021 How to Avoid Distractions & Remain Focused (PRACTICAL TIPS & NEUROSCIENCE)

Welcome to the Time Management Podcast with me, your host, Abigail Barnes. I'm a productivity coach, global speaker, time management author, and award-winning entrepreneur on a mission to share the 888 formula with the world and to remind you that it's your time.

Leave it to me to bring you new time management tips, tricks, tools, and strategies to introduce you to guests, research, and case studies from around the world and to give you a simple five-step process you can follow to up-level your productivity, achieve your goals and create a life that exceeds your wildest dreams. I'm so excited that you're here, so let's get started.

Welcome to the show. It's you and me today for a conversation all about how to avoid distractions and remain focused in a world that is noisy, in a world that wants your attention, in a world where your attention is the commodity? How do you maintain control of it, navigate it, and come out as the productive, professional, productive entrepreneur, productive human that you want to be? Well, that's what we're talking about today. And if that sounds interesting, stick around.

I'm going to be sharing practical tips, tools and strategies that you can apply to your career, your business and your life, as well as sharing case studies and examples from clients. Where do you start with? Help. I'm in this world of overwhelming distractions. My number one place for you to begin is by identifying what these distractions are. They're going to be different for different people. So I'll give some examples, but some of these examples may not be relevant to you.

You will need to do the work to find your own. It could be your emails. It could be your phone. Let's break this phone down. It could be the text messages on the phone, the instant messaging on the phone, the notifications on the phone, maybe lots of the different apps you have on the phone buzzing with notifications. It could be the email notifications on the phone. So the phone is a big old distraction. Your computer, your laptop, your desktop, whatever you work on.

It could be the notifications about the emails. It could be, again, the notifications about the apps, about the things that are installed on that device, that you'll use. If you have to do research and the platform you were doing research on, maybe it has adverts on it. And so they could be a distraction. Environment that you're working in. Maybe you're working from a home office. Maybe you're working from a co-working office.

Maybe you're working from your organization's office. Maybe you're working from your client's office. Coffee shop. There are going to be different distractions. There's going to be smells.

House, there's going to be the temperature, there's going to be the light, it might be one side of the building is darker than the other, and then there is going to be whereabouts in that building, that location, are you close to the door, are you close to a bathroom, are you close to the kitchen, so people coming and going. All of these things are distractions. And then if you're working from home, have you got deliveries? Have you got your neighbors?

What times of day do these things happen? Just like we do the seven-day time audit, first thing I would advise you to do is a distractions audit. Become aware of all of the things that are taking your attention attention away from what it is that you wanted to achieve. So audit the distractions. Once you have audited the distractions, step one, you can move on to step two, which is to then begin systematically removing them, silencing them, and putting in place a backup strategy.

Because it It might be, depending on your circumstances, that you can't turn off your phone. You can't put it onto airplane mode. You can't turn off your emails. One of the greatest things I want you to take away from this podcast and the conversations with the guests is every single piece of information, everything we are sharing is subject specific, is situation specific, is not going to relate to every situation. Single listener, every single human who is tuning in.

Take the tips and apply what's relevant to your career, your business, your life, your stage of life, your situation, your job situation, etc, etc. Also experiment because some things might work at certain times but not at other times. You systematically go through each distraction and you remove it. If it's your emails. Make sure that notification that comes in from the right-hand side of your computer saying new email is turned off.

If it's the noise with an email that pings every time a new email comes in, make sure that's turned off. If you don't have to check your emails regularly, say every 15 minutes, and you could check your emails every 60 minutes, then do that. at. If it needs to be more regularly, as I just said, do what you can with what you have until it gets to a place where you can demonstrate that it is detrimental to your job role. Not going to apply to everybody.

If your job is related to the emails responding to clients, then that is the situation that you're in if your job is to deliver on projects and it requires you to focus then your emails are a distraction so use your common sense here remove them as much as possible the notifications for the apps is a big big thing you do not need to come to your phone and the entire screen to be full of notifications for social media apps, for news apps, for train travel apps, for emails,

for your instant messaging, that whole full dashboard of a mobile phone is going to be enough to induce anxiety. So start systematically going through and making a conscious decision of what needs to be removed. Maybe you do need to know the travel apps because maybe you are traveling. Maybe you do need to know the news because maybe the news relates to your role, to your business, to your life. But do you need to know all of it? So again, remove what is irrelevant and keep what is relevant.

