8 Strategies to Remove Distractions to Improve Focus and Productivity

I take you on a journey through stories, through science, through strategies, and through steps that you can start applying right away. Thank you so much for being here. I love expressing my gratitude to you because I remember when I used to do events and maybe five people would show up. And the fact that we have millions of downloads per episodes now if makes my heart feel so much joy. And I appreciate each and every one of you because you are helping me live my purpose and

I hope I'm helping you live yours as well. Now, one of the things that gets in the way of our purpose, of our passion, of our potential. One of the things that disturbs our relationships, our productivity, our effectiveness, and the biggest thing that takes away joy in our life is distractions. We talk a lot today about the importance of presence, the importance of actually being where we are, of actually being in the moment. We talk about things

like mindfulness. How can we be mindful of where we are, who we're with, and what we're talking about. But the truth is all of us in some way. Another face distractions study show that seventy to ninety nine percent of office employees feel distracted. And I want you to take a moment to just reflect on how many times a day you think you get distracted? Is it zero to ten raise your hands unless you're driving. Is it ten to twenty keep your hands up? Is it twenty to

thirty keep your hands up? Is it thirty to forty keep your hands up? Is it fifty? So we could go on and on, but I want to share with you. Study show that we have around fifty six disruptions per day, and we spend a couple of hours every day trying to get back into focus, trying to get back on task. How many of you can say you have felt that and what are some of our biggest distractions? Fifty five say their phone right, thirty nine percent say gossip, which

I find fascinating. Another one is emails. Of course, meetings are even considered a distraction. So we have all of these distractions, and psychology shows that there are a few types of distraction. The first is a distraction that is caused by your own mind. This is a Vedic idea that some of our challenges in pain are self inflicted. You've been working too hard, you're burnt out, you're burning the candle at both ends. The second is challenges in

pain caused by others. Someone brings you a challenge or an issue. And the third and finalist, something's going around in the world, something's happening outside of that space, but that's affecting you. These are called adi artmaka, adi botica, and adidavika. These are three things that we all experience. Pain and challenges inflicted within our own mind, pain and challenges inflicted by others, and pain and challenges inflicted by

what's happening in the world around us. Now. Of course, we know something here that ultimately the pain that is received from layer two and layer three can be responded too differently and can change how we feel. We can change how we feel by the perspective and story we tell ourselves when we receive information For example, let's say you receive the information that you didn't get a job. You can either look at that and say, Okay, well, I guess that job wasn't for me. I'll go find

the right one. Or you can look at that and say it's over. I've failed. I don't have any skills. Now, notice that neither of those reactions of the truth. Neither of those responses are reality. You could not say that either of them are fact. They are simply subjective responses to a piece of information that you've received. So the first principle for removing distractions is to recognize that you have the power to redefine the story to ask better questions.

If I receive someone telling me this needs to be done today, that can be quite alarming. It can feel quite stressful and create pressure and anxiety within me. But then I know that I have the ability to ask the question, when is it due? What does it truly entail? Here's what I'm working on. Do you still want me to prioritize this? Notice how I can either respond in a panic and try and get it all done, or

I can process it effectively and discover more information. So when I used to receive that from some of my bosses and managers. I would respond by saying, well, here's what I have on today. Would you like me to prioritize this task over all of these things because I believe that some of these things will not get completed. And at the same time, how long do you think this should take? Is there anything I should know about the task? You're now saving yourself time and energy, So

panic versus process? The energy we waste in panicking based on the distraction. If that was engaged in the process, it would make a huge difference. The second thing I want to share with you today is I want you to think about how you can actually structure how you work so our attention span is better when it's twenty five minutes or fifty five minutes. We've got in the habit of setting thirty minutes sixty minute meetings. We don't realize that we can actually set a fifteen minute meeting.

We can set a twenty minute meeting. We could send a twenty two minute meeting. But we know that our attention spans works better in pieces of twenty five minutes or fifty five minutes. Our max's capacity for our attention is ninety minutes roughly, and so you'll see even on purpose episodes, our podcast episodes Friday episodes are generally between that twenty five to thirty five minute mark, and you'll notice that our guest episodes a fifty five minutes to

ninety minutes mark. We are trying to make it easier for you to digest, to absorb, to immerse. I want you to be able to take out so much from these episodes, so I design them specifically so that you can get more value out of them. Are you doing that with your tasks? You may be putting two hours aside for something, but you can't work for two hours straight. You might be putting four hours out for something or

fifteen minutes, and you can't get that right. So I want you to divide up your work into twenty five minutes, fifty five minutes, or ninety minutes. I also want you to think about meetings as being more flexible than these hardwired thirty minute sixty minute meetings as well. Now, the third thing here is what you do in that five

