Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is to aim for a focused thirty minutes rather
Speaker 1: than lament the various distractions of life. See if you
Speaker 1: can sustain work on something for just half an hour,
Speaker 1: you might be surprised at how doable this is and
Speaker 1: at all you can get done. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: being written and discussed about how distracted everyone is these days.
Speaker 1: Some distractions come from external sources kids, house issues if
Speaker 1: you're working from home, colleagues and managers who need their
Speaker 1: instant messages answered instantly. Some distractions happen because we're bored
Speaker 1: and texts. We pick up our phones to answer that
Speaker 1: text and then look at three other things and then
Speaker 1: decide we need a snack and all. This means that
Speaker 1: focus time is hard to come by, and I totally
Speaker 1: get that. The trouble is that often when people lament
Speaker 1: a lack of focused time or time for deep work,
Speaker 1: as cal Newport puts it, or anything else, they feel
Speaker 1: like they need to find incredibly long stretches of time,
Speaker 1: many hours, maybe a full day, maybe more. And that
Speaker 1: would be great. I'm a big fan of taking retreats
Speaker 1: when possible, but if you are looking for hours and hours,
Speaker 1: that can wind up feeling impossible if you have got
Speaker 1: three meetings coming up in the afternoon and a phone
Speaker 1: call that you know needs to happen at some point.
Speaker 1: So don't make the perfect the enemy of the good.
Speaker 1: Don't go looking for multiple hours, maybe don't even go
Speaker 1: looking for a single hour. Instead, just see if you
Speaker 1: can choose to focus on something for thirty minutes straight.
Speaker 1: Pick a project, pick a time that seems more or
Speaker 1: less open, challenge yourself to close or silence everything else.
Speaker 1: Set a timer. See what happens. It is quite possible
Speaker 1: that your boss will email you something urgent, but you
Speaker 1: will see it in thirty minutes. It is possible you
Speaker 1: will get interrupted by someone barging into your office or cubicle,
Speaker 1: but you can also put headphones on as a subtle
Speaker 1: leave me alone kind of signal. If you are working
Speaker 1: from home, it is possible a delivery person will ring
Speaker 1: the doorbell, or that contractor who is supposed to show
Speaker 1: up sometime this week finally will But it is also
Speaker 1: possible that none of that will happen if you wait
Speaker 1: until you know you will have the perfect time, you
Speaker 1: might never try. And if you wait until you know
Speaker 1: you will have hours to work, well, you might never
Speaker 1: have hours. So be realistic. Aim for thirty focused minutes.
Speaker 1: If you start itching to check email or something else,
Speaker 1: just stop yourself, redirect yourself back to the task at hand.
Speaker 1: If you find you need something else, just make a
Speaker 1: note of it to find it later. Try not to
Speaker 1: let yourself be drawn away. And then when your timer
Speaker 1: goes off, evaluate did you make any progress? Were you
Speaker 1: able to sustain your focus for thirty minutes? If not,
Speaker 1: why not? If you did, how did it feel. I
Speaker 1: am all for baby steps. Maybe focusing for thirty minutes
Speaker 1: will help you figure out how to car about hours
Speaker 1: for deeper work, and that would be great. But even
Speaker 1: if you can only sustain work for thirty minutes, that's
Speaker 1: actually okay. Something is almost always better than nothing, So
Speaker 1: aim for something, and something has a good chance of
Speaker 1: happening in the meantime. This is Laura. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: and here's to making the most of our time. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to before breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
Speaker 1: or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
Speaker 1: vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.