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Stay more productive at work by counting distractions

Keeping a check on distractions help in being more mindful about how we are spending our time. It not only filters out the important stuff but also boosts productivity.

Productivity
Keeping a check on distractions help in being more mindful about how we are spending our time. It not only filters out the important stuff but also boosts productivity.

Paritosh Pundir

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Founder of DoRemember... ๐Ÿš€ Helping people solve problems through ๐Ÿ‘จ๐Ÿปโ€๐Ÿ’ป CODE, ๐ŸŽจ DESIGN & ๐Ÿ–‹ WORDS

Do

Actions to take

  • List down your distractions
  • Keep an alarm for every 2 hours throughout the day

Remember

Expanded perspective

If you have been struggling with productivity at your workplace, here are a few actions that you can take to slowly improve your productivity and become more productive at work. Before jumping into action, letโ€™s try and understand how lack in productivity becomes a problem from time to time.

Identifying lack of productivity

The realization that you are being less productive is usually discovered slowly. Every once in a while you will have those off days when you will not be able to get more done, but that is fineโ€Šโ€”โ€Šone can have those off days. The problem begins when the number of those off days increase and they start becoming consistent.

Everyone wants to be more productive at work but keeping a check on productivity is not something that is very straightforward. Before you know it you have already spent a lot of unproductive days or maybe weeks and in some cases, even months! There can be a lot of reasons for this, but to improve it, you donโ€™t need to focus on all of them, as most could be out of your control. Letโ€™s try with focusing on the reasons that you can control and monitor.

Focus on the distractions

The most important tool for productivity is, focus and this is what distractions steal from you.

Make a list of all the things that are distracting you in a day. This list can consist of your phone, social media, your co-workers, your manager, your boss or even a side project that you are doing.

The next step is to filter out the distractions that you can control. While you might not be able to stop your boss from distracting you but you can stop yourself from checking your phone when a notification rings. Review this list and now letโ€™s try to balance the strength of your focus.

Balance focus with distraction

It is very important to keep a balance between your focus and distractions. There is a simple experiment that I have been doing and it really helps to be mindful of this balance. I call it the Focus Distraction Balance (FDB).

Keep alarms for every 2 hours, throughout the day, on your phone. It’s simple and doesnโ€™t require you to install anything new or have a fancy phone. Once you have done that, you just need to do a simple review when the alarm rings, whether in the last 2 hours you were focused or distracted. This will help you decide how you want to spend the next 2 hours.

Lot of alarms
Keep a lot of alarms

You can play around with the interval between the hours and try what works best for you. This will also help you efficiently manage the tasks that you need to do for the day.

Let’s get going

Now, just take a paper and pen and start listing down those distractions. As you start doing this, within a few minutes you will be surprised to know that you already know how to get rid of those distractions and make every day more meaningful.

Staying focused and productive will help you achieve your goals with much more efficiency and impeccable quality.

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