Set up your workspace to enable better focus

By Bill | Published: May 20, 2013

Being able to focus is all about limiting, tuning out, and ignoring distractions so you can stay on the task at hand.  As I wrote in my what causes distraction post, the environment you are in can significantly add to your level of distraction.  Fortunately there are a lot of things you can do about your environment to minimize distractions and aid in your focus.

Pick a place to work

If you are in an office with a dedicated desk, your choice is already made for you.  If you are any where else you probably have quite a few places to choose from, whether you realize it or not.

If you are at home, you may be subjected to the whims of the people you live with.  Find a space that best meets these criteria.  Get as close as you can to finding a location that meets all of these.  If nothing does, don’t worry about it, just find a place that meets most of them.

  • Television cannot be seen from where you sit
  • There is a clear tabletop or desk with nothing for you to fiddle with.  Take the time to clear off your desk or table where you will be working, there should be nothing on it other than what you need to complete your work.  This includes lots of photos and mementos.   Pick out 1 or 2 things at most that are special and keep them there.  Everything else can be filed away and looked at when you have time and want to take a run down memory lane.
  • There is minimal foot traffic in your field of view, people constantly running by will only pull you away from what you are trying to work on.
  • You have a comfortable chair to sit on, maybe you need a pillow to put on the chair so your rear end doesn’t start to hurt after 20 minutes.
  • You are close to an outlet  so you can charge your laptop if you are using one.

Once you have your space established, try and keep it in a clean and ready state for you to do focused work.  This means, do not clutter it back up with meaningless paper, and needless junk just because you have more open space.  The idea is to keep the distractions to a minimum.

If you are away from home, the criteria is largely the same.

  • Stay away from televisions or blinking signs that will draw your attention.
  • Find a spot that you will be able to stay out for the length of your focus session.  Conference rooms can be a bad location as people often times have these booked or may try to kick you out if they see you are the only person using them.  The same goes for coffee shops or other public places.   Make sure you understand what the policy is and what you need to do to keep your spot for as long as needed.  Often times you just need to buy a few coffees.
  • Make sure you have enough battery power on any digital device you need, if not, make sure you are close to an outlet so you can charge up.
  • Pick a spot that minimizes foot traffic.  People walking by in your field of view or constantly bumping into you will only provide more distractions for you to fight with.
  • Pick a spot with minimal visual distractions.  A place with a bunch of great abstract art may be fun to hang out in, but if it keeps distracting you from what you are working on, whats the point of trying to work there.
  • Make sure you are comfortable with what you are sitting on.  You won’t be able to get anything done if you can’t sit long enough to do it.

Dealing with noise

Our brains are programmed to tune into that noise and check for danger.  Unless you are trying to work in a danger filled space, not recommended, you will need to tune this noise out so you can focus on the tasks at hand.

You have a couple of options for dealing with noise.  The first is you can try and enlist the cooperation of everyone around you to be perfectly quiet.  Good luck!  People make noise, animals make noise, neighbors make noise, just about everything makes noise.  The world is filled with a wonderful cacophony of sound and you will be hard pressed to silence it.

The second, and much more recommended path is to block your ability to hear the sound.  A good set of earplugs can meet the goals or a set of headphones with some relaxing background noise.  If you go with headphones, I recommend noise canceling or noise isolation headphones as they do a good job of blocking outside sounds.  Lots of research has been done on what music to pick, the common recommendations are to try and pick music with out words so you don’t get distracted singing along.  Baroque classical music is a good option.  I have a classical station set up on Pandora that I use which works quite well.

Now that the work area is ready and you have a strategy for dealing with the noise go to it and start working on the focus session.  Try not to get up from your space unless you have to and just keep at what ever you are doing until the session is over.  Good luck and happy focusing.

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How to multitask better

By Bill | Published: May 15, 2013

I try to multitask all the time even though everything I read in productivity studies and books tells me not to.  I’ll try to work in the evening while watching the TV.  I will listen to conference calls while typing emails.  I will sit in a meeting and have an IM conversation.  I am constantly doing multiple things at once, mainly because I think I can.  I am slowly coming to the realization, that all of this multitasking is not doing me any good.

I travel a lot for work which means I call my family a couple of times a day to try and keep up to speed on everything that is happening.  On a number of these calls, my wife and I will be talking and sharing our day, after a while the conversation seems to slow down with neither of us saying much if anything at all.  Every time this happens, one our both of us has stopped paying attention to the either.  For me, I’ve typically hopped on the computer and am reading an article or email.  I seem to think I have super powers and can read and listen at exactly the same time to completely different things.  As my wife will surely tell you, I cannot.  When I read and listen at the same time, I only get bits and pieces of the article and bits and pieces of the conversation.  The worst part about it is, 5 minutes later I don’t remember a good deal of what was discussed on the phone or on the computer.  This leads to repeated conversations, or having to go back and reread what I already read.  Instead of doing both things and saving time.  I’ve had to repeat both things and ended up taking a lot more time than if I had just single tasked in the first place.

I think everything you do can be broken down into 4 categories, planning, consuming, creating, and resting.

