It’s human nature to be distractable, but you can learn how to overcome that weakness to be more effective and productive

It’s you on the cold hard table in the operating room. The surgery is important. Your future health and happiness lay in the balance. Do you want you surgeon to be “efficient” by working on something else — like dictating hospital record, answering phone calls, or checking email — while he or she does your surgery?

No, you want your doctors entirely focused on the task at hand. You expect 100% of your surgeon’s attention to be absorbed in your operation. So why do you expect less from yourself?

You can recognize that a surgeon who tries to be “efficient” by multitasking during your operation is not the physician you want operating on you. You know that surgery requires complete focus to achieve the best outcome, but you settle for less from yourself. You try to be more efficient by answering emails while talking on the phone. You keep multiple windows open on your computer so you can jump from one task to another without ever finishing the task you are on. You allow phone calls, email alerts, and notifications to break your concentration — all things you would not want your surgeon to do but that you find acceptable in yourself.

Perhaps that is acceptable if no one else is counting on you. Supposing no one else deserves your full attention and the best you have to offer. If none of your work is important enough to devote yourself to it fully. But if that is true, why bother doing the job at all? If your work is not worthy of your full attention and your best effort, then why bother?

You are distractible

The problem is that you are distractible. We all are, and it is not a new phenomenon. Despite all of the criticism laid at the feet of social media, email, and cellphones, those are not the real reason you can’t stay on task. The real reason is you.

Ultimately, what you want to do is to avoid being uncomfortable. That is not a personal fault; it is a characteristic of being human. We are all programmed to avoid discomfort. After all, being cold and wet was not just unpleasant for your caveman ancestors; it could lead to a dangerous case of hypothermia. Back in the stone age, discomfort warned your ancestors that something important was going on and that they needed to take notice and do something the alleviate the sensation.

The same is true for you, but what makes you uncomfortable is not the weather but the task you need to perform. That task is important to you. You want to do a good job, and facing the possibility that you might not do as well as you would like makes you uncomfortable. And what did your Paleolithic ancestors do when they were uncomfortable? They removed themselves from the disagreeable circumstance and sought out comfort. That reaction wasn’t laziness or ineptitude on their part; it was survival.

You do the same thing. When the world gets complicated, and the task seems unmanageable, you seek comfort. And you seek that comfort in distraction. By distracting yourself from what is essential, you get relief. You check out the latest news on your favorite sports team, see what your friends are up to on Facebook, or look up information on the next place you want to vacation. When you do any of those things, rather than what you know you should be doing, you get a little relief, and that relief becomes a reinforcer that trains you to keep doing the same thing. In psychology, this is called Negative Reinforcement; by removing an adverse stimulus (namely your anxiety), you reinforce the behavior (making you are more likely to engage in that behavior in the future.)

What to do

The real problem here is not all the distractions our modern connected world offers; the real problem is you and your caveman brain. That chunk of goo between your ears is working against you. It applies simple rules against you, but you can also employ simple rules to trick yourself into getting more focused and more productive. Some of those steps may seem counterintuitive.

Drop your To-do List

Dropping your to-do list sounds like blasphemy. “If I don’t have a list of things to do, how will I know what to work on?” The answer is, you already know what work needs doing. But your to-do list is keeping you from doing that work in two ways. First, having an extensive list of tasks to accomplish is intimidating, which produces anxiety. And you now know what happens when you feel anxious; you go looking for a distraction. So the to-do list encourages distraction.

The second way the to-do list works against you is that you have a natural tendency to do the least important but most straightforward task first. This strategy of tackling the small things first tricks you into feeling productive as you cross items off the list. The problem is, doing those small and manageable items first keeps you from doing the work that has a real chance of making a difference.

So drop the to-do list. It’s working against you. Instead, use a better strategy for doing what matters most.

Work in time blocks

Rather than set a to-do list, pull out your day planner and mark on it when you will do the most critical work of your day. Set aside time to work on the project, not complete the project, but work on it. Not feeling the need to complete the task makes starting it less intimidating.

I am currently in my writing block for today. I sat down and set the timer on my phone for ninety minutes. Now I am writing for ninety uninterrupted minutes. My only goal is to spend this time writing and not doing anything else. If I can’t think of anything to write, I will write about how I can’t think of anything to write, but I will keep writing.

The important thing is that I honor my commitment to devote this time to writing. By doing that, I am training my brain to do the work. Each block of writing I do is proof to myself that I can do it. That makes it a little easier to sit down tomorrow and do it again because each success turns down the anxiety for the next time I try.

You will never eliminate the anxiety. The only way to not feel fear is to not care about the work. And if you don’t care, then why bother in the first place? But by setting aside time blocks to do the job and then honoring those commitments, you learn to trust yourself. That trust turns down the volume on the anxiety, making it easier to do the same thing tomorrow.

Caveat

Notice that I said I set aside time to write. I did not say that I would complete an article in that time. Not having to generate a result dials down the anxiety makes it easier to start. And starting is the most crucial step in completing any project. You can’t finish what you don’t begin. Thus, ironically, not putting pressure on yourself to generate a result may be the best way to achieve results.

The other advantage of not feeling compelled to complete the task is that I have the option to continue to work or move on at the end of ninety minutes. Often I will push on if the process is going well and I am in the zone. Other times I will be feeling the drag of increasing effort for diminishing returns, then I will put the work on the self until its next assigned block. When I come back to it, I will feel refreshed and ready to go.

Start small

Think ninety minutes sounds like too long, then start smaller. Try this trick next time you find yourself surfing the net rather than getting work done, set a timer for just ten minutes and commit to doing your work for that time without interruption. You can do ten minutes. It’s easy and thus not intimidating.

The benefits of this approach are twofold. The first is that you get ten minutes of work done, but you will find that you often don’t stop there. Ten minutes is long enough to build up momentum, and you likely won’t want to stop when the timer goes off. So don’t, keep going.

The second benefit is that you are training your brain. By committing to ten minutes of uninterrupted work and then doing it, you are teaching yourself to trust yourself to do what you say you will. Each minor victory adds up. You trust yourself a little more each time you follow through. Then you can stretch out the time. Once you can trust yourself to work for ten distraction-free minutes, then go to fifteen and keep working up. Soon you will find yourself working in blocks of sixty to ninety minutes, probably the longest you want to try and work at any one time. Try training yourself in this way.

Schedule your distractions

Once you have completed your work block, honored your commitment, and built trust in yourself, you deserve a little reward. Celebrate your victories, especially the small ones. Reward yourself with a bit of downtime. Get a snack, read a book, move around or watch that cat video. Whatever it is that works for you, do it. These little celebrations act to reinforce your good behavior, so don’t skimp on this step. You are training your brain the same way you would train a dog. Sounds silly, but it does work.

Conclusion

The real problem with distractions is not technology; it is you. Like it or not, you have a caveman brain that wants to avoid discomfort. But the vital work of your life will make you uncomfortable. Rather than focus on the outcome, focus on doing the work. Set aside time blocks to work on your most important goals without the expectations that you need to complete the task. Then set a timer for as little as ten minutes to work without interruption. Over time you will train yourself to focus and get more done. Then celebrate your small victories as the reward your brain needs to encourage the same behavior in the future.

PS: And look at that, I still have 2:16 seconds left in my writing block. So I used that time to write this postscript as a way of honoring my commitment to myself and showing you that I practice what I preach.Distr