I close all unnecessary applications on my computer and put my work in front of me. If I need to use the Internet, I'll enable LeechBlock (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/leechblock/) (similar extensions exist for Chrome).
If I'm working on something that's particularly hard to focus on, I'll use the Pomodoro technique (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique) to keep my attention from deteriorating.
I make sure not to multitask. Multitasking makes it too easy to get distracted, and people aren't as good at multitasking as they think they are. Instead, I work on one important task at a time.
You may also want to try working in a public space such as a library. When people can see what you're doing, it makes it easier to stay off Facebook.
If I'm having a day where I am not getting much done, I stop trying. I close and leave the laptop and my phone at my desk, take a notebook and a pen, and go to the local library, where I sit down and write for an hour or two a discussion of why I am not getting anything done, and what I can do about it. The next time this happens again, I repeat the process, except I also reread the entry (yes, you need to keep the journal around) from the last time, and see if there's any patterns.
Leaving all your electronics behind, taking an old, analog medium (pen, paper) and going to a place where people are required to be quiet (library, not office, not coffee shop, not co-working space) is essential to the process of figuring out what's distracting you.
Do you find that it's the mind-hand connection (going analog, writing it out) that makes the difference, or simply the act of self-examination? Or is the pen and paper necessary to get away from the distractions the laptop offers?
No social media accounts: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. I think that's at least half the battle.
Good advice from YuriNiyazov too. "If I'm having a day where I am not getting much done, I stop trying.". I think it's important to pick your battles. You won't be productive 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.
Word on the social media. I got rid of my Facebook in college and my average productivity instantly skyrocketed (although that creeping desire to waste time eventually gets filled with other things, like online chess).
I remove the distractions. Quit email, IM, IRC, work from home in a quiet place. Few people have my phone number, and they know not to call me unless their hair is on fire. The right kind of music can help too.
If I'm struggling to focus, I do some exercising, go for a walk (sunlight helps) or just take a break away from the work and come back refreshed. If I'm still struggling, I just give up and start again the next day (where possible - deadlines are a good motivator too, but not if overused). If I can't focus because I'm tired, I take a nap. I reserve caffeine for emergencies ("must get this done today") and with a two week cooldown afterwards (you'd be shocked what caffeine can do for you in a pinch if you haven't built up a tolerance from constantly abusing it).
Most importantly, look at what you're doing. I have little trouble focusing on something I want to do. It's the tedious bits that I struggle with, and so if I find something like that, I try to eliminate it as much as possible. This means picking your projects/clients/job carefully, and not rating money as top priority.
I've always found some sort of sound blocking helps me focus, even in relatively quiet environments. I used earplugs almost 24/7 until it started I started having some issues with my ears and realized that's not really a good health practice. Since then I've been experimenting with sound blocking hunting ear muffs and noise isolating/cancelling headphones.
Also many years ago, I discovered this thing called Holosync which is some sort of binaural beats thing that's supposed to help your brain. After just checking the site now it seems really new-agey and psuedosciency and I'm not really sure if I would wholly endorse it. There are a bunch of different meditation "prgrams" that have a strict regimen, but then there's an epilogue CD with two tracks in particular (for Alpha and Theta brainwaves) that I just listen to on repeat and I've found help me immensely. Nothing else I've really experimented with has worked as well.
Go somewhere that isn't a regular habit of yours. At home you have certain patterns of behavior, the same at work, your location matters.
Find a neutral ground when you want to focus and use that location or ones like it as a way to both isolate yourself from common distractions of your normal surroundings, as well as to set the scene for your focus.
Before cutting off all your social-media sites (including HN), there's intermediate steps you can take to break the kind of reflexive habits that crop up without discipline:
1. If I just want to limit the temptation to Tweet or post about something on some service, I just log out of it. I might still check the service to read some things, but not being able to participate or respond sharply limits the time I spend on it.
2. If logging out doesn't work because you reflexively log in, due to your password being auto-completed when you visit a website, change your password to your accounts to a long gibberish string and paste it somewhere in a text file. Everytime you want to log in, it's 2 to 3 extra steps to find that password. Usually that's enough for me to not care to try.
3. If you're on Chrome, StayFocusd is a great plugin:
You give it a list of sites to blacklist, which you can either limit the total time you spend on them or completely block them for an hour or two.
--
After that are longer term things...The Pomodoro technique is good...I use a static white noise app on my iPod and time it for 20-30 minutes, during which I don't even switch away from my coding environment for any reason (except for an emergency stack overflow lookup)
And meditation...it's hard to get into at first, but if you set a time for something short, like 5 to 10 minutes, it's not too hard to ease into. It's a great way to start off the morning because its a short, relaxing exercise involving discipline.
Often times you find an excuse to distract yourself because you think the work is tedious and annoying. So stop thinking about how annoying the work is and just do it.
Don't try to manage your tedium, don't use tricks, don't use any systems. Just sit down, tell yourself to stop whining and just attack the work.
