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 that what you don't know can't distract you.
Speaker 1: By reducing the number of audio and visual notifications you get,
Speaker 1: you can increase the chances that you focus on whatever
Speaker 1: you choose to focus on. I don't have to tell
Speaker 1: anyone listening to this podcast that the world can be
Speaker 1: a distracting place. Our phones and laptops can wind up
Speaker 1: dinging all day long, to say nothing of people popping by. Now.
Speaker 1: To be clear, sometimes things that look like distractions are
Speaker 1: just the nature of collaboration or building your relationships. If
Speaker 1: you work at home, I would suggest not scheduling anything
Speaker 1: un in interruptible for the moment your kids get off
Speaker 1: the bus. They might want to tell you about their days,
Speaker 1: and planning for that is probably better than viewing that
Speaker 1: as a distraction. And if you work at home, you
Speaker 1: actually do want your colleagues to reach out to you
Speaker 1: if doing so means that you are not a bottleneck,
Speaker 1: or if you're able to redirect something that would take
Speaker 1: a long time to unwind. That said, none of this
Speaker 1: is either or, and many of the things that distract
Speaker 1: us do not rise to that level of necessity. The
Speaker 1: key is minimizing the unimportant distractions so that you have
Speaker 1: more bandwidth for getting your work done and properly responding
Speaker 1: to important interactions. So think about what generally happens when
Speaker 1: you get distracted. I know that for many people, being
Speaker 1: able to see that there are unread messages piling up
Speaker 1: in your inbox can make you feel antsy. If this
Speaker 1: is happening on your laptop or desktop, one easy way
Speaker 1: to avoid this feeling is to expand whatever you are
Speaker 1: working on to fill the entire screen. Now you can't
Speaker 1: see the rising number, or the bolded messages, or anything
Speaker 1: else you are still logged in in case this is
Speaker 1: an issue for you, but what you don't know can't
Speaker 1: distract you. I would also suggest being judicious about your phone.
Speaker 1: Make sure you have turned off alerts from apps you
Speaker 1: really don't need to know a baseball score or most
Speaker 1: headlines in the middle of a workday when you are
Speaker 1: trying to focus. The trickier area is texts and calls.
Speaker 1: These days, if someone is calling you, it might be
Speaker 1: a colleague who really does need your quick input on something. Indeed,
Speaker 1: many of us tell our colleagues call if it's urgent.
Speaker 1: So one approach is to set your phone to send
Speaker 1: just unknown numbers straight to voicemail, so you don't hear
Speaker 1: a ring for SPAN calls. That way, you are only
Speaker 1: hearing a ring when it is people you probably do
Speaker 1: wish to hear from. Then look at your text chains.
Speaker 1: Any highly active ones that tend not to be urgent
Speaker 1: can be put into quiet mode. They'll still be there,
Speaker 1: and when you choose to pick up your phone, you
Speaker 1: can see that you have forty texts, and you will
Speaker 1: know that the neighborhood association is still figuring out how
Speaker 1: to get people to bring their trash cans in quickly
Speaker 1: after the trash pickup, but you won't hear the dinging
Speaker 1: forty times. I'd say this can even be true with
Speaker 1: colleague group texts. Go ahead and make any of them
Speaker 1: quiet that you don't think are going to be urgent.
Speaker 1: You might be wrong, but most of us pick up
Speaker 1: our phones every thirty minutes or so. Anyway, The goal
Speaker 1: is to get to the end of those thirty minutes
Speaker 1: without having distracted yourself for anything that is not worth
Speaker 1: distracting yourself for now. I know that many of us
Speaker 1: wind up distracting ourselves in various ways, and we need
Speaker 1: to work on that too, But limiting the inputs can
Speaker 1: help a lot. We can't get rid of all of them,
Speaker 1: but we can definitely get rid of some of them.
Speaker 1: What you don't know can't distract you, and in the
Speaker 1: war for attention, every little victory matters. In the meantime.
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
Speaker 1: the most of our time. Hey, everybody, I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. You can send me your tips, your questions,
Speaker 1: or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Before Breakfast pod that's b the number
Speaker 1: four then breakfast po. You can also shoot me an
Speaker 1: email at Before Breakfast Podcasts at iHeartMedia dot com. That
Speaker 1: before Breakfast is spelled out with all the letters. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much. Should I look forward to staying in touch.
Speaker 1: Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
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