Must do For a productive life: How to identify and get rid of your distractors

This hyper-connected world we live in is all about distractions. From flashy advertisers, notifications popping every minute, to people that need our help or kids playing in the background, productivity started to be seen as a true luxury.

Let’s be honest with ourselves, and admit that with this new age of fast changing technology, there is no escape back to the “old days”, so in order to still get things done we have to adapt and to better recognise our triggers and what gets us distracted. 

When i first started to study the productivity topic, besides the research part, i wanted to also have a personal touch upon this subject so i got myself under the microscope and started doing tests to see how productive i really am, what distracts me and what can i change or adapt in order to improve my time and my lifestyle overall.

Below you can find some of the main distractors that I discovered during my research.

1. Email

Do you always or most of the times find yourself reading the email or checking that new notification that just popped up? Well, it might not be because you really feel the need to check it, but just because you are used to this and you did it so many times that now it has become a habit. 

According to studies it takes an average of about 25 minutes to return to the original task after an interruption. 

In other words, that 15 seconds to check who emailed you, isn’t just 15 seconds down the drain. It’s 25 minutes. 

I must admit that I am one of those persons who check their email ALL THE TIME. I could only see the good part of it: I am always on top of things and I respond rapidly to people who need my help. All that with the cost of my focus. So I came up with a pretty good strategy I would say:

I check my emails always after my peak performance moments. I save those for the most important tasks, and when I finish with those, I “reward” myself with checking emails and answering small questions on my work chat.

What is your habit of checking emails? Are you like me or you are not an email addict? 

If you are, I would advise that for the next week you only check your emails after you do your most important tasks of the day and see if this benefits you. Let me know in the comments below.

2. Personal issues

We can hardly realise the power of influence that we have on ourselves. 

Our focus and productivity may change a lot in conformity with our mood. Our frustrations, personal relationships, errands that we have to do, celebrations, may lower or raise our focus in a matter of seconds.

Letting a small thing ruin our mood can lower our productivity for a whole day without even realising it, while waking up in a happy and good mood may make us succeed rapidly in our tasks and projects.

So, again we arrived at a point where our choice will either make us procrastinate or be productive. 

One of the things that captured my attention throughout my research : specialists that study mind-body connection found out that our pose and moves are so powerful they can influence our mood.

In a study made by scientists from Columbia and Harvard universities, people were asked to hold either poses associated with power or poses associated with weakness. 

They revealed that after standing 2 minutes in those poses, psychological changes were seen – the ones who hold a power position felt more confident and more prone towards acting and risk taking, while the second group had higher levels of cortisol (stress hormone) and lower levels of testosterone and expressed lower confidence.

Amazing how we can control the way we feel. Again, is our choice and we have total control on ourselves. Remember that the next time you want to let a small thing ruin your mood for a whole day! 

3. Energetic vampires

People are different. Each of us are one of a kind. That is why, other people’s mood can affect us in a very different way.

To give an example, for me, energetic vampires are the ones that only see problems around them, they always try to find flaws in everything and have an uncanny ability to stop any kind of discussion by having something negative to say. When I am around a person like that I tend to get irritated and nervous very easily. At times I get caught up in this vicious circle and try to change their point of view but then I remember that this can affect my mood a lot and I try to stay calm and not judge them because it is not my duty to do so.

As I said, we perceive as energetic vampires different kinds of behaviours, so, find yours and try to not get your mood controlled by someone else.

4. The myth of multitasking

We live in a must multitask world and have the impression that we should control everything and be on top of every email and task and at the same time write an article, cook some food and also talk on the phone. 

There is a constant running from multiple tasks to other multiple tasks, always living with the feeling that there is not enough time or the fear that someone else might outrun us by doing more and so we will never be smart enough, successful enough and so on.

I used to think that multi-tasking was my super power, that I was great at it, until I saw the real truth: I wasn’t actually multi-tasking. What I was actually doing was switching between tasks, and at that point I thought I was going to receive a prize for being that efficient.

Even if I did manage to do a lot of things and felt productive, I realised that switching from task A to task B, when I was performing task B my mind was still thinking about some aspects that I might have missed while doing task A, and then I switched back to revise the task A and so on. 

What happened was that at one point I realised the amount of time that I allocated for these tasks increased, and I tried to change that (which was a hard thing for me to do) by just taking it task by task and see if my productivity spikes.

Guess what? It did! 

Besides the fact that the amount of time it took for me to finish those tasks dropped significantly, my mind felt better, I was less stressed, more in control of my life and my time and it really felt like I won more free time.

How to overcome your distractors?

We talked a lot about different kinds of distractors, now let’s talk about overcoming them. 

If you were expecting a big secret to be revealed you will be disappointed, because there is only one true answer and that is STRUCTURE. 

By introducing structure and creating routines in your life you will get rid of the things that interrupt you all the time, and step by step, making small adjustments to your routine (according to your needs), you will start to see changes and reap the benefits of being more organised.

One trick that I did when starting this journey was having an inventory on my productivity. Basically I measured the time that I could concentrate on a single task. Did that for many times in a row. 

The next step that I did is looking at the things that distracted me and writing them down. 

What it was revealing is that there were always almost the same triggers that got me out of my focus zone.

And those triggers I had to eliminate in order to raise my productivity.

I think the most important part is to be patient with yourself and to understand that this skill cannot be conquered in a day. Also, one day won’t be the same as the other. Some days you might derail from your plan, some days you will even procrastinate all day long. And that is ok as long as you get back on track.

Did you discover your distractors? I are very curious to find out which one is your GO-TO distractor? Let me know in the comments below!