How To Avoid Unwanted Distractions And Stay Completely Focused At Work

No matter how focused you want to be, distractions are always present. These distractions could take the form of social media apps, noisy colleagues, or other miscellaneous activities that don’t contribute towards productivity. Not only does this hurt your career progress, but it also negatively affects your mental health.

One recent study estimates that 3 hours and 12 minutes per person per day are spent on distracting interruptions that are of minimal value to the organization’s goals.

Interruptions chew up 40% of an 8-hour workday for the average worker. This may not seem like so much time, but this can amount to roughly 104 days being wasted on distractions each year.

At the end of a workday, you may be wondering where all the time went. While you may think that interruptions don’t affect much, it takes about 25 minutes to regain complete focus for a previous task. If you want to avoid unwanted distractions and stay wholly focused at work, here are seven ways to do it.

1. Unwanted Distractions

The first thing you need to do is figure out what unwanted distractions are. Simply put, an unwanted distraction is something that takes your attention away from something you want to do. Because of the technological age we live in, one of the biggest distractions is our smartphones.

Picking up your phone while working can easily send you down the rabbit hole of scrolling through social media for hours. By the time you snap back to reality, half of the day is gone.

Another common distraction is noise. This can be noise from the streets, from your coworkers, from an excessively loud television, and so on. There are so many other things that can distract you, and identifying them can prevent them from affecting your work productivity any further.

2. Smart Communication

Smart communication is another way to reduce distractions and increase productivity. Although we have devices that have helped ease the communication process, we tend to take it for granted.

Smart communication involves strategic communication at specified intervals, which leaves little room for idle chit-chat and unproductive talks. If you schedule a particular time to attend to all emails and texts, you will quickly boost your productivity and performance. To help with this, you can also leave your phone off to avoid being tempted to pick it up and text people unproductively.

3. Get Rid of Repetitive Tasks

Repetitive tasks are more time-consuming than you might think. People averagely spend about 4 hours a week on tasks that they can easily delegate. This is about 10% of working hours each week. Repetitive tasks also tend to dull concentration and focus over time, which reduces overall productivity.

To solve this, you may need to employ the use of workflow automation and software. This software allows you to delegate these repetitive tasks, giving you and your employees the chance to focus your creative efforts on more critical aspects of the business. Automation is being adopted by more and more business owners every year. In fact, about 31% of businesses have now automated at least one function.

4. Clearly Outline Your Tasks and Goals

If you want to stop wasting time and being distracted, it is always good to clearly outline all your tasks and goals. First, think about the results you want to see and start developing the mindset of achieving them. Write them down, and then create a plan of action. Maintaining this pattern would keep your work process structured, preventing you from becoming distracted. Order tends to bring about focus, resolve, and determination.

It will also help if you keep those written-down goals beside you all the time so you can see what’s working and what isn’t. If a particular plan of action does not work, you can easily replace it with something else and learn from your mistakes much faster.

5. Automate Time-consuming Reporting

As a business owner, you should understand how much time reporting takes. In addition to taking time, it is also very repetitive. As mentioned earlier, repetitive tasks tend to dull focus and increase the rate at which you get distracted. If you want to avoid this, the best thing to do would be to automate the reporting process.

Luckily, there are many automation software for you to choose from. However, when you want to choose, make sure you pick one that closely aligns with your business structure. Doing that will ensure the reporting process runs smoothly with minimal human intervention.

Final Words

Let’s face it! distractions aren’t easy to beat. No matter how skilled you are at keeping distractions at bay, you are bound to get distracted every once in a while. Fortunately, adhering to these five suggestions above would decrease your susceptibility to distractions and help you keep up your productivity level high.