscious of it. You might have made your smartphone an atomic habit.
Perhaps, your smartphone can be a powerful tool. It can be turned from a candy machine to a high-end tool, that you can use for your productivity. For example, most of the time my phone lies on the table, but it’s a great calculator, a great health tracker, mini notes store, real notes to pdf converter. Usually, I don’t browse anything on my phone. Being a computer enthusiast my every task lies on my laptop. I watch Youtube videos, tweets, or sometimes get lost on Reddit but remember I keep track of my distraction.
Recharge
Human beings aren’t supercomputers. They can’t be operated 24/7. We need fuel or energy to operate. If you try to do it 24/7, you will malfunction. Understand our body is not used to do 24/7 or even 10 hours a day continuously. When you sit on a chair, you feel nothing for the next 30 minutes, for the next 1 hour you might feel some backache or pain on the buttock but it's light. But if you start sitting more than 2 hours even if you claim you aren’t feeling any pain, but it’s torture for your body. Our body wasn’t mean to evolve for this. Experts suggest us to move every 1 hour or so, to be effective on our work.
Our brain is like a battery. Every time it needs to be recharged, our battery gets sucked out when we work. To perform better we need to recharge our battery.
Remember the Ancient age, we were all hunter-gathers. Our job was to basically collect food and survive. We used to walk, run, jump. We weren’t screen tappers or pencil pushers. To recharge our battery we have to eat, take a break, exercise.
The best way to Recharge is, Enjoying nature or Meditation.
Highlight your time every night
Everyone improves with a lesson learned from a failure. If we missed out on the data on how we performed we will never be able to change our errors. To miss out on the errors all we need to do is, gather our daily activities. What we did, how much time we did.
And there comes the ‘highlight’ part, we should review our day every day. What we read, how we performed today. What’s to finish, what will be my priority tomorrow, and so on. Highlighting doesn’t mean reviewing your day and leaving it. It should be done like this: I was distracted for 2 hours on DailyDoseOfInternet today, I shall be blocking its recommendation tomorrow.
Eat Right
Your body functions like a machine, so it makes sense that the fuel you provide to your machine is directly correlated positively or negatively to your performance. If you habit of feeding your machine poisonous elements, then indeed it will start to malfunction over time. If not it will run healthy forever. As well as, you already know that the foods and beverages you consume have the power to shape your body type, but what you may not realize is that your nutrition plays a significant role in determining your productivity habits as well.
This can play out in a number of different ways. The foods we eat have the power to give us a surge of energy when we need it most. Our universe, our world, everything is in balance. Thus the same principle applies to our body, if you eat more you will feel quirky and if you eat less your brain will be focused to create cravings.
Learn to say “No”
If we are kind, we feel disgusted to say “No” to our loved ones. If you are an introvert, I believe you don’t have the word “No” in your dictionary. Honestly, it’s brutal to get rejected. So, we don’t want our closed to feel rejected. We don’t want to hurt anyone. But it’s not about hurting anyone. It’s not even, “I don’t have time for this” thing. It’s just “It’s not my priority.”
If you feel like someone is completely ruining your time, it’s better for you to learn from the mistakes. So, whenever someone is ready to ruin your time, here are some tips to say “No” indirectly, so you don’t feel awkward :
- “Let me think about it”
- “Let me check my Calendar”
- “Sorry, I have other plans”
- “Sorry, it’s my busy day”
To feel genuine, you can tell them a true story, why you can’t do it?
Control your thoughts
“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”
The Data on the Internet is so large as of today. We get all the information at once. It’s very easy to get sucked into the Infinity Pools, thanks to smartphone and electronic gadgets. We can get the information from “America” to “Australia”, all thanks to Social Media. We consume so much information in a day. Whenever we try to perform Deep Work, we get distracted by the thoughts on the videos of Zach King, our concentration goes from work to “How he tricks us?”. So we begin searching on the Internet, “How Zach King, tricks us?”. Hence, we get lost in the Infinity Pools. Or, Whenever we feel like performing a boring or mind-intensive task. Our mind tricks us with “Hey, let’s know the net worth of Pewdiepie.” It’s interesting, right?
In this informational world, it’s very hard to control your thoughts, control your distractions. Before performing any physical task, we should clear our minds. Our mind is full of cache, how can we delete this cache is by practicing meditation. Clear your thoughts with Meditation. It will help you.
Perfection is the enemy of the progress
No one is perfect in this world. Whatever you do has not to be perfect. Don’t seek perfection, it the path to Procrastination and thus zero progress.
It is always okay to make mistakes, understand mistake is always a technique to figure out what didn’t work on your plan to be productive for eg: You consumed too much meal, so you are feeling unproductive and sleepy. So, What should be done, avoid consuming that extra meal, just because it was delicious. You missed a time for meditation, what was the fault? You spend an extra hour in the Infinity pools last night. So, what should be done? Make sure you don’t fall into Infinity Pool today. This is how you should improve every day.
Practice Practice and Practice
Whether it’s practicing studying or practicing concentration. Everything needs constant progress and focus. Practice every day. Remember the 1% improvement every day by James Clear in his book “Atomic Habits”. You won’t be a monk on a single day, you can’t gain hyper-focus like a Christiano Ronaldo on a single day. It takes practice and progress. Don’t worry about your goal to be focused, just improve by one percent every day.
The same rules apply to distractions. If you become distracted every day, you will achieve mastery on distractions, which I believe you are a master right now. If you go 1 % decrement, that will be counted. Your brain doesn’t understand what’s good and what’s not. It will try to do most of what it likes to do. So if you made a daily 1% increment a habit, trust me you’ll be bored to dive into the Infinity pool.
Start Reading everyday. Make Reading a habit.
You need understand the principles of everyday things around you. Learn the same thing from Business perspective to Engineer perspective, Philosopher perspective to Scientist perspective. Fill your mind with these 100 mental models. Start reading these models. Mental models are the most important ideas of each science: philosophy, mathematics, physics, statistics, engineering, chemistry, biology, psychology, economics and history.
You need to know and connect them.
These models do not tell you what you think, rather they teach you how to think, and encourage you to think critically.
Check here: 100 Mental Models
