Distractions Are Killing Your Productivity

I used to think that if there were more hours in the day, I could get more done.

But the more articles I read on increasing productivity;

the more the same issues keep popping up.

It isn’t that we need more time in the day to get our work done;

It’s that we need less distractions to focus on our tasks and work more efficiently.

Most recently I received an e-newsletter from Michael Hyatt offering a Personal Productivity Assessment – basically a short survey that analyzed my productivity or the lack thereof. If you are not familiar with Michael Hyatt and are interested in streamlining your productivity to living a life with more purpose then you need to check out Michael’s blog, sign up for his e-newsletters, visit his Facebook page or listen to his podcasts. You won’t be disappointed.

Now once I answered this short survey I was emailed my results, which surprisingly stated that I am “successful” at my productivity and gave some more in depth analysis of my answers. In this email reply I was also offered a link to a free ebook 12 Game-Changing Strategies to Help Achieve More by Doing Less . This ebook is a short read but it has some great first steps into becoming more productive and includes resources that you can investigate further. To read all about these two strategies, simply just take the short survey.

In the meantime, I wanted to focus on one item that I am always guilty of following as I truly believed that it was helping me be more productive – MULTITASKING

Yes, apparently multitasking isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be and after reading a bit about it;

Here is WHY.

To be productive, we need to stay on task and in this day and age of technology surrounding us 24/7, staying on task can be nearly impossible.

We need to eliminate these interruptions whether they are coming from text, emails or from the people that surround us during your work day.

I used to think that multi-tasking was the answer to getting things on my to-do list checked off.

For certain items, multi tasking may be the solution, but more often than not, it isn’t. Trying to concentrating on ten different items for only 10 minutes at a time ultimately interrupts our concentration too much and results in us actually being less productive.

So how do we get out of this multi-tasking ideal?

* Continue with your to-do list, but only work on one item at a time.

* Schedule times in to focus on each task until it is complete or your dedicated time is up. This scheduling goes back to one of my goal for 2017 of actually scheduling specific tasks into my schedule to get closer to achieving my goals. To read more about simple goal setting check out my post It’s Never Too Late to Set Goals.

* Identify and turn off all possible distractions – we all know what they are. If you are working on the computer and need to hammer out a report or brainstorm ideas – close your email or at the very least, turn off your notifications that an email has come in; keep your web browser closed as well so that you aren’t tempted to go onto social media to see what your friends have been up to for the last ten minutes. And let’s not forget your phone – turn it off or put it out of reach in another room so that you won’t be tempted to view all the same items that you have just turned off on your laptop or home computer.

I’m not saying that eliminating these distractions is going to be easy at first. We have definitely become a society that is so connected and dependent on having instant information/notifications at our finger tips, that it is going to take a while to get used to ignoring and eliminating those interruptions and breaking those habits.

One thing I do know – people’s focus is not what it used to be and by adopting some of these new habits into our daily routine we can only help get our productivity where it needs to be.