191. Very Simple Strategies to Banish Distractions

Blake got an interesting factoid for you. Matter of fact, it’s probably interesting, but I think everybody pretty much knows this, but there’s a statistic that says that on average, a person looks at their phone over 350 times per day, and 80% of the people check their phones as soon as they wake up. Is this hard to believe at all?

Oh, hang on on second.

Or better yet, is it hard to admit?

Oh, sorry. I was just checking Instagram real quick. What were you talking about?

I was talking about that very thing. 350 times.

Not hard to believe in the slightest. It might be low. It’s almost like I think the statistic will probably have to change to how many times per day people are looking up from their screens, and seeing how high we can get that number. Because by default, they’re probably just looking at a screen and then it’s a matter of measuring how many times can we-

I only looked at my phone a 192 times yesterday.

Wow.

I should feel pretty good about that.

Sick brag.

Only almost 200 times that I stopped what I was doing to look at my phone in a day. It’s not a big deal. And I slept for like six, seven hours.

Yeah. Yeah, there’s something to this that I feel like in a almost prophetic way… Cal Newport wrote that book called Deep Work, do you guys remember that book? And he’s made a statement essentially that the person that can do deep work, meaning can get into focus and sustain it for long periods of time on the right things, will be such a massive differentiator in the marketplace, if you can actually do that. And that was… I don’t know how many years ago he wrote that book, but wow, I see that playing out now, where more and more and more, it becomes easier and easier and easier to get distracted.

Which means for you listening, if you can improve even 10%, 20%, the amount that you are in deep focus mode, or you’re free of distraction, it could be a massive differentiator in your life, in your work, in a business if you own a business. It’s kind of interesting, in a time where there’s so much to be distracted by and screens are always fighting for our attention, the people that can grab hold of this concept of banishing distraction are going to be set apart.

The thing that’s interesting is that so much of what I do now, it isn’t necessarily that I’m picking up a phone, it’s that I find that I can’t do anything without also doing another thing. Key example, if I go to the store, the grocery store, and I don’t have my headphones in and I’m listening to a podcast, or music, or whatever, then I feel as if I’ve wasted my time. Or even sometimes if I’m going to go from this office downstairs to do the laundry, to get the laundry, I will put a podcast on for the two minutes that I’m gone from my desk. And it does sort of create a perpetual state of distraction and noise, that can’t possibly be good.

Yeah, I think as we’re talking about this now, I feel like… I’m trying to think back, where does it come from as far as the necessity to do what you just… Or the feeling that this is necessary? How can I be most efficient with my day to where I have to do something every time there’s a moment in that day, versus just not doing anything? Do you guys have any thoughts as far as how did we get here?

Well, there’s something to the access to the quick dopamine hits that technology has provided for us, that is by its nature really addictive. And this is where the full focus system that we talk about is hard for people to wrap their arms around. And yet when we can, it’s really powerful, because we’re talking about limiting the amount of to-dos, and yet in a distracted way, we’re craving to just get something done, so we’ll do stuff like, “I just want to get the small thing done and maybe if I can get another thing done while I’m doing that thing.” But we can end up sort of accumulating, quote, unquote, “busyness or productivity”, and yet still feel out of control, still feel like we’re not accomplishing, or achieving the stuff in life or in our work that we really want. It’s a real challenge for sure.

Today we are going to talk about three strategies that will help us get rid of distractions and actually increase our productivity.

Welcome to another episode of Focus On This, the most productive podcast on the internet, so you can banish distractions, get the right stuff done, and finally start loving Mondays. I’m Verbs, here with Blake Stratton, and of course, our producer Nick is in the building as well. Happy Monday to you both.

Happy Monday.

Happy Monday to you Verbs. Today, Verbs, we are going to try our best to not get distracted while we talk about banishing distraction, so that our listeners can become free of distraction. So what is our first strategy Verbs?

Strategy number one, which is to identify your time wasters, identify your time wasters, what are those things that are drawing you in? The force is activated and you get into this tractor beam that ends up stealing a lot of your focus.

