Are you plugging along at work and then you are checking your email, Facebook, Twitter, whatever your social media favorite is?  I can be easily distracted and I have also been listening to some great podcasts lately and one of them nailed what I had been feeling.

The podcast that I have learned a lot from lately is “Presentation Skills For Design Students” by Christina Canters.  Episode 30 was helpful to me.  It was “How to Stop Procrastinating and Get Stuff Done” with Hugh Culver.

When she asked Hugh what happens when we easily get distracted by social media things other than the task at hand that we have to do, my ears perked up.  I wanted to know, why does that happen to us?  It was interesting because Hugh said that mindset happens because we are having a manufactured distraction.  What does that mean?  It means there are harder tasks ahead of us, but we aren’t ready to work on them.  Your brain sees Twitter or Facebook and says that will satisfy you because you may see something of value to you and is a quicker success than working on the larger task at hand.  So it’s not the lure of the social media, but what is being avoided.

His advice to help keep focused is this:

1. Schedule the fun work – give yourself 30 minutes to “goof off”
2. Do the quality work – focused and single tasking so you can enjoy the goof off time
3. We only put in a couple of hours of quality work per day
4. Schedule boundary time – 60 minutes when you arrive to work so you can get things accomplished without interruption
5. Batch your work together (emails) – do them in groups of 10-15 minutes then stay off of it. those constant pings of email interrupt your workflow and productivity.
6. Blocking – make appointments on your calendar as meetings to accomplish tasks
7. Take Breaks – you need breaks.  You need to move around, clear your head and refocus.  Take breaks often.

Are you always “busy”?  Being busy doesn’t mean you are always successful. Change how you think.  It’s one thing to be busy, it’s another to be productive.

I already began using some of Hugh’s tips and started to batch my emails in time segments rather than answer them one by one as they come in.  I am also going to try to use this approach in my home with projects.  Grab 5 minutes to do a quick pick up along the floors, tables, and counter tops.  Breaking things down in chunks.  Are you easily distracted?  What do you do about it?