How to avoid the nasty viruses of distraction and procrastination
Distraction and procrastination
We’ve all been there. Distraction and procrastination. You have that all important project on your desk. You carefully move everything out of the way except that one project. But you don’t feel like doing it and luckily for you, a notification magically swooshes across your screen. Before you know it, you’re down a rabbit hole. Pulled off course, reading an interesting article on a new superfood that will double your energy or a new fishing hook that is guaranteed to ensure you reel in bigger and better fish.
When you ‘wake up’ you realise you just succumbed to the nasty virus of ‘distractionitis once more.’ I define ‘distractionitis’ as a loss of focus and attention with a tendency to delay doing a hard or important task. Its a combination of distraction and procrastination.
The dictionary defines distraction as
Distraction (n) – is a thing that prevents someone from concentrating on something else, and
Procrastination (n) – as the action of delaying or postponing something.
Next, you berate yourself and wonder what is wrong with you. How come you can’t focus? Why do you have no willpower, and why do you feel you have the discipline of a two-year-old?
So, let’s sort this out with a few pertinent figures. In my ebook, Your Winning Mindset, I mentioned that there are 84,600 seconds in a day. We all start with the same amount of time every day, yet some people are adept at doing more than others, and some are gold medallists in the art of ‘distractionitis.’
You have the potential to be distracted 3,500 times in an average eight-hour working
84,600 seconds sounds a lot. Surely long enough to accomplish a few tasks outside your everyday routine tasks?
Here’s why this is not so. A while back, I read that the attention span of humans has fallen to a tiny eight seconds. (It used to be twelve seconds.) Furthermore, it compares our focus to that of a goldfish and the goldfish wins. Her attention span is one second longer at nine seconds.
Now I am not sure what we can conclude from this, so I invite you to let me know if you have any ideas! Next, as I am not an Einstein or mathematician, I grabbed my calculator and punched a few numbers. In an average eight-hour working day, there are 28,200 seconds. So, if we have the potential for distraction every eight seconds, that is 3,500 potential times for distraction and procrastination in an eight-hour block. I will repeat that.
You have the potential for distraction 3,500 times in just one-third of your day.
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If you add to that all those moments you don’t feel like doing something, you become even more prone to catching the virus of procrastination.
Why are we so prone to distraction?
In today’s environment, a world driven by technology, we have umpteen more things to interrupt our focus. We have gadgets at our fingertips, and on our wrists. There are notifications swooshing across our computer screens and alarms reminding us to do the next task. Then there are ads popping up while we browse the web to remind us of the dress, book or fishing rod we were looking at. All of this is candy for the brain. Furthermore, your brain loves variety, and it takes the most disciplined of people to hold strong against this visual smorgasbord of goodies.
Here are a few more relevant points:
Your brain is hard-wired to move towards pleasure and away from pain.
This alone will ensure you avoid hard or boring tasks. So you become prone to both distraction and procrastination. Consequently, we must find ways to stop this.
I mean, how much more fun is it to read about your best friends travels, or the latest gadget for your favourite hobby that will make you better, stronger or faster, as compared to completing the final proof of your report about the potential threats of online sales for the company in the 21st century. Even though your boss is waiting for it.
You are a creature of habit which means distraction will happen
If you already have a poor habit of anything less than an iron discipline, and you regularly read social media or have a gold medal in multi-tasking, you will fall prey to distraction and procrastination. Your subconscious mind is where your habits lie. And you operate your life 45% to 95% by habit. Unless you desire to change and you consciously make some changes, you won’t fix it.
Humans love interesting and intriguing things and crave variety. As a result, you will also procrastinate.
Now procrastinating isn’t about doing nothing. It’s doing unimportant and seemingly irrelevant things.
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When you tire, you are more likely to procrastinate. If you have a huge project, you may procrastinate because of the sense of the enormity of the task. If you find the work boring you are prone to distractions. And when there is a smorgasbord of visual things happening around you, you will both fall prey to the virus of distraction and procrastination. The result. You waste more of your precious time. Guaranteed.
Procrastination occurs for a variety of reasons
Unless you attempt to avoid viruses of distraction and procrastination, it’s ugly twin, you will continue to erode your precious time. And even if you do, distraction will still occur. Remember, there is a minimum of 3,500 opportunities and you have an attention span of around eight seconds.
How nice to know this happens to other humans too. You are not broken. You do have willpower. It’s because you are a human being with all the elements that make you exactly that. Unfortunately, however, you won’t gain great rewards for your efforts or my insights and figures. The reward comes from your daily and weekly output.
Here are three tips to help you avoid these two viruses:
- You are an emotional being whose moods influence behaviours. If you don’t enjoy doing something or the task feels boring, you are way more susceptible to both distraction and procrastination. The key to combat this is to take a few minutes at the beginning of the day. Get clear why you are doing what you are doing. If it’s paying the bills that won’t work. Drill down four times until you can find an emotional connection, such as financial freedom, service, fun, and freedom. This is key for avoiding distraction and procrastination.
- Humans are energy beings. You are not a robot and cannot sustain working on six cylinders all day every day. You need some downtime and a few rewards along the way. First, entice yourself with a small reward at the end of a block of time or completion of a project. Second, take a break to switch your energy. Research has proven that productivity can increase with more breaks. If you own your own business schedule in a day off. If you work for someone else, schedule short breaks. Get up, stretch and move. Drink water and re-energise.
People who stay active are happier
3. Exercise. Lastly, while it may not be possible to exercise at work, a recent study from researchers at Yale and Oxford reinforced what I hold true. People who stay active are happier. In addition, the researchers found that physically active people feel just as good as those who don’t do sports but who earn about $25,000 more a year. So, when you exercise you will feel better, which means you will do more. And even if you fall victim to distraction, according to the research, at the very least you will feel happier. And this is despite how you may waste time, lose money and diminish business results. An interesting viewpoint?
Physically active people feel just as good as those who don’t do sports but who earn about $25,000 more a year.
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However, if you are like me, you may prefer to work on your focus, take charge of your wandering mind and get stuff done. Ultimately, you have more time for fun, leisure pursuits and may add dollars to your business.
If you would like to improve your focus, keep on track so you can accomplish more; banish the nasty virus of distraction and procrastination, check out my Get Breakthrough Results Program. I guarantee it has winning strategies and proven techniques to ensure you keep focused and get more done.
What else would you do if you could save a minimum of one hour a day? I guarantee this is possible in this program.
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