Do Not Disturb

This week I am going to challenge you to actively avoid interruptions when you are doing important tasks or activities.

A great first step toward eliminating distractions is stopping the barrage of messages we constantly receive. When you have an important task to accomplish, Silence your phone or put in another room, close any windows on your computer that aren’t essential to your work, and disable desktop notifications.

This might be difficult at first, but you will likely soon realize how much easier it is to get things done with fewer distractions.

If you absolutely have to be reachable, either by family or clients, create a way for them to do so in case of emergency. Otherwise, do your best to remain completely undisturbed when focusing on your mission critical tasks.

This helps curb our habit of being instantaneously reactive and instead helps us become deliberately responsive.

If you’re immediately reactive, you’re constantly jumping from task to task with no real purpose or intention. A call comes in and you instantly answer, whether you are in the proper mindset to do so or not.

However, if you are deliberately responding, you might choose to ignore that same call. Then, when you are ready, you can take a moment to compose yourself, organize your thoughts, orchestrate a plan, call the person back, and execute the call perfectly. It might be ten minutes later, but you’re much more prepared, and therefore, the outcome is better.

Develop systems where you are in “do not disturb” mode and can focus completely on the task, meeting, or activity you are engaged with. Make it clear to people who need access to you that this is what is happening so they know when they will hear back from you, and you won’t feel a need to come up for air constantly to respond to them.

True disconnection from distraction is about prioritization of what’s important to you. Respond, don’t react.

That’s it for this week! Let me know your thoughts in the comments.