You must ignore the insistent calls from your mailbox, the haunting whispers of Facebook and the languorous singing of the internet. And you have to resist as this whole little world of digital candy fills up at the click of a mouse or a tap of your smartphone.
Needless to say, it’s an impossible mission. As a result, all these distractions diminish your effectiveness. And it’s all the more frustrating to see that after 8 or 10 hours of work, you haven’t accomplished much. But unless you find yourself working deep in the woods with no connection, you’re not sure how to do it.
The harmful consequences of inattention
The second perverse effect of distractions is their addictive power. You can die from it in a heartbeat.
Why?
- Because these distractions act as immediate rewards. It’s easy and instantaneous, so why deprive yourself of them?
- Because these recreations give us rest and a healthy break from work.
- Because they make us feel like we’re doing something concrete. Like checking your e-mails, for example.
- Or simply because you’ve become addicted to novelty.
But by playing ping-pong between tasks and being distracted by the slightest draught, we slowly but surely degrade our attention span. Which makes it all the more difficult for us to do a good job.
The good news is that there’s a simple but common sense technique to avoid being mechanically carried away by distractions.
Imagine just 4 blocks of 30 minutes uninterrupted and completely focused on your priorities of the day (a file to close, clients to contact, a book chapter to write). That’s 2 hours of effective and devilishly efficient work, without emails, social networks, SMS and notifications.
It can make a major difference. In your projects as well as in your personal satisfaction. In the following lines, we will present the method in detail.
How to improve your concentration without forcing yourself?
I found this technique in Thomas Sterner’s book The Practicing Mind. The general scheme is as follows: When a specific situation or emotion happens to us, we automatically respond to that situation or emotion. For example, you are working on an important file and suddenly you have an irrepressible urge to check your e-mails. You then automatically respond to this desire by opening your inbox.
On the contrary, when the distraction or disruptive element occurs, the idea is:Take conscious control of the situation and provide an appropriate response in return. And it’s very simple, as you’ll see in a moment. But before you do, you should know this: the goal is to turn this new way of reacting into a habit.
Why are distractions so hard to control?
Almost everything we do is done out of habit, including the way we think, talk and react. And the behavior you’re struggling with today has also become a habit.
To change it, you must therefore replace it with a positive behavior that you will imprint on you.
- If you check your email 20 times a day whenever you feel like it.
- If you waste your time daily on the internet going from site to site.
- Or if you’re glued to the social networks to see absolutely what’s going on there every quarter of an hour…
That’s because you’ve forged a habit. That’s why, as soon as a specific situation or emotion arises, your mind will automatically trigger certain behaviors. You have linked an automatic and systematic response to that emotion or experience, whether you are aware of it or not.
So it is the deliberate repetition of a new way of doing things that will create a new productive habit. Little by little, this repetition will make it easier and easier to trigger it. That’s what you do with any habit, in any field:
- attention.
- procrastination.
- sports,
- the music,
- writing.
In the case of maintaining attention, for example, you want to make it a natural behavior to be focused on your priorities for 30 minutes. A bit like a golfer who would repeat a part of his swing over and over again to make it predictable and natural.
Here are the 5 steps to put this technique into practice.
Step 1: Define the goal you would want to achieve if you were not distracted as usual, a goal should be clear and specific.
For example:
- Maintain your concentration for 30 minutes without interruption on your priority task of the day.
- Execute 45 minutes of writing quietly when you return home to progress on your book.
- Stay focused 90 minutes at a time on the XYZ project without scattering in all directions.
- Or simply: finish the tasks I start without being cut off by emails or Facebook
Step 2: Identify the distraction you need to overcome in order to achieve your goal.
Choose here the negative behavior that produces undesirable results in your work. It’s easy to find it. Just complete the sentence:
“I would like [my Step 1 goal to be achieved], but [this habit (bad)] prevents me.”
For example, “will really love to work for 30 minutes straight on my project, but I check my e-mail way too often.”
Any other examples of distractions that need to be eliminated?
- Surfing the internet for hours.
- Consult the social networks 3 times an hour.
- A cocktail: internet, email, social networks…
- Spending too much time in front of the television at the end of the day
- Etc.
Step 3: Determine how to respond to this distraction.
You need to think ahead about how you are going to respond to the distraction you have just identified. In other words: What do you need to do to achieve your goal without being disturbed?
The general anti-distraction formula goes like this:
If one situation that often leads me to procrastinate arises, then I respond with a specific series of actions or one action
Step 3 consists of completing the second part of the formula: “then I respond with a specific action. »
In golf circles, we call that a pre-routine.
How pro golfers improve their score with pre-routine
Thomas Sterner talks about how he helps young golfers aiming for a pro career increase their consistency on good shots.
What he seeks to do is to teach them to counter the negative emotions responsible for poor performance.
He’s got every chance of making a bad move.
The pre-routine thus makes it possible to transform a stressful situation into an objective and comfortable one.
A situation in which the golfer confidently says, “This is what I have to do, so I’m going to do it. “This trick allows him to reduce the pressure on his/her shoulders. And once he has precisely defined his pre-routine, the golfer repeats it until it becomes comfortable and natural. Because once this new behavior is established, he knows that he can rest on it when a stressful situation arises.
The goal is to create a pre-routine that works the same way for the scenarios you encounter in your work or everyday life.
For example:
- “If the phone rings during a task that requires my full attention, I don’t answer it. And I remember to switch my phone to airplane mode when I’m working on an important task. »
- “If I get stuck on a task I don’t want to do, I push myself to start it, thinking it’s just for a minute. I define a micro-action and focus entirely on starting that micro-action. »
- “While I inevitably feel drawn to my emails, Facebook or news sites, I remember that I have much more important things to do. I rethink my current goal and then I turn my attention back to what I was doing just before. »
Why does it work? Because you formulate an intention. You think ahead about how you can respond to a situation that causes you to procrastinate. It’s silly, but it works.
