Some tasks require more focus than others. For instance, I can fold clothes while carrying on an involved conversation, but do much better writing these posts with few or no interruptions. Many more involved tasks can be done in flow, a state of full focus and maximum effectiveness.

The trouble with interruptions
“The High Cost of Distractions” describes what happens to us when we’re interrupted at a task that requires our full attention. In essence, our brain has to completely reorient itself to deal with the interruption, then completely reorient itself again to get back on task. In the process, we also lose some of the material we have in short-term memory. These effects are less than ideal, of course, and I talk about some strategies for working with distractions in “Locations That Prevent Distractions“, “Handling Distractions by Managing Responsibilities, Devising Rules, and Erecting Barriers“, and “Dealing With Distractions You Can’t Prevent“.

And we can interrupt ourselves just as effectively as other people and things can interrupt us. The way the Web is often used is a very good example of this: we might be doing something important to us and hit a difficult spot or begin to feel tired, at which point surfing the Web or checking e-mail is an easy way to feel like we’re doing something–even though it’s actually derailing our efforts.

Mapping out the task
Apart from dealing with the distractions or interruptions themselves as described in the above articles, the other useful way we can help ourselves stay with a complex task is to have a path forward. This usually involves writing things down, which is admittedly easier if the task is something on the computer, for instance, rather than waterproofing a basement or teaching children to swim. There is a simple technique that doesn’t require any writing down, however, which I’ll mention in a moment.

Having a way forward means at least knowing the next step you’ll need to take, and sometimes means fully mapping the task out, which is to say writing out each task needed in order. Looking at the task with this kind of breakdown in mind uses a different way of thinking than plunging into the task itself. For instance, if you’re cleaning out your attic, you could just throw yourself in, or you could come up with a plan and follow that. The second approach sometimes makes it easier to get started and is a good way to help protect against interruptions causing too much trouble.

Such a map, even if it changes as you proceed, provides something to return to when an interruption is over and you’re back at the “now, what was I doing before all that?” stage.

The “next step” method
The alternative to mapping the whole process out is to always know the next step. This requires going through the task thinking “OK, right now I’m weeding, and as soon as I’m done, the next thing will be to put in the new tomato plants.” When you get to the tomato plants, as you begin you think far enough ahead to know what the task after that will be. Always keeping the next task in mind makes it possible to know what to do when the interruption is over, much like the map does. It helps to remind ourselves of the current and next tasks just as an interruption is presenting itself, as this makes it easier to recall our place when that’s done. Afterward, simply getting started on the next task is often all we need to get back on track and into the swing of things.

Picture by Yersinia

This series of articles on distraction is adapted from my eBook on Writing Motivation. In previous articles, I’ve talked about the high cost of distractions and four tactics for reducing them: choosing location in one article and managing responsibilities, devising rules, and erecting barriers in another. This final article in the series covers the question of what to do when distractions can’t be prevented.

Distractions as opportunities
If an interruption makes it through despite your plans, you can sometimes turn it to your advantage. Once the distraction is taken care of, take a moment to figure out if there are any other distractions in the making—an impending bathroom break, a family member who just needs a minute of your time, that cup of tea you’ve been wanting—and take care of them in your post-distraction time rather than letting them spawn their own interruptions a little down the road.

An interruption can also be a useful moment to reflect on the direction the project is going, how happy you are with your progress, whether you have any nagging concerns you want to examine, and whether there are other steps you should consider, such as reviewing your work so far, brainstorming alternatives, or getting help.

Distraction pitfalls
However, it’s essential not to use interruptions as excuses to get off track. It’s generally a bad idea to decide that because you’ve been interrupted anyway, you might as well check your e-mail, fold a few of those clothes, or call to check in on a friend. If those activities really have priority, this is fine, but it’s easy for such things to serve as excuses to not get back to working on your goal after being temporarily diverted. Don’t fall into that particular trap.