minute break. It is unbelievable what is achievable in five minutes, and what a difference five minutes makes between tasks usually what we do is we don't have any time between tasks. We're rushing from one meeting to another, and we're multitasking at the same time by scrolling on our phone, on social media, on you know, looking through our emails, our messages,

whatever it may be. Take that five minutes instead of having a meeting that ends at ten thirty and another one that starts at ten thirty, make the next one start at ten thirty five. And in those five minutes, you stand up, you walk, you stretch, you hydrate, and you look into the distance. You stand up, you stretch and breathe, you walk, you maybe even go outdoors, and then very importantly, you hydrate and you look into the distance. We're so prone at the moment to just be absorbed

things that are close to us. We're looking at our screens, we're looking at our phones, and I feel quite trapped in I want you to take an opportunity to expand your vision. Now. This third one is really really interesting. And whether you live at a partner, whether you live with family and you're working from home, or whether you're in an organization and you're working around a team, I want you to think about something. I want you to start creating a teach me how to treat you routine.

Some people have called this a user manual or a user guide. So what I mean by this is, if I'm working with RADI my wife in my house, I will say to her, please do not interrupt me between this time and this time, because I'm on a really important call and I won't be available, but I will be available at this time. Now. If you do distract me at this time, I won't be able to give

you my full attention because I'll be preoccupied. Right. When we educate others on how to connect with us, when we educate others on how to behave with us, we give them a user guide, a user manual, or teach me how to treat me right, teach you how to treat me. Where I'm saying, this is how I feel when I'm in a low mood, when I'm tired. This is what I'd love and appreciate it. And by the way,

what would you like? So this is a two way thing because what the Journal of Experimental Psychology found when they covered three hundred participants is that being interrupted, even on simple tasks, leads to people making errors more frequently. And the length of the interruption also has its effect on the error rate. As little as two point eight seconds of interruption doubles the error rate. As little as four point four seconds of interruption triples the error rate. Right,

and it says there's so much. The employees usually spent about eleven minutes focused on a project in one go before being interrupted. Afterward, they need about twenty five minutes to restore their full focus on a project task at hand. Just think about that for yourself. And we may get upset when people distract us and we think they don't know how busy we are. Have we educated them? Have we informed them of what kind of silence we need,

what kind of distance we need? Have we actually given them an opportunity to gain an understanding of how to operate with us, right of how to actually deal with us. This can make a huge, huge difference. So create a user guide for how to work with you. Create a user manual of how to work with you. You may be someone who says, I don't like getting lots of notifications. I prefer setting up a time to meet, or I

prefer a phone call. Or you may say, you know what, Actually I don't have times for phone calls and meetings. I prefer a really well thought out email or actually, you know what, just paying me. I love sorting stuff out straight away and that makes it very very easy for me. This also helps with the idea of helping make your schedule be shared, having a shared schedule with your partner. Having a public schedule in your workplace allows

other people to be aware. Now you've got to be careful with that because sometimes if you don't time block out, people just start putting time in your calendar, so they shouldn't be able to edit it. But sometimes the visibility is what helps with clarity. Right visibility can really truly help with clarity. Have you ever had one bad moment spoil your entire day or felt overwhelmed for no reason? What about stress or anxious over that big moment or

difficult conversation? You should try meditation. And I know what you're thinking, Jay, you used to be a monk. I don't have time to sit in the woods for hours doing nothing, but really all the time you need to start your own mindfulness practice is seven minutes a day with the Daily j my Daily Guided Meditations on the car mapp. You don't need to close your eyes or find a special seat. You can try it while you brush your teeth, do the dishes, or walk your dog.

My goal in seven minutes a day is to help you find a calm and feel grounded in your busy world, plant beautiful intentions for an abundant life and simple steps for positive actions to get you closer to the life of your dreams. Here's what one of the listeners of the Daily JA had to say about their meditation. Wow, I just had a super hard day at work and

couldn't get my boss's comments out of my head. Then I did the Daily J which related to my work issues, opened my eyes at the end of the session and felt renewed again. Previously today would have destroyed my whole weekend. Meditate with me by going to calm dot com forward slash jay to get forty percent off Calm Premium membership. That's only forty two dollars for the whole year for daily guided meditations. Experience the Daily J only on Calm. Now.

I've really been talking a lot about how to manage your time, but also how other people affect you. One of the things I find is that when you look at the distraction of social media, phone, TV, streaming, whatever it may be. Often that happens because we're trying to read a book or you're trying to listen to an audiobook. You're trying to do something that you think makes you more productive, it makes you happy, it makes you focused.

