Productive people have a lot of things in common, some things they do and some things they avoid at all costs.
There are a lot of distractions out there in the world to distract you from your everyday tasks and responsibilities.
To be productive and reach our goals is something we all desire. Especially in this day and age, where productivity is highly rated. Even if we didn’t have a job to do, we still would like to be of value to the world or to our own little world, our family.
When you can avoid the 7 things I’ll talk about below, it will help you gain more productivity and achieve your goals faster! Be productive!
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7 Distractions to Avoid to Increase Your Productivity
1. Social Media
Social Media is everywhere!
You can have social media apps on your phone, or go to their websites on your laptop or tablet. I find them most distracting when they’re on my phone. These apps have an endless load of entertaining content that keeps on coming. You can keep scrolling and become a smartphone zombie so easily!
When I was in college and had to study for my exams, social media always was right there to keep me off my books. These days it is mostly Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Or do you find yourself addicted to another type of social media? Let me know!
There are many positive aspects of social media like connecting with friends or family you haven’t seen in a while. You could also get to know new people there or have a good laugh when watching funny dog videos. But the danger is around the corner! It could kill your productivity in no time!
How to be productive in a world filled with social media?
The first thing you can do about this distraction is turn off your notifications for these social media apps.
If you want a stronger block, you can log yourself out of all the apps and don’t let them remember your login data so you will have to put it in manually. This way, you will be less tempted to start scrolling because you have to make the extra effort and make a more conscious decision about loggin in.
Last but not least. Put away your phone and block those sites on your laptop when you are working or studying. Get rid of these temptations!
You can have strong willpower, but social media can be so addictive giving you all these quick feel-good hormones. Don’t trust your willpower alone if you know that you will spend time with those apps while you should be working.
Social media will still be there when you finish your tasks of the day. Then you can go back and enjoy some mindless scrolling. Try not to let it change you into a smartphone zombie though, don’t spend all your leisure time there!
2. Clutter
When your workplace is a mess, your mind will probably be one too. Clutter everywhere will distract you from focusing on your job. To be productive you need a clean and organized workspace.
Declutter your workplace
You should make it a habit to clean up your desk before you start working. This can be done when you are done working, in preparation for the next day or you could declutter your desk in the morning. I recommend doing it in the evening so you can use your new mental energy in the morning for tasks that need more focus than decluttering.
And your living area too!
This also goes for your living area. Seeing clutter everywhere when you get home from work will keep your stress levels higher than when you arrive in a tidy home. Tidy up before you leave for work if you have the time or do it in the evening. When you declutter in the evening, you won’t have to clean up so much in the morning when you’re rushing through your morning routine. If you are a morning person with a long morning routine, this can of course be added to your morning routine!
Deep decluttering and organizing
Once in a while, you should not only declutter the visible workspace and living area but do more of a deep decluttering. Open up all your drawers and start unloading them. When all of the content is on the floor, organize it and throw some stuff away that you don’t need anymore. This will give you more room for new important things and now you are also well aware of everything you keep in your drawers.
It’s best to have some sort of organization system for keeping your documents. This way you won’t have to search for hours on end when you need something. You could assign specific drawers to specific things like administration, business documents, personal stuff, hobby materials, electronics, etc.
Make sure to have enough drawers or boxes to keep everything organized. If you don’t, plan a trip to IKEA, there you can find it all.
A clutter-free room is one step closer to a clutter-free mind!
3. Phone
Another big distraction that will keep you from focusing on your tasks, is your smartphone. Some people need this to be productive, but most of us don’t really.
When you need a phone for work
When your job is mostly making phone calls, of course, you need your phone! Or even better, a company phone! When you need to make phone calls all the time, it’s best to have a separate phone for your job. This way, you will be productive answering work calls and you can do with your personal phone what everyone should do when they are at work, ignore it.
When you don’t need a phone for work
For all the people who don’t need their phone for their job, or at least not the whole time, keep reading.
It is totally okay to bring your phone to work for emergencies. Don’t check it all the time to see if you’ve got new messages just for fun. Every time you look at the screen of your phone, your focus will be gone. You have to spend some time trying to regain your previous focus, unfortunately. If you spend your day checking your phone every 10 minutes, there will be no focus left to actually get some things done.
Increase your productivity
So, how can you be productive when still bringing your personal phone to work?
Put your personal smartphone into a non-vibrating silent mode all the time! I put mine in non-disturb mode all the time, I’m not readily available when people call me, I rather wait for a text or email (total introvert over here!). You can change your sound settings for people who can reach you all the time so that in case of an emergency, your phone will ring when a specific person calls for example.
You could also put your phone in a designated phone spot where you can go check it when it’s break time. This way you won’t be disturbed by it when you are deeply focused on a specific task. This spot of course has to be in another room. When you put it in a drawer, it can help a little if you believe in ‘out of sight out of mind’. True smartphone addicts will still feel their phone sending messages through the drawers. So put your phone in another room to be safe.
4. Emails
Emails can be very time-consuming if you receive a ton of them. Here are some great tips to not let responding to your emails take control over your day and to be productive with them.