Be sure not to use the possibility (or inevitability) of distractions as an excuse to skip working on your goal. Of course it’s more efficient to get things done when there are no distractions, but not only is some progress better than no progress, but the more you get used to making progress despite distractions, the better you’ll get at ignoring those distractions.

Responding to distractions
In responding to distractions, especially when frustration builds, it helps to have a planned response you can fall back on. This connects with some ideas discussed under the managing responsibilities topic. Having preset wording helps prevent frustration from determining your wording for you, and can help remind you of how to deal with the distractions. It can also minimize the effort (and attention) you need to invest in the distraction and sometimes provide a way to head the distraction off or cut it short.

Learning from distractions
If distractions teach you nothing else, they can often at least supply information about how to avoid them in the future. If you experience a lot of distractions or have the sense that some could be avoided with better organization, trying jotting down a list of distractions as they occur (after all, you’re already distracted) and then reviewing it in the near future to come up with ideas for heading those distractions off.

Photo by Shermeee

This series of articles on distraction is adapted from my eBook on Writing Motivation. In the first article in the series, I talked about the high cost of distractions and mentioned four things we can do to minimize them. The second article delved into how location choice can help prevent distractions. The next article will consider some ways to deal with distractions that can’t be prevented, while this one covers three prevention tactics: managing responsibilities, devising rules, and erecting barriers.

Manage responsibilities
Managing responsibilities means using planning and negotiation to minimize interruptions. If you want to set aside time every night from 9:00 to 10:00, tell everyone you know that you’re busy during that time and would appreciate no phone calls or spur-of-the-moment visits. If you’re a parent and have a spouse or partner, offer to take full responsibility for the kids during certain periods in exchange for your spouse doing the same thing during your pre-arranged work times. Almost anyone who might either interrupt you or be a means to head off interruptions is a good person to negotiate with to help keep these times undisturbed.

Managing responsibilities may also mean finding ways to keep yourself from being distracted by other obligations. In my interview with her, writer and entrepreneur Nancy Fulda talks about the effectiveness of taking care of small, nagging tasks before tackling the larger, more consuming ones: “The problem with that was that all those unfinished tasks weighed on my mind.  It was like a mountain of work hanging over me, this big dreadful pile of Things That Needed Done, and it sapped my energy like a vampire … The thing is, that huge dreadful mountain tasks seldom took more than an hour to complete.”

Devise rules
Devising rules means thinking about possible interruptions and coming up with solutions to head them off before you even get started. The resulting solutions are ones you can adhere to without thinking, for instance “Never answer the phone while practicing” or “When decluttering, never stop to read anything: instead, put anything of real interest aside in a ‘to read’ pile.” Rules have to be clearly planned so that there is no thinking involved. If one of your rules is not to open your e-mail program while you’re working on your finances or not to watch TV until your housework is done, then you’ll know that you’ll need to be strict about those rules in order for them to work. When you have preplanned responses like this, dealing with the situations you’ve anticipated does not take a large amount of attention, and therefore doesn’t require the wholesale reorganization of thoughts a full-fledged distraction would have forced.

My article on the value of rules in motivation is here . 

Erect barriers
Erecting barriers means taking physical steps to guard your work area from interruptions: a sign on the door saying “Please come back after 2:30 PM,” unplugging your phone or your network cable, putting on music that you work well to, and using earplugs are all ways to use barriers to temporarily shield your environment from the infinite distractions of the outside world.

Photo by mahalie

This series of articles on distraction is adapted from my eBook on Writing Motivation. In the first article in the series, I talked about the high cost of distractions and mentioned four things we can do to minimize them. This article follows up by discussing the first of those four, choosing your location. 

Location, location, location
To the extent that you have some control over the times and places when you are focusing on a goal you’re trying to achieve (like getting your finances in order, learning a language, or writing a book), good choices of working environment will help you work better and with fewer interruptions.