I know for me, there’s this excuse because of the work that I do now of, “I should check social media because that’s where I will interact with leads for the first time. It’s where I’ll provide value, or maybe I’m creating some content and putting it on there.” But I noticed that… Nick or Verbs, have you ever done this where you sort of do the check carousel type of thing? Just check my email. I’m going to check Facebook.

Yes.

I’m going to check the LinkedIn notification. I’m going to check this. Oh, and I wonder if an email… It’s been 10 minutes, maybe I should check my email again. And you go right back around.

Yeah.

I’ve definitely fallen into that trap-

It’s a real thing.

And I realize, “I think I’m being productive.” Because again, you’re getting those quick hits of, “Oh, I’m checking something. I’m on top of it.” Maybe I’m doing something of value, but I’ve definitely allowed the apps or the things to control my day, versus my priorities driving my day.

Here’s a sincere question. We are talking about technology. Blake already referenced the dopamine hit we get every time we refresh the thing and we get a notification. In our notes here, not to spoil anything for anybody, one of the things that’s listed is, “I spend my time reading the news.” And I’m like, that’s not the issue people are having. Sorry, everybody. You’re not sitting around reading the news and getting distracted. But the question is, did people 30 years ago… What were they doing to fill this time? Or is this a new phenomenon that we’re encountering right now? So what were our parents doing? When they were our age, they’d sit down with… Would they have even had the same conversation?

I know I’ve seen some meme where it talks about how people don’t look up from their screens, and there’s that photo of people on the… I don’t know if it’s a subway or on a bus, and they all have newspapers right in front of them, and they all just have their head buried in a newspaper.

That’s true.

Yeah.

Not talking to each other. And I definitely think that there is probably always something about the human experience where to grow and to achieve something, we have to do things differently and do things that are uncomfortable. And my guess is, 30 years ago, a 100 years ago, 300 years ago, we were finding ways to get an easier hit of dopamine than the stuff that makes us uncomfortable. However, and I don’t have any studies in front of me, Nick, it’s undeniable, the… All you have to do is watch a movie from 1986 and realize how painful the intro to that movie is. You’re like, “Dear Lord, when are we going to start the action? Why isn’t anything blown up yet?” It’s just bananas. Now our attention span is so short, you can’t start a movie and not have something occur in five seconds. You can’t have these long titles where they go through a whole orchestral John Williams flex. You don’t get that anymore.

Again, when the discovery of the fact that, “Oh, there’s these dopamine reactions that we benefit from,” I think the same thing has been happening. It’s just been in different mediums. We brought up the newspaper. You see a picture of somebody on the subway from a few decades back, people are reading newspapers or magazines, kids are playing with actual toys, and that’s how they’re keeping themselves busy. When now all of that has shifted to the screen. I remember my mom would be watching a movie, or a TV series, on the couch doing her nails. So I think we were always doing something extra, but it was more tangible, versus being on a screen and us being locked into that device, of however those devices show up now.

This is really my bag, so I won’t spend forever talking about this, but it’s not the screen, it’s the algorithm. So let’s just call… That’s what it is. That’s actually the problem.

Are you saying it’s been designed for us to be locked in?

You’re not going to beat it. Everybody, you’re not going to beat it. But anyway, what can we do? We’ve got some ideas here. What can we do to thin out all of these distractions?

Identifying it is the first step, and that is, Nick, a strategy in and of itself. It’s important though, to be specific. And I would encourage you to actually jot stuff down, versus just trying to keep, “Oh, I know I need to be off social media.” Well, that’s not specific. Identify, for instance, what is triggering these time wasters, when do they occur? That’s identifying the time waster. Or maybe… I don’t work in a office setting anymore, but I can remember I at a time was working in an office, and there was a shared office space and then a more private space, and there was a big difference when I was in an open space versus non-open space. And part of this is just my makeup and my personality. I’m introverted, which doesn’t mean I don’t like to talk to people, it means when people are around, I have this feeling of I need to make sure that someone’s acknowledged and that I can get into conversations. There’s a sense of it’s pulling energy from me. It’s just subtly, unless it’s intentional connection time.

