Eliminate distracting work to free yourself up to be focussed

You can’t focus on a task if you’re thinking about all the other things you need to do.

Your full attention needs to be given to the task, and to do that you need to create an undistracted mindspace.

I find I get this focus in the last few hours of the day.

Why is it then?

It’s when I don’t have any:

• meetings that will break my workflow,
• emails or messages left needing my attention,
• colleagues awaiting my response on an open task,
• other deadlines on my mind.

I am productive and can move things forward when I remove those distractions. If I don’t plan ahead, it takes me the first part of the day to remove those distractions. But sometimes not even, and I get to the end of the day wondering why I couldn’t get a decent piece of work done.

Distracting work keeps me switching between things and pulls me away from any big task that I’d like to get done.

What you can do today:

• Dedicate a portion of your time to knocking out distracting work (emails, meetings, etc.).
• Dedicate a portion of your time to focussed work, where the distractions are out the way.
• If you prefer to get your big chunks of work done in the afternoon, schedule to knock out all the distracting work in the morning and don’t let the distracting work encroach into your focussed afternoon work time.
• If you prefer starting your day getting big chunks of work done, then you need to make sure the day before, you eliminate any distracting work that could distract you in the morning.

Bundling distracting work and getting it out the way as fast as possible frees you up to have focussed time. Do the ground work to eliminate distracting work upfront to prevent your mind from wandering when you get to your focussed time.