How to harness the power of distraction free writing

Here is a scary number:?The average person is?distracted every?40 seconds?when working at their computer .

Isn’t that mind-boggling? We can’t work for even a literal minute without being interrupted or interrupting ourselves.

And?worse,?it takes us an average of?23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back on task ?after these interruptions.

No wonder?we don’t get any writing done!

If you’re determined to buck the trend?and find a way to achieve distraction free writing, I have five easy-to-implement strategies for you:

1-Reduce?your goals

Yeah, I know this sounds crazy?and self-destructive but hear me out. Those of us who get discouraged or frustrated — and therefore, easily distracted — by writing usually do so because we’ve become intimidated.

That book we want to write??It needs to be 75,000 words. Yikes! How the heck are we ever going to write that many words? Or, that blog post we need to produce? It may be short but we have to finish in an hour.?Is that even physically possible??We become scared, anxious and…blocked.

These feelings?lead to what I call an?internal?distraction. In other words, the problem comes from?within?ourselves. We’re uncomfortable so we don’t allow ourselves to write.

I learned the secret power of?reducing?goals?when I met with a client several years ago. She told me she’d failed to write that day but, no problem, she was going to double her output the next day. She even sounded cheerful and enthusiastic when she made this wrong-headed suggestion.

‘Please don’t do that,’ I suggested to her.?‘Instead, try cutting your goal in half.’ Initially, she resisted but eventually she agreed. And when I had trouble writing myself the very next day (at the time, I was working on my book?Your Happy First Draft ),?I realized that I needed to do exactly the same thing.

And here’s what happened:?I cut my word count goal in half for the next two weeks. To my huge surprise, I met my original goal most days. And on those days I failed to, I didn’t feel bad about it. Which left me in a more positive state for writing the next day.

You can accomplish a surprising amount with small goals.?If you can write for five minutes and generate 100 words, five days a week, you’ll have 26,000 words by the end of a year. And if you can bump that total up to 200 words a day, you’ll get an impressive 52,000 words by Dec. 31st.

2-Write first

I encourage all my clients?to do their writing first thing in the day. I?don’t?encourage them to get up early — we all write better if we’ve had enough sleep. And I know that parents of young children often have their mornings too fully booked to consider writing at that time.

But schedule your writing?(just five minutes!) as early in the day as you can. If you write first, your mood for writing will be better because things won’t have started going wrong. If you write first, you’ll get a jump on the phone calls and meetings that typically derail most of us. If you write first, you’ll be less tired and exhausted from the demands of work and family life.

Writing first?allows you to avoid a whole host of?external?distractions.

If you write first,?you’ll also get a gigantic burst of accomplishment. “I did it,” you’ll be able to say to yourself. “I’m a determined and successful person.” In turn, this will bolster you for other tasks during the day and for your writing, the next day.

3-Do your research?before?writing

Many people make the mistake?of trying to research while writing. I did this all the time when I was a university student working on my honours thesis. I remember sitting at my library carrel and juggling multiple books and journals on my lap while trying to write. Of course, this was in the days before the Internet so the work was?physically?harder. Nowadays, you just need to click between documents. But however you try to multitask, it’s mentally distracting.

Trying to do two different tasks?at the same time not only slows you down but it also makes the work of writing both unpleasant and uncomfortable.

So how do I reconcile point 2,?where I suggest you write first in the day and point 3 when I say you should do your researching?before?writing? Easy. I suggest you research the day?before?you write. Yes, this requires some planning and coordinating, but the payoff is huge. It means you’ll have the chance to sleep on your ideas before writing, which seems to help just about everyone.

And if this feels like too much work, remember that you’re going to be writing for a short amount of time only, so how much research will you need to do for your 200 to 300 words?

4-Turn off your technology (except for the noise-cancelling headphones)

This is where you can truly?obliterate external distractions. Draw a fence around yourself and don’t let anyone else come in.

Turn off your email?— silencing any noises it might make, shutting down the app that makes the email momentarily appear in the top right-hand corner of your screen and turning off the little number that appears in the corner of the icon showing how many unread emails you have. All of this stuff is torture. Shut it down!

Turn off your cellphone?or, even better, move it into another room. Refuse to answer your front door. (Put a note on it, if that makes you feel happier.) Some people will need to turn off their WiFi to be able to concentrate and if that describes you then consider using an app like?Freedom ?or?StayFocused ?to keep you off the internet. If your issue is you can’t do distraction free writing in MS Word, try?Ommwriter ,?JDarkRoom ,?or?CalmlyWriter .

Then, pop a set of noise-cancelling earphones on your head?and listen to something pleasant — music without words, white, pink or brown noise, or nature sounds, like a burbling brook, rainfall or birds in a forest.

If you have to work in an open area office, the headphones (the bigger and clunkier the better) should keep people from disturbing you. But if not, tape a sign to the side of your computer saying something like “on deadline.”

5-Find an accountability partner

Having an accountability partner?is like having a secret agent on your side. My?Get It Done program ?operates that way for roughly 50 people each month. Members report their daily writing to me, five days a week. “I’d never have written today if not for having to report to you,” is a comment I hear every week.

But if you don’t want to join a group,?find an accountability partner on your own. It will help you stay motivated, allow you to overcome procrastination, give you mutual support and encouragement and help you develop better discipline and consistency.

Distractions, both internal and external,?are everywhere. But don’t let yourself be interrupted every 40 seconds! Learn how to achieve distraction free writing and you’ll be able to stay on track and achieve your goals.

This post first appeared on The Publication Coach blog .