How To Unleash Your Hidden Productivity
Hey You! What if I tell you that there is a secret productive troll running free with you all over the place? Whether it’s your home, college, or office, he is all over.
You can’t see or hear him yet he is there, degrading your capacity to accomplish your goals. He is the only reason behind your past disappointments.
You have sometimes thought that he is there and attempted to discover and kill him out, but in any case, you surrendered. With your these negligible endeavors, he has grown up like a tremendous beast and now killing your ability to fulfill your dreams with much more power.
But this won’t happen from now, as with this article, we will discover the secret to discover him out and conquer over him. Now, you must be thinking up that I am kidding as you don’t have any such troll alongside you.
In any case, mind me, he is there with you! from over a long time. Also, this troll has a name.
Its DISTRACTION.
Even in the quietest places, this troll seems to be working against us with obnoxious popups, noisy alerts, and new tabs opening with almost every click of the mouse.
The average worker is bombarded by constant distractions: — email, slack chats, text messages, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat notifications.
As the New York Times reported, a UC Irvine study found that a typical office worker gets interrupted every 11 minutes — yet it takes an average of 25 minutes to come back to the original task.
Sometimes it’s not about what you should be doing, but what you should stop doing.
So, what we can do to fool this troll and remain focused…
Well, here I will disclose to you some ideas where we can use our technology only to stop this distraction.
1. Remind yourself your Goal every time you open a new tab
There are some outstanding Chrome extensions out there in the market that are mainly designed to improve our focus. One of them which I find supportive is — Momentum — which shows an excellent view shot every time you open a new tab.
The beauty of Momentum is that it distracts you when opening new tabs with an incredible landscape photograph while reminding you of your focus point for the day along with your to-do list. These properties remind your mind that your to-do list is a higher priority than wasting your time on unimportant websites.
2. Smartphones
Snack Nation CEO Sean Kelly once puts forth a solid defense that the little PC in our pockets is the world’s most perfect distracting machine.
Part of the reason has to do with our brain chemistry. Doing things like checking Facebook or text messages discharges dopamine, a feel-good chemical that rewards us for completing tasks.
That is the reason, it’s so tempting to check our phones constantly. Our phones are a known dopamine source, which floods our brain temporary pleasure. In fact, phones and apps- with their popup notifications are designed to trigger this exact behavior.
To take care of this issue, you can set your phone and social media apps password as your “GOAL” name. This will make you remember your goal every time you attempt to open these distractions.
Also, I have brought some applications for you which will control other applications: -
- Stay Focused — App Blocker & Website Blocker: is a Self-Control, Productivity and App Usage Tracker app which helps you focus by limiting the usage of apps, websites and keywords basis the conditions defined by you! In addition to website blocking and apps blocking, you can set limits on your overall phone storage as well.
Investing a lot of energy in Social Networking or Messaging Apps? Block it and it will help you reduce the usage.
2. Focus Plus — Focus Plus sets a timer for your work. But the exciting part of this timer is — it blocks the usage of everything on your phone. Only the timer will be displayed and you won’t be able to go back or open anything even from your notification panel.
3. Multitasking
We all think we can do it. We take calls while we work. We read articles while we write them. We secretly order lunch while we are in an important staff meeting.With this, we won’t be able to give our perfection in any of the work. And then we say, why we are not able to remember the topic that we just learnt yesterday.The thing is, we’re wrong. Our brains just are not built for performing various tasks, and we are generally horrible at it.
Multitasking is a misnomer, and we should consider dropping it from our vocabulary altogether. When we attempt to multitask, we are intentionally distracting ourselves from our most important tasks.
4. Tape your computer
Now this is one of my favorite hacks because it is so simple, yet highly effective. Take a 10-inch-long piece of masking tape and write yourself a question on it with a marker, then stick the tape along the top edge of your computer screen.
Examples of a question could be, “Is what you are doing is productive?”, “Is this going to grow you?”
This may seem a bit ridiculous, but there isn’t a simpler way to remind yourself to stay on task than have an obvious question that has an obvious answer smacking you in the face every time you look at your monitor.
The main motive is don’t let your main goal fade from your mind every time you try to waste your time over your distractions.
5. A phone sabbath every Saturday
You cannot use your phone on Saturday. For nothing. You are not allowed to touch it. Read books. Family Time. If you are meeting up with friends, tell them you don’t have your phone so they will need to be there on time.
It’s possible. People have been doing this for millennia. You are in control.
This will make you relax and refill your mind with good thoughts and thus prepare you to get started with an energetic and focused week ahead.
6. Say No to Social Media
Yeah, I am saying it is pretty straight forward, stay away, completely stay away from social media while you are at work. Yes, that Instagram post of your friend’s vacation is highly adoring, but all you’re going to end up doing is meandering through the wormhole of Instagram, only to realize that all of your “friends” are lying to the world about how awesome their lives are — and now it’s been two hours and you have accomplished absolutely nothing.
Many people give their excuse for distraction to their emails.For a lot of us, checking email is the first thing we do in the first part of the day.We answer high priority requests, respond to questions, browse articles from the various mailing lists to which we subscribe, and delete junk mail. From there, we have our inbox open all day, and when a new email pops up, we click into it immediately.
Often, this isn’t our fault. Many of us have been taught that being responsive to email is an essential part of our being a professional.But as it turns out, this type of engagement with our inbox is a surefire way to torpedo our productivity. Responding to emails is, by its very nature, responsive.The main threads and conversations we have in emails pull us in multiple directions and distract us from the important work still on our plate.
We can fix it by Batch Process your email. Instead of living in your inbox, designate set times to respond to emails, and stick to it.
You sit down at the computer, and you swear you’ll be gainful. Next thing you know, it’s twelve hours later.
You’ve browsed your email, updated your Facebook status, blown through 200 pages of Reddit, read every article in your Twitter feed, looking up for your favorite band on Wikipedia, vanity googled yourself, cyber-stalked your ex, browsed through all your high-school Instagram crushes’ Instagram feeds, and lost a week’s pay playing online poker.
What you haven’t done is WORK.
We can also fix it by Stay Focused extension:
Stay Focused is a productivity extension for Google Chrome that helps you remain concentrated on work by restricting the amount of time you can spend on time-wasting websites. Once your allotted time used up, the sites you have blocked will be inaccessible for the rest of the day. And trust me, it won’t let you change the settings as well once you are over with your time.
Its highly configurable, allowing you to block or allow entire sites, specific subdomain, specific paths, specific pages, even specific in-page content (videos, games, images, forms ,etc.)
My not answering emails for two hours doesn’t mean the project will go down the drain.
My attraction to that (1) on my WhatsApp browser tab is me willingly accepting slavery to the idiotic notification culture Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn have spawned. By interrupting my work, I am the moth flying into the light and getting zapped.
Distraction is for the mind what fast food is for the body.
Every time, you look from the center of the screen up into that browser tab and see that (1) in there, you are pushing garbage into your mind. But there’s no visible consequence. At least with fat, you can see in the mirror what you’ve done to yourself.
So, distraction-shame yourself. Whenever you cannot complete a 4-hour-long focus session of work every day, tell yourself what a sad pathetic loser you are and this is not acceptable. You’re weak for having handed your locus of control to whichever message faked its urgency as important.
Conclusion
Distractions are a fact of life, but there are definitely ways to optimize your office and minimize their effect.
The key is to eliminate as many as possible. Rather than engage in a daily struggle with your own biology, avoid as many as possible by removing those temptations in the first place.
What are some distractions that we missed, and how does your office deal with them?
Let us know in the comments!!