You can always turn things back on. We're talking all about how to avoid distractions and remain focused. This is your own experiment of what distracts you. You are only going to know once you have removed the distraction, if that was distracting for you. Because we're all individual, we're all different and not all of us are distracted by the same things. I'm sure you have a friend who you are out with them and you say, can you hear that barking dog? Can you hear that alarm?

Can you hear that background noise? No. And maybe you are that friend. Not everybody has the sensitivity that another person has. So what distracts one person won't distract another person. The number of clients that I have spoken to about removing the notifications. Some of them, they're not distracted by it. Some of them, they are incredibly distracted by it. Take it and apply it in the way that works for you.

Once you have identified your distractions, removed your distractions, the next stage builds on the previous episode that we were talking about how to traffic light your to-do list, scheduling your activities. So in that episode, we were talking all about how to manage and how to tame your to-do list. If it is overwhelming, you might want to check that episode out if you haven't already. In this episode now, we're building on what we discussed in that episode. So scheduling your activities.

You identified from your to-do list what you needed to do and now insofar as how to remain focused and how to be more productive when you schedule those activities is going to help you to achieve those outcomes those results to be more productive we group our activities and our tasks and we focus on them at certain certain times of the day and certain days of the week. If something needs to be done today.

We cannot schedule it on any other day. We are starting from a whole week and we are looking at everything we need to achieve in the whole week, which is the best way to manage your time. And you can schedule the different activities on the different days depending upon the deadlines for those activities. Then you can start to schedule in the externalities.

By that I mean the people that need to provide you with the information, with the data, with the reports, with the things that go into you achieving your end goal, hitting your deadline. And when we group the tasks we are allowing our brain to focus on a set way of working. One of the things that has become apparent through neuroscience over the last 15-20 years is that our cognitive resource. Is used to different degrees based on the activities that we are working on.

Some activities use more brain power than other activities. And if we group them together, we can be in a similar focus, a similar frame of mind in order to achieve those activities step by step by step by step by step. When we're structuring our schedule, when we're structuring our day, when we're structuring our week around similar activities, this is helping us to get the blinkers on, if you like, like a horse and just focus in on what it is that we need to do in that 90 minute chunk of time.

Why is it a 90 minute chunk of time? Well, I've spoken before about Nathaniel Kleatman, Professor Nathaniel Kleitman, who was studying sleep and looking at the circadian rhythm. And then his work and the work of his team focused in on something that they called the ultradian rhythm, which is saying that where we sleep in 90-minute cycles, 90-minute REM cycles, and we go down, down, down, down, down into sleep, and then up, up, up, up, up, and then down, down, down, down, down.

They said that we worked similarly so that we in general as humans could then work in 90 minute chunks of time as well. This is why we say 90 minute chunks chunks of time. We also have the Pomodoro, which recommends 25 minutes of time. And then it might be when you do this experiment that you work very well in 60 minute chunks of time. What I would love you to take away from this episode, this podcast, and any conversation we ever have is I am never saying there is one way.

I am never saying this is the best way because I truly understand humans, their design, their their motivation, my own, my clients, and lots of different other modalities and things that I've learned over the years, one of which being human design, which we have a human design expert coming on the podcast. In the next few episodes, they are going to be sharing what human design actually means and how that can impact our ability to be productive, to achieve goals, etc, etc. etc.

It's mind-blowing stuff. I digress. This is what I have personally been overlaying and working with others to understand that we are all different by our human design. So we are scheduling our activities, we are structuring our day, we are structuring our week, which can then lead into planning a month, planning a quarter, planning a year. Again, these strategies depend depend on what your job role is, what organization you work for, if it's your own, if you work for others and.

Et cetera, et cetera. The more we know what our macro goal is, the easier it is then to break it down into micro goals and then step by step by step, hour by hour by hour by hour. Understanding that different times, different days, different days of the week, we are going to be able to tap tap into different energies and gain access to information faster, quicker, easier.

Because logic would dictate that if we needed certain numbers from the organization, certain numbers would be available at certain times of the month, certain times of the year, far more easily than they would be at others, which then makes our job easier and makes us us more productive.

Identifying the distractions, removing the distractions, knowing what it is that we need to achieve when we need to achieve it by, is a combination of taming the to-do list, of managing our focus, managing our energy, increasing our productivity so that we can can do less and achieve more from the sheer fact that we are not wasting time switching our energy levels between activities, waiting for data that inevitably is going to be due out at a different time.