I normally try to get a few cups of coffee into my system, and start making a list of things that are most important to accomplish within the amount of time I have to work for that day. When I have a defined list of objectives, it makes it easier for me to try to cross things off the list. If that fails, I'll end up watching an episode or two of a tv show, playing an instrument or something away from electronics mostly so I'm not staring at the problem I'm blocked on.
Agree. A to do list is my go to option.
If I do not complete the tasks on time, the list grows ominously. When the list becomes gargantuan, I get really scared and end up doing everything in one shot.
Also the joy of scratching off completed tasks is unmatched.
I take a walk, or a nap. On a bad day I may try to work on something else for a while.
Really bad days, I find that I've been reading HN or Reddit for hours, serially. Sigh.
My productivity is cyclical. There will be whole weeks where I'm utterly uninspired, I hate the world and it hates me, I don't want to go to work. I try reading. I try to remember that this will pass, and in a week I'll probably be a typing fiend.
I also play the practical joker. No pranks, as such, but leaving little signs around for people to notice is fun. I once wrote profanity in very small letters on the bottom of a hallway-length whiteboard (people were helping with that one). If you can rope one or two other people into a joke, that's fun (creative and only mildly destructive use of superglue, for instance...).
Oftentimes inability to focus is because you didn't leave yourself a good starting point. Writers use this trick; they stop for the day when they are sure what comes next. So split it into two - sit down and spend a bit of time doing nothing but orienting - figuring out what you would do next if you were about to do it. Then when you've identified it, go take a break until you feel ready to start again.
Lately, it's been a combination of removing distractions like IM, e-mail and the like. Putting on headphons and listening to Coffitivity. Then, I either grab a paper and pencil or tablet and stylus and sketch what I should be designing. I take components and use Vitamin-R (pomodora) and get working. If this seems to fail at any steps, I take a walk around the block with the expectation that there will be no delays when I return.
My main distraction is noise, since I mostly work from home, and my home can be a rather noisy place sometimes (I don't live alone). The sound of the TV, for instance, can be anywhere from a nice background presence (like for a documentary) to an impossibility to work (like an action movie that tries very hard to catch your attention).
I change jobs. I don't have a Facebook or Twitter account. The televisions were trashed over a decade ago. My home page is my personal KanbanFlow page, modified to follow Mark Forster's Final System. It almost works.
I make sure not to overcommit myself. A study shows that scheduling has to be considered independently of effort, ability and experience. If I am not doing what I think I should be doing, I try to change the environment so that not doing what I should be doing is harder than doing what I should be doing. I don't believe that the exercise of willpower is any kind of solution. Its usefulness is limited largely to the minimum expenditure necessary to operate within the environment one designs to encourage work.
Also, I try to operate on a long time horizon. If something I do isn't going to have a discernible impact 10,000 years from now, I consider whether the opportunity cost is too high.
If something I do isn't going to have a discernible impact 10,000 years from now, I consider whether the opportunity cost is too high.
I'd be really curious as to what crosses that threshold, and how you determine this.
I also find it a very interesting viewpoint in light of the famous JM Keynes quote, which I've only just encountered in a longer form:
But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.
Set a goal to do one small part of it in 5-10 minutes, then the rest usually follows. If it's a real struggle to get that small part done, examine why I 'need' to get it done in the first place. Deadlines are a huge motivator; I find external ones if the task doesn't come with its own.
Also, making tea or a latte before getting down to work can help me focus my mind, over time I've come to associate both of those activities with 'focus time'.
Edit to add: Isolating the task from distractions kind of goes without saying, but I find it helps to frame the distractions as much as the task. Why am I so compelled to go play game X, or read book Y, instead of the task at hand? Going a level deeper and figuring out what your brain's avoiding/being lured by has been really useful for me (especially while dealing with focus issues after a concussion).
It may sound as silly advice; but it's the honest truth.
The very fact that you are thinking about focusing when you are trying to focus; precludes you from actually doing it.
It's counter intuitive: Sit behind the work to be done, and truly accept whatever happens. Accept the fact that you might be unfocused or distracted. It's a sign that you aren't ready to work. Don't resist. Just either do, or don't.
57 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 111 ms ] threadIf I'm working on something that's particularly hard to focus on, I'll use the Pomodoro technique (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique) to keep my attention from deteriorating.
I make sure not to multitask. Multitasking makes it too easy to get distracted, and people aren't as good at multitasking as they think they are. Instead, I work on one important task at a time.
You may also want to try working in a public space such as a library. When people can see what you're doing, it makes it easier to stay off Facebook.
Leaving all your electronics behind, taking an old, analog medium (pen, paper) and going to a place where people are required to be quiet (library, not office, not coffee shop, not co-working space) is essential to the process of figuring out what's distracting you.
Sigh.
1) having a ritual 2) being away from both distractions electronic and human
Good advice from YuriNiyazov too. "If I'm having a day where I am not getting much done, I stop trying.". I think it's important to pick your battles. You won't be productive 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.
