Monday, July 6, 2015

Fighting the distractions

How many of us deal with a number of distractions each day? A distraction could be someone talking near to where we are working, someone coming in to visit or even the internet.

I know that I sometimes fight the distraction of the internet when I am trying to write. I find that when I start to lose my focus I turn to the internet to see what there is I can read or lose myself in. Of course the lose myself in isn't the good part because that is when I realize that the 10 minutes I was going to allow myself has turned into more than an hour. I think I am like others and when you are trying to find the small break that you need you forget that you need to watch the time so that you can get back to the project you should be working on.

One way that I have found that sometimes works for me is to actually unplug the internet from my computer so that I just can't access it. My other way of getting the writing done that I need to do is actually do some of my writing on my transformer notebook because on it the internet isn't as good so it is harder to get distracted before I get frustrated. Both of these methods do work because it means that I don't lose all the time browsing the internet or playing games on it when the writing is the main focus.

I am very lucky that I don't have the people that are dropping by to visit or people talking near where I work most of the time. That is one of the big advantages of having a small business because you don't have the extra people around when you are trying to focus on the task that you need to get accomplished. When we go to our Executive office we do have the people talking near where our office is and that is sometimes a distraction because it breaks the focus but at least I can close the door and block most of it.

We all have to fight the various distractions that are around us. The distraction could be as simple as the pile of stuff sitting on the corner of your desk to the internet to other people. When you need to focus on a task at hard figure out a means of not letting those distractions get in the way and see what happens.

If you do succeed in avoiding the distractions and you get the task done remember you do need to make sure that you reward yourself by doing something and yes just for a few minutes. I have now finished writing this so I am going to take my 5 minutes and am going to go and check Facebook.

1 comment:

  1. We so live in a distraction rich environment (so many instances of "Squirrel" or "Shinny bobble") and it just getting worse, so that those of us who wish to get something real done have to work to keep these distractions at a distance. But this keeps getting harder, such that I wonder when it will hit a real breaking point this evolution of our culture. http://blog.dilbert.com/post/123459399486/the-interruption-economy

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