And so maybe that’s you listening. You realize, “Oh, it’s a distraction. I let it be a distraction to just get into conversations or whatever.” Sometimes those can be productive, or if you need some connection that’s helpful for your productivity. But it’s going to be different for everyone, the specific things that you’re wasting your time with, or avoiding the real work with. It could be social media, it could be things that are actually your “job”, quote, unquote, that feel like your job. “Well, I have to keep my email open,” for instance. I work with so many clients and they just keep their email app open throughout the day, and I said, “Well, is there anything that you’re going to get in an email that you can’t respond to one hour after you get it?” And it’s almost always no. If something’s truly on fire, they’ll get a call. But just the pinging of the email, they’ll want to check it. But that’s going to pull them out of a focus zone and make it impossible to do focus. So identify those time wasters. Try just brain dumping, writing them out, and see what you discover.

Can I recommend, and I have not done this, this is a classic do as I say, not as I do, but I should, and maybe I will today, just get rid of all of your notifications. I have so many notifications that come to my phone that I then ignore. I’m like, “Oh, I don’t need to know that.” But that means that the important ones that come through, I don’t emotionally react to, “Oh, I got to get to that.” So it might be a situation where you could just get rid of all of them and then selectively put them back. How many notifications do I get a day? 200? 100? So many, and I don’t need any of them. I might need some. My reminders, I’ll get swallowed up, because I’ve gotten 4,000 texts, and news alerts, and sports scores, and whatever. It’s another thought.

Yeah, and I think just to underscore what you said, Nick, I think as… Because it starts in the downloading of an app process. You go through the sign in, the check in, then the screen pops up, “Do you want to receive notifications?” Not now, every time. Not now. And then, like Nick mentioned, go back and add the ones you think you’ll need. For instance, if you have your bank app and you want to know, Hey, there’s fraudulent activity going on in my account, then you get a notification for that. But those are things that come pretty sparingly. Because I think the important thing to remember is you have to… It’d be wise for us to have a season of just palate cleansing in regards to our notifications. Because if anything comes through, it’s, again, prepping your mind for eventually when something comes through that you want to actually engage in, and you never get that opportunity to zero back out, and not be looking for those notifications.

I’m going to do it. Verbs, I’m going to do it. Today. I’m going to write it down. I’m going to see if I can turn them all off and then selectively put them back.

All right. Strategy number two. Set boundaries with your time. Set boundaries with your time. We all have boundaries in our life, but what about our schedules? What about the things that we actually want and need to accomplish? What does that look like for you, Blake?

Yeah. Well, it begins with a conversation with my spouse. We are sharing life together. And right now I have my own work that I do, and I’m a solo operation at the moment, so this is different than many of you listening, although some of you can understand this. When you can flex your time, or when you have quote, unquote, “freedom” with your time, it becomes that much more important to be intentional with boundaries on your time, because otherwise, everything’s just all over the place. There’s not firm office hours. There’s not, “Well, we have to do this, otherwise the boss is going to…” Whatever, “I’m going to lose my…” None of that really exists for us. And so this is something even that my wife and I will come to each quarter, and sometimes if we’re in a season of high transition, sometimes multiple times in the quarter.

Most recently we did this at the start of the second quarter looking at, “Okay, let’s take a look at what we’ve got going on and our commitments. What time boundaries do we need? When am I going to be fully in work mode? And how can I remain undistracted? And what support do you need so that I can stay in work mode?” And that sort of thing. And so that’s where it begins is, when are we on, when are we off? When are we together, when are we not? That’s what it looks like for me. And then to go further from that, me personally, that’s when we can start getting into a tool like the Ideal Week, which is in the Full Focus plan. Verbs, do you use the Ideal Week?

I do use it at times, mainly at the beginning of the quarterly preview process, just for me to revisit and see what my days and weeks are looking like, what they’ve looked like in that past quarter, and how I would like them to look in the upcoming quarter, and make those necessary adjustments. And again, I think this is something that we all have to be real with ourselves. There’s multiple things happening, especially if you’re working a full-time job and then you have your weekends.

So there’s these two or three days, depending on what your schedule looks like, where all the stuff you want to do, all the stuff you may have to do with family, all of those things kind of get crammed in to those days, because it’s time that you want to spend with some of your best relationships, and you want to be able to develop those. So there is that process, that there’s a winnowing that needs to occur to make sure you can do those things, as well as have time to just reset for yourself as well. So yeah, I think that’s definitely an important step in these strategies.