  • Planning is coming up with ideas and thinking about how you are going to accomplish them.
  • Consuming consists of reading, watching, and listening to material.  It is the act of taking information in and storing it so you can use it later when planning or creating.
  • Creating is the act of making something happen.  Whether that is writing, talking, designing, or building.  When you are producing something that can be consumed by others, you are creating.
  • Resting is giving yourself a break from planning, consuming, and creating.

You can only do one of these items at a time.  For example, if I am writing and someone comes in to talk with me, I either do not listen and try to continue writing, or I stop writing and listen to the person.  If I decide to multitask, all I am doing is switching between listening and writing and not doing either one very well.  You may think you are special and can do both at once but I challenge you to examine this self image of super human skill.  Ask a few people you trust if your level of attention and ability to process is the same when you multitask as when you focus on one thing.  Can you write an email and listen to a presentation at the same time as well as you could do one thing at a time.  For most of us, the answer is no, if you are being told that you can do these things well at the same time, let me know.  There are quite a few scientists that would be interested in studying you.

Our conscious brain works in a linear fashion.  You plan what you want to do, consume the information you need to go do it, create what you wanted, and then rest when you are done.  Any deviation from this path is simply that, a detour that delays you from reaching your end goal.

So what is the recommendation?   Ditch the multitasking.  If you are listening to someone, close the computer, put away your phone, and listen.  If you would rather be some where else than end the conversation and get back to what is more important to you.  Doing both things at once is simply putting forward a crap effort on your part towards multiple aspects of your life.  You can do better than that.

 

 

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What causes distraction?

By Bill | Published: May 10, 2013

In this post I will talk about what distractions are and what causes them.  In future posts I’ll dive into how to combat the different types of distractions.  For now, lets just cover the basics of distraction.

Dictionary.com defines distraction as:

  • that which distracts,  divides the attention, or prevents concentration
  • that which amuses, entertains, or diverts
From the definitions it is easy to see that a distraction can be a good thing or a bad thing.  It all depends on your perspective and the situation.
Positive distractions are valuable as method for recharging your mind and emotions.  Similar to a enjoyable game of basketball after a long day at work, or a nice day at a spa retreat where you receive an amazing massage,  a positive distraction can have a small recharging effect through out your day.  Positive distractions can have the same recharging effect.   They can break you out of negative thought patterns, emotional down times, and have a recharging effect giving you more energy to keep moving forward.  The one caution is that positive distractions should be used sparingly and as a reward.  I’ll create a post going in depth on positive distractions but for now it is sufficient to know that they do exist, have value, and should be used in moderation.
Negative distractions are any thing that pulls your attention away from what you are trying to focus on.   Most people will incorrectly classify a negative distraction as a positive distraction because they are kidding themselves into believing they are in control of the situation.  I negative distraction is anything tThere are three types of distraction: notification, environmental, and internal.
Notification distractions are any thing that beeps, buzzes, vibrates, flashes, bounces, or otherwise tries to actively draw your attention.  This type of distraction is extremely dangerous as it can be highly addictive.  Similar to the ding ding ding sound for slot machines, the audible ding and flashing notification can cause a small endorphin release in your brain giving a pleasurable sensation.  The act of receiving and checking a notification feels good, seems harmless, and is very simple to do.  The problem with notification distractions is how often they happen.  Email is a typical notification distraction as most email clients will ding, show a popup, or flash when an email appears.  With the average corporate person sending and receiving close to 200 emails a day that is 200 distractions a day and we are only talking email.  If you have instant message open, Twitter open, Facebook open, you mobile phone on, and any other social client you may be working with the number of notifications being pushed your way can easily take up more than your entire day just to keep up with.
Here is a list of things that fall under the category of notification distractions, this list is by no means exhaustive:
  • Email
  • Instant Messangers
  • Collaboration tools – Chatter, Jive
  • Text messages
  • Phone calls
  • Pagers (if anyone still has these)
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Linkedin
  • RSS

Environmental distractions are anything in your immediate area that can cause a distraction.  Environment distractions are typically the easiest to address by simply changing your environment.  If there are things distracting you in the environment move some where that is more conducive to focusing or take steps to eliminate the environment issues.  The distractions are not addictive or sought after, they tend to be more of an annoyance.  These are the distractions that we are most familiar with and what most of us think of when we think about distractions.

Common examples are

  • talking people
  • television
  • radio
  • temperature
  • clutter
  • lighting
  • The chair you sit in
  • uncomfortable clothing you wear
  • traffic – any person, animal, or thing passing through your area
  • hunger and thirst

Internal

Internal distractions are the most important types of distraction to understand as these are internal conflicts that are preventing you from concentrating.  An internal distraction is any negative or uncomfortable emotion, thought, or feeling that triggers you to switch away from what you are working on and seek a distraction.  Most people are not aware of what the trigger is they just find themselves putting off what they are supposed to be doing and surfing their favorite internet site or getting up and talking to a coworker.  The challenge with internal distractions are that they occur independent of external stimuli.  These are also the impulses that typically submarine any efforts we are making to change habits, focus on accomplishing something significant, or completing a particularly difficult challenge.  We will spend a lot of time on this site discussing internal distractions, how to recognize them, and how to overcome them.

 

Distractions can take many forms.  This is a list of the categories and how they can manifest.  Pay attention throughout your day tomorrow.  What sort of distractions affect you the most?

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