Distractions are a huge part of life. Whether it’s trying to study at university, doing homework, typing up spreadsheets in your office, or even trying to exercise and work out, distractions can easily wiggle their way into your day-to-day life. But why exactly are they such a bad thing?
The obvious answer to this is probably that distractions stop you from doing these specific activities.
What many don’t realize and what some experts can often miss out, is that some pretty bad underlying issues can arise from a good distraction.
So why should you avoid getting distracted as much as possible?
Memory impairment – You may not have ever thought about this, but it makes pretty logical sense!
Distractions can interfere with tasks that require learning and taking in knowledge, a common case when it comes to school, college, or university.
Getting distracted by things that have caught your attention, can cause you to memorize the events in that distraction, which could interfere when you get back to learning again!
This is a case of fragmented learning and is what makes understanding complex concepts and ideas even more difficult. I’d know from experience when learning engineering at university!
You could suffer from stress and anxiety – Think about it. When you scroll on social media, going through dozens of reels for hours, you’re mind simply becomes burnt out.
You feel the need to mindlessly scroll through platforms like TikTok or binge-watch your favorite YouTube channels to the point where you don’t have the energy or mental capacity to do some proper, productive work!
This can make you feel overwhelmed and stressed if you try to do complex, important tasks that require critical thinking or creativity.
You inhibit your personal growth – If there’s one thing that will stop you from growing and becoming a better you, it’s a distraction. Distractions often can get you deeply invested, causing you to forget the reason why you’re trying to complete an important task or piece of work in the first place!
As a result, you feel the intention to not want to self-reflect on your weaknesses as a person, or the areas of your day-to-day life that you’re trying to improve upon for personal growth to blossom.
Without self-reflection, personal growth simply cannot happen, so stop whatever distractions are catching you out!
With these reasons in mind, it’s important to identify what types of distractions are catching you off guard, and trust me, there is a lot that you may have never even thought of…
Here are 15 sneaky distractions that are catching you out without even realizing…
Calling your pets a distraction can come off as a bit mean, but it’s a logical fact that they can prevent you from being able to work efficiently or complete a goal with complete competence. But why exactly should you be weary of your pets and animals being distractions? Well, there are numerous reasons.
For one, many animals, especially dogs often showcase a playful personality and one that requires constant attention for the sake of their satisfaction. This in itself is the underlying distraction!
It’s important to look after your pets, but at the same time, this can prevent you from accomplishing some productive work. You may be encouraged by your dog to go outside and play fetch with a ball, go to the store to get your cat some cat food, or even have to walk your dog. This simply isn’t convenient if you’re trying to do a task such as completing a 5000-word essay!
Noise is a major distraction that can come with pets too! Parrots, for example, love to mimic sounds and voices that they can hear, which can lead them to verbally distract you with singing or even shouting for no apparent reason.
Whatever pets you have at home, take matters into your own hands to not get distracted by them!
Whether it’s keeping a bird in its cage, letting your brother or sister take the dog for a walk instead, or ensuring they can’t get into your workspace, office, or room, preventing your pets from distracting you can be much easier than you think…
This is something that can catch people out when it comes to trying to work productively.
There’s this common misconception that doing multiple tasks at once means that you’ll get more done. This can lead people to feel like they’re more productive when actually, this is the completely opposite case…
Doing numerous tasks at once means you’re more likely to put in far less effort per task.
You have to remember that we’re only human, not super-advanced AI that can get work done within seconds!
Hence, working multiple tasks at once, which leads to less effort being invested in each task means that you’ve probably rushed or done a piece of work to absolutely poor quality.
But how is multitasking a distraction? Well, numerous items around you can encourage you to multitask, distracting you from investing your maximum effort, creativity, or deep learning into one sole task.
Perhaps you have multiple bits of work in front of you. It could be 2 exercise books on different topics you need to learn. Maybe your laptop, tablet, and phone are all on your work desk, causing you to work on tasks associated with each of these pieces of tech all at once!
Putting all of these distractions out of your field of view and putting one item, whether it be a single textbook or device in front of you, all alone can help you avoid getting distracted.
This all has to do with organization, which is our next point…
A heavily cluttered and messy workspace can be hard to look at! It makes for the perfect visual distraction when dealing with productivity, which is why it’s important to have strong organizational skills!
The ability to stay organized can in many ways be regarded as a hard skill and one that is valued in the world of work, so it’s not just beneficial for keeping focused and concentrated when working but also for employability!
Perhaps your room is cluttered with clothing that’s not hung up, paperwork that hasn’t been put away neatly, or boxes full of unused junk. There may even be plenty of unorganized wires from your computer, or laptop. or PC, making it very annoying to work when it’s putting you off guard!
It’s these kinds of messy cluttered situations that can promote the feeling of not having control over your workspace because you’re simply overwhelmed by the sheer clutter around you! But fear not, there are many measures you can take to develop your organizational skills!
