Dealing with Distractions

“If a person gave away your body to some passerby, you’d be furious. Yet you hand over your mind to anyone who comes along” - Epictetus.

When was the last time you really felt uninterrupted at work? We live in an environment of constant distraction - from our devices, technology and the people we work with. Our technology distracts us with notifications, alarms, alerts and a multitude of other dopamine inducing techniques. When the technology isn’t distracting us, then it’s our colleagues with interruptions, videoconferences, and meetings. In fact, even our distractions are now being interrupted! Our meetings are impacted by small talk, side discussions, late arrivals, or technology problems. A substantial part of most meetings is just wasted time. 

Even working from home is no longer a sanctuary. If it’s not the cat, the kids or the neighbours, its Netflix or that pile of laundry sitting in the corner that we are easily distracted by. 

In 2018, online training company Udemy conducted a survey of more than 1000 US office workers working in full-time positions across several industries. The results of that survey speak for themselves. Co-workers (80%) and noisy offices (70%) were the top distractions overall. Not surprisingly, a lot of our distraction is actually self-inflicted. We regularly check our personal devices and social media at work. 62% of all respondents said that they spent about an hour of every workday looking at their own phones, even when their jobs didn’t require social media. In fact, more than half of the people surveyed agreed that personal technology and devices are more distracting than the tools necessary to do their job.

This constant set of distractions is actually killing workplace morale and destroying employee engagement. 34% of survey respondents said that they like their jobs less, and 54% said that workplace distractions were making them perform below expectations. In fact, it takes up to 20 minutes to get back up to full speed after a distraction2, and the impact can also result in a short term drop of up to 10 IQ points3.

On a positive note, there are considerable benefits to reducing workplace distractions. 75% of people said they would get more done, 49% said they would be happier at work, and 44% said they would deliver a higher quality of work. So how do you actually go about reducing distractions at work?

Acknowledge

The first step on the road to a distraction-free life is to acknowledge the problem. That’s right, its time to stop lying to yourself about how addicted you are to your phone, getting likes on Instagram or just that general dopamine hit of checking your email every 3 minutes. 

Start by recording how you spend your time and how often you are interrupted. Track and measure your technology usage. You could do this the low tech way with pen and paper, or alternatively, you could use the technology for good and use an app tracker. Even a company like Apple have acknowledged the negative impact of technology. The latest version of all Apple operating systems (both the Mac and iOS) come with a feature called Screen Time. This handy tool will show you your daily average phone usage, how many times you pick up your phone per day, how many notifications you receive and what applications you use the most. Go and check it out right now. On your iPhone go to: 

Settings > Screen Time > See All Activity

Scary, isn’t it!

Schedule

The next step is starting to take control through scheduling. Your technology and devices should serve you, not the other way around. 

Start by getting control of that device addiction you have. I highly recommend that you adopt a digital sunrise and a digital sunset. I heard a comedian once say “If the first thing you touch in the morning isn’t yourself or your partner you are doing something wrong!”. Unfortunately, the first thing most of us touch in the morning is our phones, and many of us even take them with us to the toilet! This is just insane. Nothing good in life ever came by email, text or social media. Yet we start our days flooding our minds with other peoples priorities, or comparing our lives to the curated social media feeds of others. 

I suggest that your phone wakes up at least an hour after you wake up. This gives you time to yourself. Start the day reading, exercising, or communing with your partner, your pets or your family. The same is true for the evening. Your phone should go to sleep one hour before you go to bed. Not only will this minimise the effect that blue light from your phone has on your sleep, but it will also allow you to unwind and start slowing down in preparation for bed. 

Let’s talk about email. The bane of every office worker on the planet. According to The Radicati Group, in 2018, 228 billion emails were sent per day, and the average office worker received 97 and sent 43. Dealing with email has almost become a full-time job, or at least a large part of our daily working lives. But why? Is all that email really necessary (aka arse covering), and even when it is (aka arse covering) does it really require an immediate response? We have been trained, and are teaching others to treat email like instant messenger. It’s time to stop. Its time to make an appointment with your email.

That’s right - go ahead and schedule 2-3 email appointments per day for 15-30 minutes each. Guess what? The world will not end. You will have more time to do your actual job, and you will train the people you work with not to expect an immediate response to an email. The added benefit (or disadvantage depending on who you work with) will be that they might actually pick up the phone or speak with you directly. 

While you are at it, you might as well get your physical meetings under control. At a minimum ensure there is a clear purpose and agenda. Make people who are late to meetings feel ashamed (only joking - sort of), and create a culture in your organisation of meeting etiquette and respect for peoples time. Don’t get me started on tele/video conferencing where you spend the first 10 minutes trying to get the tech to work. Get your shit together. How hard can it be? 

Limit

So firstly we acknowledged the distractions and tracked how bad our problem actually was. Then we took control by scheduling them into our lives to minimise the impact. Now we can take it to the next level - limiting. 

The Jedi level of dealing with distractions is to avoid them altogether - or at least put obstacles in their path. 

Step one is to turn off all notifications on your phone, laptop and any other devices. Unless you are an obstetrician or in charge of a nuclear power plant, then I very much doubt that anything you do is so mission-critical that you need instantaneous notification of events. 

Secondly, put the phone down. Spend time away from it. I bet if you go out without your phone, you suffer from anxiety. Guess what - that’s a sign of addiction. I know you love your brand new iPhone, but please don’t take it to bed. If, like me, you have absolutely no will power - then keep your phone in another room. Need your phone to wake you up in the morning? Buy a cheap alarm clock. Need it to read on at night? Buy a cheap Kindle. There was life before 2007 (when the iPhone was launched). If you are serious about getting control over your device addiction, then you need to take drastic steps. 

Now, what about email. If you want to level up, then go ahead and delete the email client from your phone. WTF, I hear you say - “I couldn’t possibly do that!”. Yes, you can. You can do your email when sitting in front of your computer or iPad. Try it for a week. I bet you don’t go back. 

Lastly … meetings. What meetings are essential versus which can you skip? If you miss a meeting and nobody notices then did you really need to attend in the first place? Be ruthless. The elephant in the room is that most meetings are of limited value. If you want to try something radical, then hold meetings where everyone remains standing - I am positive that meeting times will get shorter and a lot less time will be wasted.

So acknowledge, schedule and limit distractions and you will be well on your way to being more productive, happy and energised at work.