To live life with less distraction, consider implementing one or more of these 10 unconventional habits:
1. Turn off smart phone notifications. Our smart phones have quickly become one of the greatest sources of distraction in our lives. The average person now
checks their mobile phone 150 times every day
(just short of every 6 waking minutes). To limit the distractive nature
of your smart phone, turn off all nonessential notifications (Email,
Facebook, Twitter, Games, etc.) as a default setting. As a result, you
will be able to check your apps on your schedule at appropriate times
throughout the day.
2. Read/Answer email only twice each day. When we
keep our email client open all day, we surrender our attention to the
most recent bidder rather than the most important. The sooner we realize
this, the sooner we understand why the habit of checking email only
twice/day is promoted over and over again by some of the most productive
people in our world today (
Michael Hyatt,
Scott Belsky,
Leo Babauta). Schedule your email processing. You will feel the benefits immediately as the habit instantly limits incoming distraction.
3. Complete 1-2 minute projects immediately. Our
lives and minds are often cluttered and distracted by the many
unfinished projects around us (unanswered email, household chores,
financial responsibilities). Fortunately, many of these projects can be
completed in far less time than we think. To live with less distraction,
if a project can be completed in less than 2 minutes, adopt a
“one-minute-rule” mentality.
4. Remove physical clutter. Unnecessary clutter is a
significant form of visual distraction. Consider this: everything in
our eyesight subtly pulls at our attention at least a little. And the
more we remove, the
less visual stress and distraction we experience. Clear
your desk, your walls,
your counters, and your home of unneeded possessions. You’ll be surprised at your newfound ability to focus.
5. Clear visible, distracting digital clutter. Just
like physical clutter distracts our attention, digital clutter
accomplishes the same. Desktop icons, open programs, and other visible
notifications jockey for unannounced attention in our mind. Notice the
digital triggers that grab your attention. And ruthlessly remove them.
6. Accept and accentuate your personal rhythms.
Discover the rhythms of your day to make the most of them. For example, I
do my best creative work in the morning, afternoons work well for
busy-work, and evenings are set aside for family—leaving late evenings
for entertainment, rest, and guilt-free distraction. Accepting and
understanding our natural rhythms to the day/week provides healthy
motivation to remove distractions during our most productive parts of
the day knowing there is opportunity later to indulge them
7. Establish a healthy morning routine. Henry Ward Beecher once said,
“The first hour is the rudder of the day.” He was absolutely right. Begin your days on your terms apart from distraction. If possible,
wake first
in your household. Drink your coffee or tea or fix yourself a warm
breakfast. Journal or read or just enjoy the silence. Develop a
distraction-free morning routine. It will lay the foundation for a
less-distracted day.
8. Cancel cable / Unplug television. It is difficult to argue against the distracting nature of our television. Researchers tell us the average American
watches 37-40 hours of television each week.
There is, of course, a solution to this madness: unplug your television
completely. But if this step seems too drastic a stretch for your
family, you’ll never regret the simple decision to cancel cable. Your
calendar will thank you for the extra time available. Your wallet will
thank you for the extra naira. And you’ll quickly wonder why you
didn’t do it sooner.
9. Keep a to-do list. One of the most helpful and
practical pieces of advice I ever received about keeping focus is the
simple solution of keeping a to-do list handy and current. No matter how
hard you try to manage yourself, new responsibilities and opportunities
will surface in your mind from internal and external sources. The
opportunity to quickly write down the task allows it to be quickly
discarded from your mind. I use
Clear as a simple, easy-to-use opportunity list.
10. Care less what other people think. The value of
your life is not measured by the number of likes your Facebook post
receives or the number of positive comments on your blog post. Please
understand, there is great value in humbly seeking opinion and
appreciating the wise counsel of those who love you. But there is no
value in wasting mental energy over the
negative criticism
of those who only value their own self-interests. Learn to recognize
the difference. And stop living distracted over the opinion of people
who don’t matter.
There is little doubt our world is filled with constant
distraction—it always has been. And there is little doubt that those who
achieve the greatest
significance in life learn to manage them effectively—they always have.