For starters, try getting some desk accessories that’ll help clean up your workspace and even increase your productivity!
Desk organizers, a whiteboard for writing notes and brainstorming ideas, or a monitor stand can make for perfect anti-distraction accessories, while also decluttering your room or work space!
You might have been curious as to why I mentioned having a monitor stand to be great for avoiding distractions, and it is!
Having a bad posture can often result from sitting for prolonged periods when working in a position that causes you to crouch forward. This is especially common in remote work or offices which require you to look at a computer all day. So in what way is having bad posture a distraction?
Well, back pain is a major consequence of poor posture and can result in tension and compromised mobility, especially when trying to twist your waist or stand up straight. If your posture gets worse, this can even result in back pain while sitting down!
Significant back pain and tension while sitting down can seriously inhibit your ability to concentrate and focus on the task at hand that you’re trying to complete because your mind is always focusing on how uncomfortable your body is feeling!
In other words, you’re simply not reaching your productive efficiency, more specifically your true productive potential!
That is why having accessories such as a monitor stand where you can increase the height of your computer can help stop you from arching your back or looking down at your computer. Instead, raising your computer or laptop’s height helps straighten your neck and back as you need to look up to see.
Hence, the straighter your posture, the less tension that will build up in your back, meaning you won’t be distracted by back pain, but will have a higher mental capacity to concentrate and put more effort into your work!
You might think that going to get a snack is a great way to re-energize your mind so that you’re ready to be more productive when returning to your work, but realistically, this isn’t usually the case…
For example, having to go to your kitchen means you’re leaving your area of work, which may be your office or room. What this means is you’re leaving an environment that encourages you to be productive and going to one that encourages relaxation and the mind to be relieved of stress.
Having a snack can also encourage you to procrastinate to. For example, going to make a nice sweet treat like a Nutella toastie may encourage you to watch TV or browse Netflix as a complimentary “treat” that you can enjoy whilst you eat.
And we know where this goes. You may end up binging TV shows and videos online, discouraging you from wanting to be productive! This isn’t just all of it as well…
Snacks such as chocolate bars, sandwiches, and cereal bars, all of which make up the most popular kinds of snacks, are full of carbs and sugar. This means that eating these in excess can often lead to a sugar rush and then a sugar crash from the spike in your blood glucose levels, causing you to feel tired and less energetic.
These are feelings that are only going to make it harder for you to put more effort into productive work or even act as a roadblock to you doing the work in the first place!
So stop snacking and start resisting the temptation, only until you’ve done the work!
Being productive is by no means an easy task. When trying to accomplish something which we want to accomplish or do, it can often be tricky and frustrating at times.
Specifically when it comes to important tasks such as revision for an exam or finishing a project at work, we develop the urge to finish as soon as possible to avoid the frustrations and challenges of the task at hand.
This is simply human nature because we try to find the easiest but most effective path to accomplishing a task given to us!
This great urge can also cause us to keep looking at the time to see how long we have until a task can be finished or until we can have a break. This is especially the case when working in offices or remotely at home, where we are so eager to finish up!
The issue is, if we concentrate on the time more and constantly look up at the clock, our wristwatch, or our phone, are we really going to get any work done?
Concentrating on time, means you’re restricting your mental capacity that you could have invested in your work instead. If your mind is so fixated on time, you simply limit the focus that’s necessary to get the most out of your work. Whether it be understanding complex maths concepts when revising or finishing a PowerPoint presentation, it will be even more difficult to understand or finish up!
Simply getting rid of the clock on your wall, or locking away your phone and watch can once again eliminate your urge to look at the time as you develop the mental resilience to resist looking!
This is a bit debatable because it can depend on whatever activities, tasks, or goals you’re trying to accomplish. For example, less mentally demanding tasks such as painting, working out at the gym, or cleaning are great tasks that can benefit from listening to music, because it can get you in the mood to work even more productively!
This isn’t the case for some other scenarios…
Mathematics or problem-solving – Perfect cases where intense concentration is required. Some problems can often be complex and require constant concentration to be able to solve. Music is the last thing you need to do this!
Studying – Whether it’s revision for an exam, watching educational videos or lectures that you might have missed, or simply taking notes, listening to music can act as a compromise to understanding the concepts, ideas, or tricky information that you want to wrap your head around.
Writing – Coursework, essays, important emails, reports, PowerPoint presentations, and spreadsheets can be very difficult to put together if your mind is focusing on lyrics instead!
While it’s true that taking a nap can help re-energize your brain, do bear in mind that it’s easy to end up not going back to finishing your work after one. Sometimes, people fall into the habit of taking a nap and then procrastinating right afterward, because they’ve developed a sudden urge to relax and lounge about instead of getting straight to work.