But then naturally you get a bit bored and you think, oh, well, I might as well switch on that show. I might as well scroll on TikTok or Instagram and see what's going on. Here's something that I want you to consider. Cheat on your book with another book. Right, you could be reading multiple books at the same time, or listening to multiple books at the same time. You can listen to multiple episodes of On Purpose at the same time. This really changes the game because what happens is we

think that the substitute for our reading is TV. So we go, so I need I'm tired of education, let me go to entertainment. Well, what if you cheat it on education with more education? Right? What if you were able to recognize that you can read multiple books at the same time, why and how? Because you may be bored of this topic, you may not need to learn more about it, but there may be another book that you really want to read around sport or entertainment as well.

So cheat on education with more education. You don't need to cheat on education with entertainment. So sometimes people say I'm so distracted by my phone, I'm so distracted by this, But really what they're saying is I got bored of doing this thing and instead of finding another thing as a backup. This is why I'm constantly probably around. You know, I'd say probably about two to three books per that

I'm dabbling in at the same time. And when I'm dabbling in two to three books at the same time, I may read one chapter of each per night because I want to rotate and move around, and that allows me to not really keep my brain moving, it allows me to stop feeling distracted because I'm distracting myself with something that's beneficial for me. We think of a distraction as something that has to be negative, but a distraction can be positive. And that's where the fifth one comes in,

which is this idea of planning your own distractions. Plan your own distractions. Allow yourself to watch a YouTube video, allow yourself to listen to a song. And music is really interesting actually because you can listen to music in the background and it almost acts as a distraction. Or you can listen to a podcast in the background of your work and it acts as a distraction because your mind hooks onto it. It feels like it's distracted while you're doing something, and it allows you to even get

into a state of flow. I'm sure many of you experience. That's why people love working out to music. The music kind of becomes the soundtrack of your life and you're kind of lost in it as you're doing this activity as well. So it's really fascinating when you can play music in the background to keep the mind preoccupied, or play a podcast in the background to keep your mind

preoccupied as well. Now, principle number six, I read from the American Society for Training and Development that the probability of achieving a goal listen to this ten percent. If you have an idea. How many people do you meet that have the most brilliant ideas and they think that that idea is worth something, that that idea is going to get them there because their idea is fantastic. The probability of achieving a goal if you have an idea is ten percent. Now that improves to forty percent if

you decide you will do it. So it shows that that thirty percent gap is the decision. So often we have a good idea. I've had so many good ideas for a new app, a new delivery service, a new website, a new web three platform, but you have to make a decision to do it. So for those of you that feel like you're procrastinating or you're distracted, it's because maybe what you're trying to work on it's just an

idea and you haven't even decided on it. And even if you decide on it, the probability of achieving a goal is still only forty percent. That's less than half even when you've decided. Now that increases to fifty percent if you make a plan to do it. We've heard this before. You need to make a plan, right. An idea needs to have implementation behind it. But that's only

a halfway there. That's only halfway there. So if you want of those people that are saying, Jay, I keep getting distracted, but I have a plan, then there's still fifty percent of growth left. So I don't want you to get discouraged by that. I want you to be in corriged that you're not doing anything wrong. You're just halfway there. And so if you're saying I have a plan, I'm ready to go, I've made a decision, I have a great idea. That's still only fifty percent. Probability of

achieving a goal. That goes up to sixty five percent if you promise someone else you will do it. You may promise a family member, you may promise your partner, you may promise your child. Promises make us more focused. Right when we promise someone I would definitely do that. We feel the pressure. We have the fear that we don't want to let them down, we don't want them to think we're flaky, and that pressure is positive. We use it to focus, we use it to overcome distractions.

But here's the part that blows my mind. This number, the probability of achieving a goal, skyrockets to ninety five percent if you have a specific accountability appointment with the US into whom you commit. This is why personal trainers, coaches, therapists make such a big difference in our life, because that is an accountability appointment. A class at the gym is an accountability appointment, and art class is an accountability appointment.

A mastermind with entrepreneurs and CEOs and networking is an accountability appointment. If you are not doing something as an accountability appointment in your calendar, it won't reach ninety five percent. A lot of the distractions we have is we don't become accountable to someone else. You may say, well, Jay, how can I be accountable to someone else when I'm working from home and working digitally? Maybe I work on my own. Well why don't you work online with a zoom?