We don’t always consider the power a location can have to minimize distractions, but once we do, the kinds of locations are fairly self-evident: favor locations where there will be few distractions, and try to avoid places where you might run into friends or be expected to respond to people or events. The most accessible and convenient locations–your home or usual workplace–are often the most vulnerable to distractions because people will expect to find you there. But places where you’re less likely to be distracted, like a friend’s spare room or the library (when those kinds of places are options in the first place), often involve extra time and effort to reach, and therefore may discourage work on your goal or cut into your productive time.

While there’s no way around being bound to a location for some efforts, like decluttering, avoid being completely dependent on one location if possible: the more times and places you can use to work toward your goal, the more progress you’re likely to make.

To the extent that you have a choice, try to prefer working on your goal at times when you’ll have minimal distractions, as long as those times don’t offer other problems—for instance, late at night can be a peaceful and productive time to work, but not if you’re always exhausted by then, or if it will have a serious effect on you getting enough sleep, or if  your work would wake somebody up.

Sometimes it’s possible to get more uninterrupted time to work on your goal by shifting around more interruptible activities, like housecleaning. 

Mental work environment
Your mental work environment is also a key factor. You can prepare your brain by committing to the project you’re about to work on and setting a minimum amount of time to focus on it. Avoid shifting around among different kinds of tasks within one work session when possible–for instance, working a little on your business plan, then answering some correspondence, then coming back to the business plan–since when you make these shifts you’re effectively interrupting yourself.

In the next article in this series, we’ll dig into the other three strategies for minimizing distractions: managing responsibilities, making rules, and erecting barriers.

Photo by girolame

This post and the follow-up I’ll be posting next week are based on the “Handling Distractions” chapter from my new eBook, The Writing Engine: A Practical Guide to Writing Motivation. Have I mentioned it’s free to download and share?

The true cost of distraction
Distractions are pernicious for even more reasons than might be immediately obvious. They

• offer unwanted invitations to stop doing whatever we’re doing,
• require two mental “reboots,” one to address the distraction and another to return to work,
• interfere with focus and immersion–distractions lower the number of pieces of information and connections we can keep in mind at once and force us to retrace our steps,
• cut into time set aside for work toward a goal,
• make otherwise productive activities more frustrating and less pleasurable,
• encourage errors,
• help discourage us from doing constructive things in the first place (due to feeling like we won’t be able to work uninterruptedly), and 
• interfere with “flow” states, in which we’re engrossed in what we’re doing, highly productive, and enjoying ourselves.

If you have trouble screening out distractions, there are several useful techniques you can employ–but it may also help to know that focusing despite distractions, like virtually any other skill, is one that improves with practice. My experience certainly bears that out. It used to be that I couldn’t write or focus on work when there was any kind of noise around me, but there came a time when my home office had to share space with the playroom. Pushing through sometimes difficult writing sessions with kids playing in the background, I eventually became much more resistant to distraction, and a couple of years after that process began, I found myself cheerfully writing a book in the middle of a social gathering, and even contributing a little to the conversation from time to time. I  I didn’t do anything special to gain this skill except to keep trying to write even when distractions made it hard.

What our brains have to do to handle distractions
In his book Brain Rules: 12 Rules for Surviving and Thriving at Home, Work and School, developmental neurobiologist John Medina describes the process the brain goes through when it has to shift attention from one kind of task to another. It has to disengage from the first task, shutting down the systems it was using; assess the new task; fire up new systems for it; handle the new task; then go through the whole thing all over again when we switch back. Says Medina, “a person who is interrupted takes 50 percent longer to complete a task. Not only that, he or she makes up to 50 percent more errors.”

In other words, a two-minute interruption takes a lot more than two minutes away from whatever it interrupted. That interruption can also mean the difference between being in flow and being out of it

So, it pays to prevent distractions. There are at least four ways to do this: choosing your location, managing responsibilities, devising rules, and erecting barriers. Next week, we’ll talk about each of these strategies in more detail.

Image based on a photo by rachel_titiriga. In case you’re one of the lucky ones who might not recognize it, the blue thought bubble contains a blue screen of death.