Turn off email notifications entirely. Every beep that turns your attention to the corner of your computer screen is one beep too much. The beep itself is a distraction but most of the time, you would want to respond to that beep immediately. When you do this every 30 min, you won’t be the most productive you can be because of the lost focus while changing tasks.
Another very helpful thing I think is time blocking your email time. Pick a specific time during the day when your only job is to respond to emails. This can be once or maybe twice a day, but certainly not more frequently. This way you won’t continuously disrupt your focus and still have time to answer your emails.
You probably also get a lot of junk emails that you don’t actually want to receive. This can be real junk like spam emails, you should direct them directly to your spam folder. However, these could also be emails that you wanted to receive once but don’t anymore. Every now and then, clean up your inbox and unsubscribe from the emails you don’t want to get more news from. This way you will get fewer emails and you will have more time to do other things!
I read a lot of great tips for cutting back time on your emails in the book ‘The 4-Hour Workweek’ by Timothy Ferriss. You should check this out if you want to learn more about working fewer hours a week but reaching the same productivity.
5. Noise
How can you be productive with noise coming from everywhere? Distracting noises will kill your productivity in just a matter of seconds. Especially when you are highly sensitive to noise but really for everybody.
This noise distraction however differs greatly between individuals. Some people like having some background noise to focus on what they are doing, nothing but silence will throw them off completely. Other people need to be in total silence or at most have some very light background noise like the wind or rain, mostly nature sounds.
When another person is talking really loud in the same room or even a different one but you hear them, this is a problem! Say goodbye to being productive when you are constantly distracted by the sound of people talking. This also goes for loud music from the neighbors, very loud traffic, or construction workers doing their jobs.
An open office plan can be detrimental to your productivity if your coworkers are always on the phone and you need some quiet time to get some work done. It could help if there are specific silent rooms for deep-focused work. You could go sit over there when you need your focus and the other space to do some other things where your focus is less necessary. This could be things like replying to emails or consulting coworkers for their opinions on your project.
When you can’t or don’t want to isolate yourself to do your job, try some noise-canceling earphones or earplugs. These will cancel out most of the background noise so you can focus more on what you are doing.
Become more productive by figuring out how much noise you need to work at your optimal capacity. Try to adjust your working space to this need as much as you can.
6. Babysitting or Pet Sitting
Babysitting or pet sitting must not be taken lightly as it does require your attention. These things to avoid are mostly for people who work from home.
Babies
When you work from home, it can be tempting to keep your baby at home instead of letting them stay at a playgroup or nursery school. You can definitely do this, I’m not saying you have to give your baby away when you want to watch him or her yourself. But you should know that you will be less productive when working while taking care of a baby or child.
I hear you saying, but they sleep a lot during the day! Okay, that’s great if they do that and you can get some productive hours in then. You can consider it, but if taking care of your child takes up a lot of your time or focus, maybe it’s better for your productivity to let them stay somewhere else during your work hours. You can spend plenty of quality time together when you’re done doing your job.
Pets
People who have babies probably won’t like this statement but taking care of a pet can be a handful too! When they are young, they want a lot of playtime, and when they get older, they still want you to spend time with them and cuddle with them on the couch.
We have a 15-year-old dog and man she can whine. When you are alone with her, at least a few hours of the day she is whining for god knows what reason. Then you see if she needs to drink, eat, pee, or poo and even then she continues to whine. So yeah this can be pretty distracting if you want to get some work done. Noise-canceling earphones or earplugs work great for this occasion too! Of course, make sure that she doesn’t really need anything first before trying to ignore her!
So, if possible, get a babysitter or pet sitter during your working hours. Or find out how to work around taking care of your precious baby or animal.
7. Appointments
Do not schedule appointments during your working hours. Just don’t. It won’t help you to be productive at all.
Having an appointment somewhere during the day will keep your mind distracted from work and focused on where you have to be anytime soon. This really should be avoided if you want to be productive. You could make exceptions for urgent things but this really shouldn’t be a regular thing.
But if you work full-time, how can you schedule appointments then? Try booking them right before or after work. You could always start your work day a bit later or finish earlier and this way, your work won’t be interrupted.
Worst-case scenario when you have an appointment during your work day, see if you can bring your laptop and get some work done in the waiting room of doctors. Most of the time there is wifi and you will lose less valuable time this way. The waiting times can be very long so it’s always best to bring something to keep you busy.
When you work from home you can schedule appointments into your agenda but make sure to use your time efficiently. Plan appointments when there is almost no commute so you won’t lose much time getting there and take some work with you to do while you wait.
Conclusion – Be Productive
Let’s make a list of the 7 distractions you should avoid to become a productive person.
- Social media
- Clutter
- Phone
- Emails
- Noise
- Babysitting or pet sitting
- Appointments
When you can avoid these things, your productivity will improve so much! Get rid of all the distractions to achieve more during the day.
Productivity isn’t everything, but it is nice to accomplish things daily and to be productive, as this makes you feel good and proud of yourself.
If you work for an employer, and you see your productivity going through the roof, don’t forget to ask for a raise! When your increased productivity helps the company you work for greatly, you should be rewarded!