The Ideal Week is interesting, because it’s a formula, or a budget so to speak, of your time, and when you can get over this thing of, “Well, my weeks are so unpredictable each week,” and you can just say, “Yeah, but if I could control it, what would that look like?” It’s interesting, we talk about how hard it is to get off your phone. I think this step, the boundaries with your time, or setting these recurring appointments with yourself, or with your team, or using the Ideal Week to learn how to batch like activities, that is a super low energy way to remove distraction from your life. It takes energy upfront.

Like you said, it’s great to do in a quarterly preview when you have some thinking time to strategize about how could I batch like activities together, so that I can stay in a zone? Or group meetings together, so I can stay in a zone? Or could I do everything in my power Monday through Thursday, or just Monday and Tuesday, to not have any meetings before noon, so that I can check my email once at the beginning of the day, and then just be off for three hours?

That bit of strategy work will relieve you of daily, and sometimes hourly, willpower work of overcoming distraction. So if you’ve never filled out or used the Ideal Week tool, and you would like to try it out, you have it in the front of your Full Focus Planner, you can grab that. But if you don’t have one of those yet, you can actually get this template for free. Go to fullfocus.co/idealweek, and you can get a free download. Even if you have a planner. I like to just print these off personally, because I can make a lot of mistakes, I can scratch around at it. So download that and start doing some strategy on how you can banish distractions by setting boundaries with your time.

All right. Strategy number three is write your daily big three. Write down your daily big three. What are those three top things that need to occur in your day that will really keep you focused and in a straight line to accomplishing those higher leverage activities?

That’s right. We talk about this one a lot, right Verbs? Identifying those top three things. This is huge, and I don’t know about you, but there’s even a difference between identifying my big three and also keeping my planner open. This is one of those tips that it sounds too easy to work. We think, “Distraction is such a huge issue, so it must take a lot of effort and creative wrist slapping for me to not be distracted.” And yet when we just write down our top three things, at least for me, it kick-starts the subconscious mind, so to speak, to just go in that direction.

Absolutely.

And then if I keep my planner open, or I write it on a sticky note or something like that, just those three things, I notice by muscle memory, going to check the thing, or check an email, or lifting up, I start doing deep work. And as soon as I start doing something that’s important, I don’t know if you guys feel this, it’s like, “Oh, I better be distracted right now.” And so that muscle… But I see the big three and I’m like, “Oh, that’s right. This is what’s actually important.”

And if I can use a eighties reference, I feel like life is like a game of double dare. So you have, I believe, nine flags. Everyone remembers the game Double Dare, used to come on Nickelodeon. The goal was for you to win that all expense paid trip to Orlando, Florida. The only thing that stood in your way was nine or 10 flags and a few obstacles. But if you can get through those obstacles, you are well on your way to stepping on that plane and enjoying an all expense paid vacation to Orlando, Florida. So I tend to put the daily big three in that calendar, it’s like, “Hey, the end of this big three is that trip to Orlando, Florida. I may have a few obstacles. I may have to slide through some slime, but if I get that flag and I get all 10 of them, then I’m set and ready to go, and move on to the next.”

Yeah, I was going to point out that you didn’t mention that the flags are buried in slime, or whipped cream, or-

Whipped cream, creamed corn, in the nose somewhere. Yeah. All right, so today’s tip to level up your focus, we spoke a little bit about it earlier, do a notifications cleanse. What this looks like is going through your apps, turn off all the apps that you don’t need, and then think about the ones that are most relevant for your life, this season of life, that are most important to you, and then add those back in slowly. But start off with a total cleanse and then see how much that helps you focus.

Also want to let you know about an upcoming event on May 19th. We are hosting our first ever live productivity event with both Michael and Megan. This is going to be packed with new insights based on the latest research available on the subject. So if you want to make the most of your time and maximize the results, both in work and in life, mark your calendar, May 19th, and do not miss it. You can book your spot right now at fullfocus.co/productivity, and we’ll see you there.

Thank you for joining us on Focus on This.

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We’ll be back next Monday with another great episode, but until then, stay focused.

Stay focused.