Turn off notifications

How to stop being distracted

The quality of work of any specialist is highly dependent on attention. Dozens of ideas remain elusive and unrealized simply because the person did not focus on them and was constantly distracted. Think about how often you complete a task, plunging into it 100%, without wasting energy on extraneous matters..

Suppose you are writing or reading something. Your smartphone notifies you of messages, likes, comments every minute. This is a real Pandora’s box, which the makes you spend a lot of time on empty actions and useless surfing on the Internet.
In the digital age, the only radical way to regain your own freedom and concentration is to go offline and be offline contrary to your wishes. This is not easy to do, especially if you work or study using the Internet. But there are certain tools that will help to stop being distracted and reduce the number of “annoying” factors.

1. Turn off notifications

Stop dissonance of notifications of fresh spam in the mail, new marks on photos and likes on Instagram. Leave only important notifications – messages in the work messenger and calls.

Check the rest in your free time when you complete the task. To change the settings, dig in your laptop and smartphone, look at the parameters of social networks and email accounts. Life will become quieter, calmer and more measured.

Check from time to time only those groups, channels and dialogs that are important for your family and professional richness.

2. Unsubscribe from mailing lists

It is simple and important. Email often tries to sell a person what he does not need. Endless mailings from stores like Lamoda and Wildberries, where you have been purchased one or more times, come to the email. Letters pop up and distract. You spend time closing a notification and viewing an incoming message.

Today, all mailing lists have quick unsubscribe functionality at the end of each letter. Click there now.

3. Buy a watch and an alarm clock

You already realized that a smartphone is evil. According to statistics, Russians devote about a third of their free time to Internet communication on the phone. In Britain, young people check the status of the gadget 85 times a day. 150 times in the USA and Australia.

The surefire way to reduce the number of moments of being with the phone in your hands is to limit its capabilities. To do this, buy a simple watch and use it only to check the time. Set a real push-button or electronic alarm clock to get to work, but do not bring gadgets to the bedroom.

4. Uninstall applications

The radical method. Determine which apps on your smartphone or tablet are most distracting. For example, you are constantly thinking about Instagram. Remove it while you work. Now you can check this social network only through a browser, where the functionality is very limited. This method will definitely reduce the number of constant views of the tape. When you complete the task, install Instagram again.

5. Clean the desktop

Is your monitor dotted with files that are too “important” to be deleted? Overcome yourself and structure all unnecessary. You do not have to drag documents directly into the trash. Move some data to cloud storage or a separate folder.

If your computer is full of useless digital junk, try using applications such as CCleaner. The program itself will analyze the contents of the device’s memory and offer to get rid of a list of files, the absence of which you will not notice.

Turning on your computer and not seeing all the trash on your desktop is a great way to start the day and stop being distracted.

6. Choose the right music for the job.

Many people use headphones when they want to concentrate on working at a computer, especially if this happens in a public place. But think about what exactly you are listening to. Modern music services, for example, Yandex.Music, offer excellent track lists for concentration. You can find compositions where white noise is combined with slow instrumental melodies.

7. Click carefully

Think carefully before clicking on the link or sharing the news. Gossip pollutes the tape. If you read and share them, you will also make them famous..

Many world news make you feel despair, disappointment and anger. Try to ignore them. It’s not about living in information isolation, but about the fact that a person does not always need to know all the details. Less silly articles and videos on your daily routine is a good step to stop being distracted..

8. Create a schedule of work and rest

Many of us have calendars and planners where work meetings, organizational meetings, and other office life events are celebrated. It helps not to be late, to set goals and keep abreast of things for a week or a month..

But what about vacation planning? Put things you need to relax and calm down: meditation, meeting friends, breaks in work, reading, exercise.

If necessary, make a schedule of visits to social networks and news portals.

9. Save interesting things online

The network really comes across something worthwhile and useful. The correct information must be consumed. But when you read constantly and spontaneously – even the most interesting turns into a harmful distraction.

If you stumbled upon good material or received a link to it from colleagues or friends, save it. There are special applications for this, for example, Pocket. It also allows you to return to articles in the place where you quit reading. Having such a program on your smartphone will help you to have a useful source of information with you and to stop being distracted while you work..

10. Download the meditation exercise app

The ability to meditate is one of the useful and powerful skills that will help change your own life. These days there are tons of programs that make meditation accessible, easy, and understandable. In such services, you can choose the duration of meditation and topics. You can meditate at short intervals while you are waiting for someone to meet or traveling by public transport. Peculiar guides will help you not to be afraid of exercises and understand their effectiveness.

Meditation Apps:

• Headspace: Guided Meditation (For IOS and for Android)
• Meditation and Sounds by Verv (For IOS and for Android)

The ability to observe oneself through meditation is the ability to look at distractions in a different way and react to them in a new way..

If you have a curious mind, that’s fine, be proud of it. But it’s also useful to realize in time when you are distracted from something important..

A good concentration will help you to calm down under stressful conditions, work more productively and have more free time for your favorite hobbies and communication with loved ones.