Do you find yourself doing one task and in the next few minutes you are doing something else, even though you have an important task to finish ? Do you see a meme about procrastination and tell yourself “this is so me” ?
If your answer to any of the above questions is yes, then welcome to the world of distractions!!
How distractions affect our productivity (tldr; blame your brain)
When you are working on something and you are not fully focused on that task, your mind will continuously keep telling you:
come on dude leave it, let’s watch some video on YouTube, see someone’s story/reels or let’s maintain that Snapchat streak (duh!).
Basically, our brain looks for an easy way out. Our brain wants us to do those tasks where we can get dopamine (a brain chemical you get when you achieve something good). Our brain prefers getting this feeling of accomplishment from doing easy tasks, even if you are not doing anything worth your time.
So in a nutshell, if you don’t schedule your tasks properly, your mind will never focus and you’ll give in to distractions that stop you from achieving anything.
That’s why it becomes extremely important that you schedule tasks and then schedule your distractions as well i.e give specific time on your daily calendar for these distracting tasks so that they don’t disturb you the whole day.
What solutions worked for me?
We all entertain various kind of distractions and we all have our own ways to deal with the same. So now, I would like to share a few steps I followed and most of these worked for me:
Social Media Related:
- Uninstalled Instagram app on mobile, using same in incognito mode in browser whenever required, this helped me in reducing distracting stories/reels (Instagram desktop doesn’t support reels)
- Unfollowed 100+ people on Instagram. Try this, you won’t even miss most of them. We are following so many people unnecessarily.
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Deactivated my Facebook account.
It’s surprising to see that I didn’t even miss the platform or feel like going back to Facebook to see what’s going on there, which means I was using it just because it was there, just like many other social media platforms.
Planning Related:
- We all need a dose of entertainment to stay sane and that’s why I follow the concept of Scheduling The Distractions which means while planning the day, you could plan what time you are going to use Instagram/Youtube/Facebook etc. This will give you more time to your priority work and you won’t get FOMO from not using those apps.
- I plan my next day in an excel sheet before sleeping. I divide the whole day into half an hour slots and plan something for each half hour. Obviously, I don’t follow it exactly as planned but it helps me understand where I waste most of my time.
Chrome(browser) related:
- Disabled “most visited link suggestions” in chrome. We tend to open our most visited sites whenever we open a new tab.
- Used chrome tab groups to sort opened links and avoid getting distracted by other open tabs.
- Installed OneTab chrome extension to manage opened tabs and save RAM.
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Installed Tabwave chrome extension to convert New Tab into a Pomodoro clock and To-Do list dashboard.
Now i’m strictly following Pomodoro clock.
- Installed Blocksite chrome extension to block many websites I used to visit often.
Impact Of These Changes
Now, I’m not saying that I have become the most productive person after following all of these methods, I just want to convey that I have taken a step ahead towards improving myself. That’s what ultimately matters and I wish that you start doing the same after reading this. Most of this worked for me, it might or might not work for you, mix it up, be flexible, no need to be hard on yourself unnecessarily, see what works for you and plan accordingly.
Following all those advice on the internet might be difficult initially, but trust me if you have a lot of work to do but you find yourself procrastinating or wasting time, this could be the change you need. Let me know your opinion about the same and stop stalling your priority tasks.