If I'm struggling to focus, I do some exercising, go for a walk (sunlight helps) or just take a break away from the work and come back refreshed. If I'm still struggling, I just give up and start again the next day (where possible - deadlines are a good motivator too, but not if overused). If I can't focus because I'm tired, I take a nap. I reserve caffeine for emergencies ("must get this done today") and with a two week cooldown afterwards (you'd be shocked what caffeine can do for you in a pinch if you haven't built up a tolerance from constantly abusing it).
Most importantly, look at what you're doing. I have little trouble focusing on something I want to do. It's the tedious bits that I struggle with, and so if I find something like that, I try to eliminate it as much as possible. This means picking your projects/clients/job carefully, and not rating money as top priority.
Also many years ago, I discovered this thing called Holosync which is some sort of binaural beats thing that's supposed to help your brain. After just checking the site now it seems really new-agey and psuedosciency and I'm not really sure if I would wholly endorse it. There are a bunch of different meditation "prgrams" that have a strict regimen, but then there's an epilogue CD with two tracks in particular (for Alpha and Theta brainwaves) that I just listen to on repeat and I've found help me immensely. Nothing else I've really experimented with has worked as well.
Find a neutral ground when you want to focus and use that location or ones like it as a way to both isolate yourself from common distractions of your normal surroundings, as well as to set the scene for your focus.
1. If I just want to limit the temptation to Tweet or post about something on some service, I just log out of it. I might still check the service to read some things, but not being able to participate or respond sharply limits the time I spend on it.
2. If logging out doesn't work because you reflexively log in, due to your password being auto-completed when you visit a website, change your password to your accounts to a long gibberish string and paste it somewhere in a text file. Everytime you want to log in, it's 2 to 3 extra steps to find that password. Usually that's enough for me to not care to try.
3. If you're on Chrome, StayFocusd is a great plugin:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd/laankej...
You give it a list of sites to blacklist, which you can either limit the total time you spend on them or completely block them for an hour or two.
--
After that are longer term things...The Pomodoro technique is good...I use a static white noise app on my iPod and time it for 20-30 minutes, during which I don't even switch away from my coding environment for any reason (except for an emergency stack overflow lookup)
And meditation...it's hard to get into at first, but if you set a time for something short, like 5 to 10 minutes, it's not too hard to ease into. It's a great way to start off the morning because its a short, relaxing exercise involving discipline.
Often times you find an excuse to distract yourself because you think the work is tedious and annoying. So stop thinking about how annoying the work is and just do it.
Don't try to manage your tedium, don't use tricks, don't use any systems. Just sit down, tell yourself to stop whining and just attack the work.
Oh and modafinil. :)
Also the joy of scratching off completed tasks is unmatched.
Really bad days, I find that I've been reading HN or Reddit for hours, serially. Sigh.
My productivity is cyclical. There will be whole weeks where I'm utterly uninspired, I hate the world and it hates me, I don't want to go to work. I try reading. I try to remember that this will pass, and in a week I'll probably be a typing fiend.
I also play the practical joker. No pranks, as such, but leaving little signs around for people to notice is fun. I once wrote profanity in very small letters on the bottom of a hallway-length whiteboard (people were helping with that one). If you can rope one or two other people into a joke, that's fun (creative and only mildly destructive use of superglue, for instance...).
But one day, I tried this, and boy did it change my life! http://simplynoise.com/
I'm pretty sure this doesn't work for everyone and can get annoying to some people; but for me it was a revelation and solved a problem for good.
I make sure not to overcommit myself. A study shows that scheduling has to be considered independently of effort, ability and experience. If I am not doing what I think I should be doing, I try to change the environment so that not doing what I should be doing is harder than doing what I should be doing. I don't believe that the exercise of willpower is any kind of solution. Its usefulness is limited largely to the minimum expenditure necessary to operate within the environment one designs to encourage work.
Also, I try to operate on a long time horizon. If something I do isn't going to have a discernible impact 10,000 years from now, I consider whether the opportunity cost is too high.
I'd be really curious as to what crosses that threshold, and how you determine this.
I also find it a very interesting viewpoint in light of the famous JM Keynes quote, which I've only just encountered in a longer form:
But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.
h/t: /u/wumbotarian on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/1tzb9c/10_quotes_...
Also, making tea or a latte before getting down to work can help me focus my mind, over time I've come to associate both of those activities with 'focus time'.
Edit to add: Isolating the task from distractions kind of goes without saying, but I find it helps to frame the distractions as much as the task. Why am I so compelled to go play game X, or read book Y, instead of the task at hand? Going a level deeper and figuring out what your brain's avoiding/being lured by has been really useful for me (especially while dealing with focus issues after a concussion).
It may sound as silly advice; but it's the honest truth. The very fact that you are thinking about focusing when you are trying to focus; precludes you from actually doing it.
It's counter intuitive: Sit behind the work to be done, and truly accept whatever happens. Accept the fact that you might be unfocused or distracted. It's a sign that you aren't ready to work. Don't resist. Just either do, or don't.
sudo bash -c 'echo "127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com" >> /etc/hosts'