3 Techniques I Use to Reduce Distraction and Protect My Productivity

Instead, we would prefer our day consumed with deep work — reading, writing, analysis, coding, designing, inventing. Cal Newport defined Deep Work as "the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task." It is typically measured in days or weeks of effort.

Clearly, Newportian Deep Work is impossible under constant distraction.

I argue, though, distraction is just as cumulatively destructive when measured in minutes or hours of lost productivity each day. If you only have 30 minutes to invest each morning to write that book or conduct research, for example, interruption is devastating. That productivity is lost until the next day.

Distraction Devastates Productivity In Several Ways

In our guts, we feel the cost of distractions. When I’m at my desk, deep in thought, a "quick question" from a colleague that takes two or three minutes to resolve can cost me an additional ten (or, frankly, a whole afternoon) until I refocus and reload, becoming productive again.

There’s plenty of research on the costs of distraction and interruption on productivity. One industry survey revealed workers received an average of 304 work emails weekly and required a 16 minute recovery period after processing email before attention could be refocused on other tasks. The same survey claimed workers IQ’s declined by 10 points when fielding emails. It is not just emails that are the problem — the study reported the average employee spends 31 hours a month in meetings.

Maybe even more sad, even when focusing another study showed evidence professionals spend only 12 minutes working on a specific task before switching to something else (either voluntarily or due to an interruption).

So, what is done to compensate for all the distraction? Clearly, we all just attempt to work faster, as if typing quickly can make up for lost time. Not surprisingly, this behavior just leads to more stress, pressure, and frustration.

It’s All in the Framing

In a former career as a software developer, interruptions were anathema to making progress on a project. In other words, deadlines could be missed due to unchecked interruptions and distractions.

Later, as an entrepreneur and executive, interruptions and distractions defined my day. As a CEO my daily workflow was managing the executive team and leading the company’s sales efforts. Meetings, phone calls, employee and customer complaints, impromptu tasks (and everything else nobody wanted to do) consumed my day. Deep, focused work was nigh impossible without imposing intentional structure via my calendar.

In my current position as a professor, I could follow either of these patterns. I could focus on extreme deep work to the exclusion of all else. But my students and department colleagues might not appreciate this approach. Or, I could constantly engage myself with meetings, ad hoc conversations, and visits from students. But my research collaborators and tenure committee may not appreciate that approach.

In fact, all of the above activities and modalities are part and parcel of a professorship (and most other "knowledge positions"). Fortunately, I have the freedom to choose how I frame my job. I can choose to let tasks, intrusions, and meetings define my day, leaving scant time for projects. Or, I can choose to take control and define how I will engage with all the messy and unscheduled parts and pieces of the day.

To succeed using the latter approach, I rely on a number of tools and techniques. The following are three that may work well for you.

3 Techniques to Reduce Distraction and Protect Your Productivity

1) Control Access to Your Time With Calendly

I’ve written previously about how important it is for me to control my calendar.

An electronic calendar is the lynchpin of my productivity system. The biggest challenge to controlling my calendar is other peoples’ requests of my time. Without imposing boundaries, calendars fill up. This is a law of physics.

I use Calendly to impose those boundaries.

Through Calendly I defined several meeting types. I have a 15 minute student meeting type and a 30 minute general, one-on-one meeting type. I then defined what days and times of the day each of these meeting types are available for scheduling. With this set up in place, I hand out the appropriate Calendly link when someone asks for a meeting, e.g. a student, a colleague, etc. They are free to choose a time that works with their schedule and Calendly, since it is synced to my master online calendar, ensures there are no conflicts with my other obligations.

2) Throw Your Phone Into The Ocean

Yes, throw your phone into the ocean. Or the toilet works just as well.

Okay, before you close your browser, I admit sending your phone to a watery grave is extreme.

So, how can you get similar benefits to throwing away the phone?

• Delete social media apps from your device. Force yourself to visit distracting sites in the mobile browser. Since we’re all lazy, this one additional barrier between you and Aunt Gert’s latest Facebook update may be just enough to curtail the impulse.
• Still too extreme? Try turning off the social media app notifications on your device. With both iOS and Android, one can select which apps are allowed to push notifications. By removing these notifications, the user decides when to give an app their scarce attention.
• Install an app such as Freedom that allows a user to temporarily block access to the internet, specific sites, or apps, such as email. This can train you to avoid distractions for increasingly long time periods. After using Freedom for several years, I trained myself to no longer need it.

3) Turn Your Important Work Into a Game

Finally, maybe the most powerful technique I use to fight distraction and increase deep work productivity is to make work more fun. By fun, of course, I mean turn it into a game.

This works well for me because I am, in the language of David McClelland, intrinsically motivated by a Need for Achievement. I seek mastery, improvement, goal accomplishment. This may not work as well for those primarily driven by a Need for Power or a Need for Affiliation-Intimacy.

There are two ways I like to gamify my work on a daily basis.

First, I keep score. For instance, when writing, I have a writing scorecard where I set goals and record my results for words to write in, say, the next 25 minutes. I set a timer and punch the keyboard. I’ve used this for writing, literature reviews, online courses, and hobbies.

A second way I gamify my work is by using the pomodoro technique. This technique consists of breaking long and complex work marathons, such as writing, reading, or coding, into a series of 30 minute sprints. The first 25 minutes of each sprint is for intensely focused work. A 5 minute rest period follows. These 30 minute "pomodoros" are then repeated 3-5 times after which a longer break is earned.

Trust me, at the end of 3-5 pomodoros, I am exhausted because of the intense effort they elicit.

When I use pomodoros for writing or programming, I receive two tangible benefits.

My production increases, as I am not switching my attention so often. I know I will get a break in just a short while, after all.

But, also, the short, 5 minute breaks become refreshing rewards for my focused effort. During the breaks, I stretch my legs, tease a nearby family member, or check social media for a quick dopamine hit.

How to Increase Your Productivity, Starting Today

We’d all like to dip into a bottomless well of free time. In this article, instead, I presented three ways to use the time you do have more wisely.

If you better control access to your calendar, avoid constant interruption from devices, and stay focused through gamifying your work, well, I argue that you have found (a slightly deeper) well of free time.

My calendar is the central hub of my productivity system and it allows me to budget my time across many disparate projects and work flows. It would all break down, though, if I didn’t follow the tips in this article.

What can you do today and this week to align with the suggestions in this article?

The first and easiest step might be to pull out your mobile phone, open up the settings menu, and turn off all the app and system notifications — except for the phone app.

Then, text all your loved ones and your boss. Let them know if they have something urgent for you, just call. There’s an app for that.