Unless there’s a valid reason for you to take a nap such as having little sleep, or a long day at work and you need to rest so you can do another piece of productive work like a personal project, it’s safer to avoid taking regular naps if you want to get work done!
Besides, there are so many ways to ensure you’re awake, focused, and fully energized to tackle personal goals, tasks, or important work.
Just look at your diet, sort out your sleep schedule, and focus on your social battery, because that can have a major impact on your energy!
You’ve probably made the mistake of aiming to get a good chunk of work done, but have mistakenly put your phone, tablet, or smartwatch beside you.
This is one of the ultimate distraction generators, because the sudden notice of notifications even when you’re not focusing on as easy to see even when they’re at the corner of your eye!
The genuine urge to want to look at this popped-up notification is almost irresistible and has probably caught a lot of us out.
Nonetheless, it isn’t impossible to resist the notifications on your phone. Just like the gadgets we have that can tell the time, lock away these notification-filled devices in another room or drawer when you work, or put it in an inaccessible area like a safe, to help train your resilience to using them!
I understand that it’s important to spend time with our friends and go out once in a while, but if you can’t go, you can’t go!
If you are going to go out, consider this first – How important was the work you were going to do? It’s your decision how much of a priority that work was and more often than not it can be more important than a social gathering with your mates down at the pub.
Don’t get tempted by your friends to go and meet up with them when you don’t want to. You may worry that it could tarnish your friendship with them when in reality, there’s always another place and time for you to make up for your unavailability!
This will likely apply to remote work and productivity at home.
The design of your workspace can play a huge role in your mood and willingness to get work done.
Just like the organization of your room, aesthetics play a key role here, and it’s all generally dependent on your personal preferences. In the case of dopamine décor, different designs for the rooms, furniture, and walls of your home can influence your mood, and in certain cases dopamine levels.
For example, having colourful, vibrant walls, carpets, pillows, rugs, and cupboards in your room may give you feelings of joy and an uplift in your mood, but at the same time can make for quite distracting dopamine décor from a visual standpoint.
Once again this can limit your mental capacity and the effort you need to be truly productive!
This point extends on to the previous point but is rather more specific…
Having photos, pictures, and images up on your wall can once again make for fantastic dopamine décor and styling, but can often cause your mind to dwell on them more than the work you’re trying to do.
Memories of your family, friends, and fun, emotional gatherings make for the most common and special pictures. It may be lovely to put these up, but they can be mentally distracting if your focus is on the events or times that those photos depict and not on your complex maths problem that you need to solve!
Putting these photos, images, or pictures in a place such that they aren’t in your field of view when you work is the easiest, most effective way to avoid this distraction. So don’t get caught out!
I highly regard stress and fidget toys as the perfect gadgets to help relieve stress and anxiety, but ONLY when you’re taking a break from work.
Keeping these gadgets beside you while you work, whether it be in your office or home can be seriously detrimental to optimizing your productive potential!
This is because it’s easy to pick one up and start fiddling and messing about with it for potentially hours on end.
And understandably, while stress toys may take your mind off the frustrations and mental strain of the workload you might have, they’ll ultimately end up wasting valuable time that could’ve been used to accomplish goals, projects, or large workloads!
When we talk about productive work, most of the time a computer, laptop or some sort of electronic device is required. It could be typing an essay, making a presentation, performing zoom calls with people from work to deal with a group project, web design, or potentially graphic design and media.
Whatever it is, your computer or laptop setup must be optimized for you to achieve maximum productivity, focus, and concentration!
A great way to do this is to ensure that only any browser tabs relevant to your work are open.
Keeping tabs that link to shopping websites such as Amazon or the Apple store for example is only going to distract you because you’re intrigued to see what’s on those websites.
Any website and tabs on your computer that link to games, shopping, or even YouTube videos and Netflix are significant distractions, so close them if you’re striving to be productive!
Noise can be compromising for productivity, but there are certain noises that people aren’t even aware of that’ll prevent them from being productive.
For example, the ambiance of the outside world can be quite detrimental. The noise of people walking, cars driving by, planes, and people screaming can often be distracting.
In many ways, these noises can be more impactful on you completing work than music!
Ensure that you’re work environment is in a quiet area. If you have to close your door, or windows then so be it. Even wearing ear muffs can help filter out the liveliness and noise of the outside world.
Now that you have an idea of what sneaky distractions can prevent you from reaching your productive potential, it’s clear to see the sheer number of scenarios and opportunities for your focus and concentration to be diminished.
For this reason, it’s great to assess the way you work and analyze your workspace. That way you’ll inevitably find ways to be less distracted and increase your productive capacity!
Whether it’s a cluttered room, phone notifications, music, or the addictive yet unnecessary need to look at the time, being less distracted is easier than you think! So start working on your focus and concentration today!
