My 2020 Hacks For Reducing Distraction and Improving Productivity

Over the coming century, the most vital human resource in need of conservation and protection is likely to be our own consciousness and mental space. --Tim Wu

Want to start the new year off with fewer distractions and a clearer, more organized mindset? I'll cover my strategy for managing notifications, organizing your mobile apps for greater productivity, and my favorite productivity tool, Omnifocus, all on the personal-professional continuum. I am a Mac and iPhone user, but some of these apply to other platforms.

Notifications

Notifications are so insidious. They may seem fun and "productive" when checking them, but they can actually wreck your productivity and mental space if you don't manage them properly.

Many of these issues can be solved by "pulling" the information rather than having it pushed at you, i.e. just manually check the app once in a while, possibly using badges to let you know when it's time.

Email: Close your app often, and use tools like SaneLater and Boomerang

Email is such a productivity killer. Most people know that by now. Shutting down your email app and manually checking a few times per day is great. You can also use tools like Inbox Pause from Boomerang, as well as SaneBox, which is my favorite tool for managing email chaos through AI.

Slack: Use Do Not Disturb (DND) + Custom Statuses Frequently

At my digital agency, O8, we have a custom status called "focused work" with the ?? emoji by it for Slack. I use that along with the DND setting frequently. The great news is, if something's on fire or someone is dying, someone can message you directly and choose to break through the DND setting.

Texting vs WhatsApp: Get Your Groupies on WhatsApp

Texting should be your Main Line of personal communication. When it gets crowded with group texts and other chatter, your attention and communication channel goes kaput. Yes, you can and should mute group text threads, which will stop notifications but still allow you to manually check those conversations whenever you pull up your text message app, but there is a better way.

It's called WhatsApp. Get your friends to use WhatsApp, like the rest of the world, turn off notifications for that app except for badges, and possibly banners of type "Lock Screen" or "Notification Center", then simply check it once in a while.

Facebook Messenger: Turn Off All Notifications

It's probably safe to say that your Facebook contacts don't all constitute your "inner circle." They don't need access to your attention right away, especially if you manage expectations properly. If it's urgent, friends can text. If someone is dying or something is on fire, they can even call you.

Otherwise, check your Facebook messenger once a day, or whatever suits your schedule. You probably don't even need badges, because you'll eventually pull up the regular Facebook app which will tell you when you have a message anyway.

Instagram: Turn Off All But The Most Important Notifications

For some reason, I still have DM notifications enabled. That may change in 2020, but everything else can be shut off and checked manually. If you're an Instagram user, you'll eventually pull up the app again and see the notifications. You don't need to know instantaneously that people really do like you -- if you do, that's a separate article.

Mobile App Organization

Have you considered that the way you organize your mobile apps impacts how you use your mobile devices, and any habits you may wish to form or break? While many use the search bar to find their apps, if you train yourself to navigate visually you can actually coax yourself to follow certain habits.

Below is my iPhone home screen. I've organized it into rows.

1. The first row (ignore the "Core" group) is for habits I want to practice regularly or if need be.
2. The second row are things I access or want to be able to access quickly and regularly.
3. The third row is for documenting life, whose moments sometimes arise quickly. I currently have TikTok surfaced as a solo app rather than in a group as I am exploring it and using it to export video stories to Instagram.
4. The fourth row is for things I use the most often, due to the ease of finger placement at that level.
5. The fifth row is my learning and inspiration row, and also the row my eyes seem to land on first, which is no coincidence – I want to engage with this row more than any other.
6. The sixth row is for high-value work actions. It contains Pzizz, which is an awesome app that plays time-boxed meditative focus sounds that I use during "deep work", highly focused periods. It's like the Pomodoro technique with a stimulating soundtrack. The rest are for sales and networking.
7. The final row, which stays persistent across screens, is for either (1) the most frequently used apps, or (2) apps I want to push myself to use more frequently.

As for swiping among different screens, my home screen is as stated, the next screen is for apps I use semi-frequently plus a "phone/message" group for checking those badges from WhatsApp and other messaging services, the third screen is for business, the fourth screen is for travel and food, the fifth is for shopping and entertainment, etc.

If you have a lot of apps as I do, this can take a while to organize, but it's one of my favorite things to do on an airplane without wifi, and similar "what else am I going to do" situations.

Omnifocus

This deserves its own article, but I want to call out OmniFocus for being a beautifully organized dumping ground for all of the ideas, brainstorms, and thoughts that run around in my head, which go into the "Inbox", then categorized by project and tagged, then reviewed weekly project-by-project.

As a CEO of a company with a very strong and active personal life, this is key. My life is an integration of personal and professional. As Jeff Bezos said, it's all about "work-life harmony" rather than work-life balance.

I have tried pretty much every to-do and task-management app out there, but none have the insanely organized workflow of OmniFocus. It is definitely not for everyone, but if you seek more organization in your professional and personal lives in an integrated fashion, and you're a Mac user, it could definitely be for you. The best place I've found to start learning is https://inside.omnifocus.com/ -- check it out.

That's all for now. I hope some of you find this valuable and wish you all a happy and productive new year!