It’s not that I lack attention, just that I can’t direct it where it needs to go…

As one former boss said, I could be distracted by a bit of dust rolling across the floor. He wasn’t wrong.

I swing between periods of massive productivity and mental pinball. This is fine when you’re doing rapid fire transactional work but it’s a nightmare for deep, complex work.

A few things I’ve found that help:

Identify what’s going on. There tends to be three options: 

• Hyperfocus – great when it lines up with your task list. A bloody nightmare when it doesn’t. Can I shuffle my diary to make it work? Troublesome when it’s something that is totally unrelated to work, I still haven’t found a reliable way to deal with this…
• Distracted – mind is bouncing around like a ping pong ball, needs containment, not control.
• Procrastinating – feels like distraction but it’s not. It’s avoidance with a purpose. Usually it’s because of discomfort – fear of looking daft, failing or being unsure of how to tackle a big problem. Not laziness.

Tactics I use to manage it:

Remove distractions – sounds bloody obvious but it can still be hard to do. Noise and visual disturbances should be minimised where possible, I find that music can help but it needs to be dance music, no lyrics. If you’re in an open plan office, tell people when you can and can’t be disturbed. Instant messaging is a massive distruptor– WhatsApp/Slack/Teams all need to be confined to parts of the day when transactional work is being done.

Create accountability – tell someone you’re going to have something done for a specific time. Even if they don’t care, the creation of a deadline can help.

Timebox everything – be militant about it, the work and the distractions. If I’m obsessing over something unrelated to work I’ll timebox 30 minutes for that in the day. Having that scheduled stops it elbowing into everything else.

Unitask – don’t kid yourself, multitasking it’s a myth. The inertia in task switching is significant, I’ve read that there’s about 15 minutes lag when trying to get back into deep work. I’m not sure how true this is but either way it’s significant. Messaging and email are the worst for this, timebox them or they’ll kick you out of flow.

5 minutes of [thing] – This works for distraction and procrastination. If there’s something you’re not that keen on doing or struggling with, tell yourself you’ll do 5 minutes of it and only 5 minutes of it. That removes a lot of the reluctance and once you’ve broken that barrier you almost always end up doing more and often complete the task.

Go for a walk/exercise – this really helps me stay motivated, I feel a lot more focused, energised, (and paradoxically relaxed) after going for a bike ride.

Sometimes it feels like trying to eat soup with a fork. When it clicks and I can harness it though, it’s like a superpower.

If anyone’s got any more tips, I’m all ears!

 

 nathan@nbstrategy.co.uk.