You can have a zoom open with a friend who's also working in their home. You're not talking, You're just working together, even if you're virtual. And every time you get distracted, you just say hey, I'm getting distracted. Did and you have the ability for both of you to remind each other, well, let's get back to it, or let's get distracted for five minutes, let's read a book, let's pick up a page. The idea is that you

have an accountability appointment to help you grow. I recently spoke at this amazing company called at Lassian, and they had a survey that shows that employees lose about thirty one hours per month in meetings. I think it's even a lot more but that seems like a fair number because that's numbers lost. And it goes on to say that as much as seventy one percent of people define meetings as unproductive, they're still compelled to spend from fifteen

to fifty percent of their work time on meetings. Right, And what distracts meetings is fifty four percent of people say small talk and office gossip, side discussions about other projects forty five percent, late arrivals and early departures that's thirty seven percent say that. And problems with technology or connectivity that's thirty say that. So what does that mean?

It goes back to the point I made earlier that we have to be really careful about how much time we place in appointments and meetings versus how much we place on accountability appointments. Now, the next principle is to take a social media fast for a week seven days. Now. I don't often recommend this, and the reason I'm recommending here is maybe you're just burnt out. Maybe the distractions

are just overwhelming. You feel stuck, you feel like you can't move, You just feel like you're grappling with the stress and pressure of having to respond, having to reply and in that scenario, in that situation, I want you to consider that you don't need to put that pressure on yourself, that it is okay to let go. And actually, if you let go for seven days, you notice how life improves and you notice how little you needed it. I think that's more what it is for me when

I lived as a monk. It's not that I don't do all the things that I stopped doing during those three years. Now I do. Like we didn't watch TV for three years, we didn't listen to other music for three years. Of course I listen to those things now. But when you've gone to one extreme, you can actually find the middle better. And I find that's what happens.

We're so extremely obsessed when you look at your screen time and you see twenty hours, hopefully not maybe you see eighteen hours, Maybe you see sixteen hours on your screen time, ten hours on your screen time, and you go, well, wait a minute, I'm at one extreme. Maybe if I go to the other extreme of zero, I'll end up at five. Whereas when you try to get to five, you're still at seven and a half or eight, which feels high. Right if you're at ten hours of screen

time a day and you go to zero. When you come back, you can find that healthy middle ground at five. And I think that's what happens when you go from one extreme to another extreme in any habit is you gain the ability to come back to the middle ground. And that's a question for yourself. Are you an extremist or are you a middle person already? If you're a middle person ready, you can take more gentle nudges and

gentle steps. But if you're someone who's an extremist, sometimes it helps to go to the other extreme in order to balance it out. The last way to overcome distractions is stopping so hard on yourself when you do give into them. There are some days where I'm so distracted and I just don't beat myself up, and the next

day I'm really productive. And I think what happens to a lot of us is that that day that we're not productive, we beat ourselves up, and that actually reduces our energy and so the next day we have even less energy to bring to our tasks. For me, if I have an off day, I allow myself that off day, and the next day I just get back on with it. Now you've been said, yo, how do you do that? How do you stop being critical or judgmental of yourself.

It's simply by recognizing that it breaks you, that actually it slows you down when you beat yourself up, that you don't become better. Because you beat yourself up, you don't actually improve, You actually reduce your energy when you go down that road. Right, So I want you to be a bit more compassionate with yourself, be a bit more grateful with yourself. If you had a day of distraction,

let it go. It's okay tomorrow, you get back to it. Tomorrow, you stand up to it and you go for it immediately. And distractions are something we're always going to face. So trying to remove distractions completely is a bad idea. We're trying to reduce the amount of time we get distracted so that we can be more focused. My biggest realization I said this years ago. My biggest realization around this is that the real cure to distraction is not focused

or productivity or efficiency. It's attraction. When you're attracted to something, you can't be distracted from it. If you've ever seen someone that you're attracted to, no matter how many people walk in the way, no matter how far they are. You're just glued to that person, right. You know what that feels like. When you're attracted to something, you can't take your eyes off that person. It's a beautiful experience

that we all have. You can't be distracted when you're attracted. Right, When you're attracted to someone, you're not distracted by what else is going on around you. Just glue to them. Even if there's a conversation, you can't hear it. If someone is saying something really mean to you won't be able to hear it because you're so fixated. We're looking for fixation in our work. When you feel you're too distracted, ask yourself, how can I become more attracted to this

What do I need to do? How do I need to think about this task to become more attracted to it. I'll give an example. You can convince yourself either through the opportunity you're getting. You can convince you convince yourself through the financial gain. You can convince yourself through the purpose and the meaning behind the task you're doing. Don't give up. Keep looking for attraction, and slowly but surely, you will overcome distraction. I wish you all the best

on this journey. I'm sending you so much love makes you Tag me on Instagram with your biggest takeaways from this episode, the biggest headlines, the biggest statements that connect with you, the practices that you're going to employ this week, And I'll see you again next week. Thanks for joining me, Lee,