This week, how to get control of your digital distractions

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Episode 188

Hello and welcome to episode 188 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

Before we get started, just a heads up if you are a regular listener to this podcast, next week the show is taking a break. We will be back, though in two weeks time.

Okay, on with the show. 

Do you find yourself distracted by all the digital inputs coming your way every day? There’s email, of course, and then digital news, social media and now we are inundated by Slack and Microsoft Teams messages. If we don’t control it, it’s non-stop and just looking at your phone’s Home Screen is enough to set off anxiety, stress and overwhelm. It’s not healthy and we do need some strategies to get control of this.

Well, that’s what we will be exploring in this episode.

I just want to give you a heads up about the early-bird discount on my Time And Life Mastery course. The special offer will be ending today, I will keep it on for a few more hours for you. I would not want to you to miss out on getting yourself enrolled in, what I believe to be, my most comprehensive and best course.

This year, I have re-recorded the Time Mastery part and it now includes lessons on how two being your goals and long term plans in the Time Sector System. 

It’s a brilliant course and I do hope you join me. The special offer ends in the next few hours, so don’t delay. More details on the course and how to get enrolled are in the show notes or you can head over to my website—carlpullein.com.

Okay, let’s get on and dive deeper into ways to overcome all these digital distractions and that means it’s time for me to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice. 

This week’s question comes from Sadiq. Sadiq asks: Hi Carl, do you have any tips on managing all the messages and emails I get each day. It’s got the to point where I don’t have any time to do my work because of all the messages I get. Please help.

Hi Sadiq, thank you for your question. 

So, let’s look at where most of our digital noise comes from. To do this I want to look at the Hierarchy of Communication. This is the order of importance of your communications. 

First up is face to face communication. If you are in front of the person you are communicating with, nothing and I repeat, nothing should ever distract you from speaking with that person. It does not matter if it is the checkout assistance in the supermarket or your boss. If you are in a face to face situation, the person you are communicating with takes precedence over everything else. Full stop. No negotiation. If you cannot, or will not, accept this rule, stop listening. This podcast is not for you. 

Incidentally, I would go so far as to say this also applies to Zoom and Teams video calls. Again, you are talking to a person in real-time and they deserve your undivided attention. 

Next up are phone calls. This is similar to face to face. You are talking to a real human being in real-time. It is just plain rude to not give this your full attention. 

Phone calls are becoming increasingly rare these days, but if do receive calls, you need to treat them appropriately.

Third in this hierarchy are text messages. These are different from social media messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger and What's App. Now, I would include your Slack and Teams messages in this list too because these are messages from either your work colleagues or boss. 

These are likely to be important, but less important than face to face and phone calls.

Up next comes email. Now, these days emails are never urgent and you should never treat emails as urgent. As I have mentioned before, if your house was on fire, your neighbour would not email you to tell you. 

Finally, social media messages and comments come right at the bottom. You just do not need to respond to these immediately. They are not important. 

There is a bigger problem with social media comments and that is their potential to create a negative emotional response. There is a lot of bad in the world—there always has been. But I can promise you there is a lot more good in the world than bad. 

Unfortunately, the good in the world is not newsworthy and so it does not get a lot of coverage. This means we end up focusing on the bad and that does nothing for your mood or emotional state in which to get your work done. 

Jim Rohn said: “stand guard at gates of your mind” and you should be very careful with the news and social media posts you read. All this bad news is never going to put you in the right state to do amazing work. 

A quick tip here is to find a neutral newsfeed you can subscribe to. By neutral I mean politically neutral. That way you can stay on top of what’s going on in the world without getting drawn into other people’s inflaming opinions. You can also find some of your favourite journalists and follow them. I have a number of journalists I have been reading for years and I subscribe to their newsfeed so I only get their articles. 

Okay, what can you do right now that will help you to clear the noise? Well, one piece of advice I often hear is to turn off all notifications on your phone. Now, this does sound like wise advice, but in my experience, I find it a little impractical. If my wife or parents text me, I want to know. So I would advise you to be selective. Turn off your social media notifications for sure. These are never important. 

With your email notifications that’s up to you. I keep them on, but then I don’t treat email as urgent, but it is good to know what’s coming in. If my learning centre went down, for instance, I am likely to first hear about it through email and that is something I want to know about. 

But with all that said, what are the underlying causes of digital distraction. Well, in my experience when a person is very clear about what it is they want to accomplish each day, they are rarely distracted by anything other than what it is they are trying to accomplish. 

The reason we are so easily distracted is because we have no sense of purpose. We don’t have a plan for the day and we are not clear about what it is we are trying to accomplish. When you begin the day with a clear set of tasks to complete before the day is finished, you don’t get distracted. 

I coach a lot of people who are incredibly successful. The one thing they never struggle with is distractions. They are incredibly focused on what it is they want to accomplish. Do you think people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos waste hours of their day sifting through social media and the news? Absolutely not. They’re focused on their goals for the day. 

Now, this does not mean you isolate yourself from the news and social media, all you need do is set aside time each day for reading news and social media feeds. I go through my Facebook feed after dinner for twenty minutes or so—the time it takes me to drink my post-dinner cup of tea. I like to see what my friend is doing. But I don’t need to be checking it every minute of the day. 

All you need do is give yourself ten minutes at the end of the day and plan out what you will do the next day. Hopefully, you are now operating the 2+8 Prioritisation Method for your planning: Deciding what your two must-do tasks for the next day are and the eight other tasks that should be done. 

When you have this list ready for you every morning, you are much less likely to be distracted by all the digital stuff coming at you each day. You have a plan and that is what you need to focus on. If you do get your tea tasks complete, great, you can allow yourself to be as distracted as you want.

If you do find all the pop-up notifications distract you, turn them off on your computer. You are likely doing focused work while sitting at your computer and the last thing you need when you are focusing on something important is seeing pop-up notifications out the corner of your eye. 

One tip I can give you here is to check your messages and emails between sessions of work. It acts as a way to close one piece of work before you start with another piece of focused work. When you do this you do not need notifications at all. Most focused work sessions last less than two hours and so, nobody’s going to be upset with you if you respond within two hours—seriously. They will not be upset with you. 

People are far more understanding than you imagine. Even your impatient boss!

Ultimately, Sadiq, you need to know what it is you want to accomplish each day and that needs to be linked to your longer-term goals both professional and personal. It’s that sense of direction that will keep you focused. 

And there is one final message I want to share and it is a quote from Brian Tracy: 

“You need three key qualities to develop the habits of focus and concentration, which are all learnable. They are decision, discipline, and determination.”

Decide what you want to accomplish each day—have a plan for the day

Be disciplined in making sure you follow that plan and Be determined to stay on track. 

It’s true, these three “Ds” are all learnable and to do that all you need to do is practice them every day. 

The most disciplined people are the ones who never allow themselves to be distracted. You can do that too. 

Thank you Sadiq for your wonderful question and thank you for listening too. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.