If some of the things that are distracting you are social media, for example. Sentence is is this. If you're not getting paid, you're the one who's paying. And what I mean by this, specifically to this week's episode, is that if you're not getting paid, you're the one who's is if what's stealing your attention is actually stealing your time, your ability to get your job done so that then you can do something else. Your ability to do it faster, quicker, better, your health and well-being.

If what you are paying attention to isn't adding value to your life, you are paying for it. Whether you are paying for it financially in the immediate you are paying for it with your time with your attention with your energy remember at the start I said in this day and age attention is a commodity now your attention is within your control if you are not being paid to give your your attention to things, you are paying. Sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes that's not such a good thing.

So I will leave that thought with you, start to apply it, start to see and start to ask yourself, is that trade worth it? So I was speaking to a client this week who said that when they did their seven-day time audit, it helped them to identify that social media, certain social media apps were taking way too much time and attention away from what it was that they wanted to achieve. So they wanted to have more time for their well-being. And what they did as a result of this, they run a business.

So they needed to be present on that app, but they identified how to schedule on that app. They then removed the app from their phone. So with certain apps you can use them on the desktop, you don't need to have them on your phone, and that was how they took control back of their time. They weren't being paid. It was costing them their time, their effort, their attention, their ability to focus on their well-being. So they took that time back.

So where in your life are you giving your time away to something that is not giving you back what it is that you want? And that's not to say that social social media, certain social media platforms, certain social media accounts aren't able to add value. But that's understanding when you're using them, why you're using them, and whether it's giving to you or you're giving to it, or it is a mutual trade-off.

Social media Media is such a force for good, but it also can be such a force for time consumption. Depending on what browser you are using on your computer, there are a huge number of apps that you can use to plug in that can make certain websites unavailable during your focus time.

You can also use them on your phone. personally I find that simplicity works the best for me so setting a timer on an app turning my phone onto airplane mode writing out my to-do list the activities that I need to get done writing them out physically so that I can physically tick them off I find this focuses my mind removes the distractions and is a very analogue approach. Obviously we've discussed this before if you work in a team you might be using systems where things need to be online.

Do what you need to do, experiment with it and keep a track, keep a diary, write it down and do more of what works and do less of what doesn't work. This is how we hack our productivity.

This is how we get more done with the time that we have by being curious, by being investigative, investigative by trying the things that work for us and doing more of what works for us based on what I was saying earlier that we all are unique we all are designed uniquely we all have different preferences we all have different backgrounds different experiences different ways that we work and different amounts of time that we have to be able to do what needs to be done done.

As we wrap up this conversation today, there's one last thing I want to share with you that I do when it comes to avoiding these distractions and remaining focused.

This is my secret hack that I share sometimes in conversations with friends, with clients, with colleagues, with family, and that is I set a timer. Now, in the past, it would be a kitchen timer with the ticking, that tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. Other times, it is quite simply the timer on my phone or the timer on my laptop. So I know what it is I need to achieve in the next 60 minutes. I set a timer that counts down the 60 minutes. For me, I find this incredibly motivating.

Because it focuses my mind. I know this is the amount of time that I have. This is the goal. This is the thing I want to achieve. Let's go. So let me know if you try that one out. Also, let me know if you already do that and let me know what you do to avoid the distractions and remain focused.

If you're loving these episodes, leave us a review on whatever platform you're listening to it on, you can listen to the podcast, obviously on a bunch of audio platforms, as well as watch the video version of every single episode over on our YouTube channel. All the links to that are in the show notes. Everything that I talk about on the podcast, we have saved it all under one quick and easy link for you now. So just scroll in the show notes and look for episode links.

Click that link and you will have access to all of the things that have been mentioned. If you want to buy a copy of my book or the workbook, you can go and find all the links to that there, as well as on Amazon around the world, you can buy the book and do the time audit. There's a link in the show notes for how to do your time audit as well.

And if you can't find what you're you're looking for just leave a comment wherever you are tuning in and we will get back to you so until next time my friend stay safe stay well and remember it's your time. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode if you loved what you heard be sure to let me know by leaving a review so I can keep the good stuff coming come and say hi on instagram at success by Design Training or visit my website successbydesigntraining.com or connect with me

on LinkedIn. Just search Abigail Barnes. Until next time, don't forget you are amazing and it's your time.