This one number is wrecking your productivity

Anthony Sanni on the need to eliminate distraction to do more by doing less and be more productive and effective.

Prefer to read? See the transcript below. Note: The transcript has been modified to make it easier to read. Hope it helps!

Jay's number was 18. What is your number? And if you're wondering what I'm going on about, here's a little fact that might clue you in to where I'm going with this. It takes about 10 to 25 minutes to recover your concentration after one distraction. It also takes about 10 to 25 minutes to get into a state of deep concentration and productivity. Today, we're talking about distractions. With no further ado, let’s get into it.

Hi, my name is Anthony Sanni and on #beenthinking I share productivity and personal development insights to help you achieve your best in life, career in business. And it's really hard to achieve your best when you are constantly being bombarded by distractions.

Hey Jay! What’s your number?

A while back, I gave a seminar at a financial services company. At the end of the seminar, one of the attendees (let’s call her Jay)—a business analyst, who’s work involved a lot of calculations and concentration—told me about how she had actually been curious about this concept of distraction, and she had taken time to tally how often she got distracted. So I asked her “So what was your number?” And she said “18”. And I thought, You know what? That's not that's not bad at all. And then she said, “PER HOUR! 18 distractions per hour!”

Hello you! What’s your distraction number?

Before you judge Jay I invite you to actually check what your number is. This is because distractions have a way of being so subtle and so stealthy. They happen all the time, and we don't even notice but we're paying the price, whether we notice it or not.  With 18 distractions in a single hour, after the first two or three distractions, that entire hour is a write-off. Because remember, it takes up to minutes to recover from a distraction.

If there is one thing that you can eliminate from your work that's going to multiply your productivity without you having to add really a lot of effort, distractions would be top of that list.

How often have you gotten home after a long, tiring day at work and you realize you didn't really achieve very much? I think you'll agree with me that it's important to get home and feel like we've achieved something meaningful, or at least we've moved closer to our goals... whether it's our personal goals or the goals that we are partnering with our organizations to achieve. And it's hard to do that when we're constantly being distracted.

Distractions are blocking your “Flow”

Dr Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi at his famous TED Talk

The late and great distinguished professor of management and psychology, Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, was the discoverer of the psychological state known as Flow. Flow is a state of deep productivity and deep enjoyment and fulfillment in our work—two things that I think you and I will probably agree are desirable as we do our work. Especially if you're a knowledge worker. If you work mainly with information, being able to focus and get “in the zone” is so critical to producing high value work.

…one hour of deep focus might be worth four to five hours of scattered focus.

Whether you're programming software or even just having a conversation with someone over the phone, entering into that deep state of immersion can multiply how much we get out of our work and those experiences.

Dr. Csikszentmihalyi identifies eight factors for being in the state of flow, and two of those are, get this, concentration and focus. I hope by now you're curious about what your number might be. Once you see how many times you get distracted, I think you'll be interested in taking some steps to eliminate it.

Sources of  Distractions

But to give you a head start, let's talk about the common sources of distractions. In the 21st century, especially among knowledge workers, and especially among those of us working either remote or a hybrid model, I would say the number one source of distractions (you know where I'm going with this) is our tech.

It's instant messages, it's email, it's our phones going off every seconds. It's notifications left, right and center. Its Slack messages. It's IMs and all of these things that are drawing our attention leaking and leaching our attention from the task at hand.

 And before you jump to judging your coworkers who won't leave you alone or your clients who won't stop bugging you with their email, consider this... I have found that a huge proportion of those tech distractions are our own fault. THERE! I said it.

Every time you pick up your phone out of habit, you are distracting yourself. Every time you go browse something on the internet that has nothing to do with the task at hand... You are distracting yourself.

And while there may be other psychological reasons, maybe a lack of motivation, maybe procrastination, maybe just a habit—whatever the reason for it—its actually stopping you from having a more productive day.

I have found that a huge proportion of those tech distractions are our own fault.

So the first place I would say to go eliminate distractions is with our own behavior. How often are we picking up our phones? How often are we distracting ourselves? How often are you distracting yourself and keeping yourself from entering into a state of flow?

Okay, let's talk about number two—other people trying to get you attention. Depending on the nature of your job, there might be little you could do about this. If your job depends on you being interruptible, the best you can do is manage it. But if that is not the case, if these interruptions are coming in, especially through tech channels, it might be necessary for you to carve out what I call productivity time bubbles.

 Productivity Time Bubble

A productivity time bubble is a time you set aside as sacred—where you become virtually uninterruptible. You turn off notifications, you set yourself on do not distrub status. And I know it's so much more difficult to create and preserve these time bubbles, but you can get creative. Even if there are other people around you, sometimes the the act of putting headphones on, if the company culture allows, can send a message to people that you really don't want to be disturbed because you are trying to focus on something important right now.

And honestly, once you get this down, once you start practicing this concept of productivity, time bubbles, you will feel time compress! You will be surprised, NAY shocked! at how much more you will get done within these short sprints of productivity than perhaps you were getting done over the course of an entire day without distractions.

I don't know if you've experienced this, but momentum tends to build up in our output when we are focused. So that one hour of deep focus might be worth four to five hours of scattered focus. And this way you do more in less time. And like I always say, that's a good thing because it gives you more time to do other things that might be important to you.

So over the course of this week, indeed over the course of just one day, see how many times you got distracted in the hour and then start to put strategies in place to mitigate those common sources of distractions and just watch your productivity and your enjoyment of your work soar. My name is Anthony Sanni. As always, encouraging you be your best. Do your best. I will see you in the next video. But until then, bye for now.