Boost Your Concentration With a Distraction Diary
Are you reading this as a way to postpone doing something else? When you finish reading this article, are you back to work – or are you going to look for something else to distract you, if only for a moment?
If you’re looking for a way to channel your distractions towards something more productive, a Distraction Diary can help you understand why your brain wants to think about everything else other than the task ahead of you. It can also help you figure out when to get started and when it might be time to take a break.
As Kimberly Bui explains in her book The Financial Diet :
My Distraction Log is essentially a spreadsheet in which I constantly track my urges to check my phone. I am making a list of columns and at the top of each column I write down any reasons I might get distracted. For me, it’s social media, emails / texts, personal finance / blog updates, and messing around.
I tried to keep a diary of distractions and in addition to writing down what distractions I was tempted to, I also asked myself why I was looking for a distraction. I quickly realized that I have two huge distraction triggers:
- When I needed to solve a problem I didn’t know how to solve yet
- When I had to make a decision, I didn’t want to make it.
In other words: I felt the urge to do something else because I had not yet figured out how to do what was in front of me.
This impulse of distraction can be a sign that you really need a break – and if it’s a break that takes you away from your workplace, that’s even better. There is a reason why so many people get their best ideas when they do something that allows their minds to rest and reflect.
However, sometimes you don’t need as much of a break as you just need to bend your fist and do the hard work. Complete a boring and difficult task. Write a complex email. Tell somebody no. These tasks will not disappear until you complete them.
Bui adds another component to his Distraction Diary:
[…] whenever I think of something I need to do, like send an email or order a gift, I write it down as a task under the table instead of actually starting the task. This way, I don’t forget about the reminders popping up in my head, but I also prevent myself from plunging headlong into a completely different task than what I’ve already focused on.
This is one of the core principles of David Allen’s “ Getting Things Done” productivity system that I’ve been practicing for over a decade: if you’re working on something and an unrelated task, question, or reminder comes to your mind, write that thought down in a notebook, and then go back to what you did before.
Bui notes that her decision to keep a distraction journal was also inspired by Sam Laura Brown’s podcast The Perfectionism Project , in which Brown advises listeners to “keep a list of all the distractions that are tempting you so you can focus on the task at hand and keep track of whatever. it needs to be done later. ” If you haven’t yet implemented this kind of note-taking in your life, you may be surprised at its effectiveness.