You want to know how to further increase the efficiency of this technique?
As in sports, it’s a good idea to practice your pre-routine.
- Take a moment during the day to repeat your answer by imagining the scenario in your head.
- Visualize yourself erasing your negative reaction. See yourself calmly deciding how you react.
In short, practice your pre-routine away from distracting episodes until it feels natural and comfortable. Your response will be all the more effective when you need it.
Now all you need is a little click to start the process.
Step 4: Choose a trigger
A trigger acts as an alarm that would sound just before the distraction. It alerts you that:
- You’re about to succumb to the temptation
- And that it’s time to replace your usual negative answer with your new positive one.
In short, the trigger allows you to initiate the pre-routine that you have precisely defined.
You’ll see, it’s quite simple to understand.
Let’s take our example of young golfers. The trigger usually arrives when the player must hit the ball because that’s when he must be serene. In this case, the trigger is a simple movement, sometimes subtle.
If you look closely at a competition, you will see for example that
- Players pull on their polo shirts at shoulder level.
- Or their earlobes.
- Or they spin the golf club in their hands.
These are examples of triggers for the golfer who says, “My anti-stress and anti-negative thinking routine starts now. »
For you, it’s the same thing to counteract distractions. You need to find a trigger that allows you to identify your negative automatism as soon as it occurs.
For example:
You want to write 5 pages of your book when you get home at the end of the day but you usually throw yourself on the couch to watch TV.
- Grabbing the remote control may be your trigger.
So this is the signal that you have something much more important for you to do, to continue writing your book.
Another example:
If you check your email all the time, your trigger may be the first sign of emotion you feel.
You know, the one that makes you say inwardly “it’s time to go check your email, you’re dying for it!
At the first sign of this urge, you must come back to the present moment and say to yourself:
This is my trigger. It’s the alarm that tells me that every time I let myself check my email while I’m on important work, I tend to react negatively. So I need to refocus on my work for 30 minutes (or finish my current task) and I’ll check my email afterwards.
See, it’s not rocket science!
It’s almost all good. But before you do that, take this last tip carefully.
Step 5: Perform your pre-routine
Here’s the point that will make all the difference: Perform your routine free of emotion and judgment. Why is this crucial?
Because it keeps you in control of your actions. But to provide a detached response of judgment, you have to start by disconnecting the autopilot.
You have to be conscious. In the present moment. And observe your thoughts and actions when you’re distracted.
For example, when a student makes a mistake in his or her reasoning or in the execution of an action, the instructor gently points it out to the student and then puts the student back on the right track. He is not going to say to him in a mean or inappropriate tone, “But you’re really too stupid! You don’t understand my word!”
A good instructor does not respond emotionally to a student’s mistake. And that’s what we have to do with ourselves.
When you feel the distraction manifesting itself and pushing you to procrastinate, simply observe what is going on without emotion or judgment as this will only block things. And if it doesn’t work the first time, it doesn’t matter. Understand that you are in a learning process.
By practicing during AND outside of distracting episodes, you will get better and better at it. Your brain will instantly make the connection between your trigger and the new routine you’ve set up.
But don’t wait for an immediate result at all costs or you risk getting frustrated and reacting emotionally. Like, “yeah, it’s not working your thing.
Simply follow the following procedure: Just after the trigger, perform your pre-routine (i.e., the actions you have chosen) without emotions or judgments, instead of mechanically succumbing to distractions.
This gives the following complete anti-distraction mechanism:
Each time such and such a problematic situation occurs > Trigger > Execute its new routine.
9 Techniques to Combat Procrastination
We are all familiar with the phenomenon of procrastination, that is, putting off the tasks that need to be done. When we procrastinate, we waste our time and postpone tasks until it is too late. And when it is indeed too late, we panic and wish we had started earlier.
Fighting against these behaviors not only brings satisfaction but also saves time while reducing stress.
Discover our 9 techniques to fight procrastination at work.
- Plan your work week in advance: Planning your tasks for the coming week is a great way to be efficient at work but it’s especially useful if you often find yourself overwhelmed by the workload and don’t know where to start.
- Don’t overestimate your abilities: When making your plan for the week, make sure you are realistic about what you can accomplish every day.
- Set up the salami technique: The salami technique consists of cutting large tasks into several smaller ones. Tip: Plan your tasks by including breaks of a few minutes every 25 minutes of work.
- Learn to prioritize: Learning to prioritize and manage time is a soft skill that every person must master, and it is not just a question of organizing tasks in order to meet deadlines.
- Eliminate distractions: It’s so easy to get distracted when you’re at your workstation and therefore procrastinate.
- Change your environment: It can be difficult to change your environment when you’re in the office. But even a temporary change of location on your premises can help stimulate your creativity.
- Don’t try to be perfect! The problem of procrastination arises in many people because they are afraid of being judged or because the idea of not doing a perfect job prevents them from actually starting it.
- Learn how to say “no”! It can be difficult, but it is essential to know how to decline certain requests from your contacts.
- Reward yourself! Whether you’re big or small, knowing that you’ll be rewarded after a task remains a great source of motivation. Take the time to congratulate yourself on your diligence and perseverance by giving yourself a short break that you can take advantage of to really “drop out”!
Ready to kick your distractions and procrastination ass?
I’m not going to hide it from you. It will take practice to fully master the techniques we have shared with you. But something magical happens once you regain control of your attention span.
You are no longer a slave to your digital impulses. This new state of deep concentration allows you to do more than before, in the same amount of time. At the end of the day, you no longer have that bitter taste in your mouth. The one that smells like waste, because of the two-ball day you’ve had.