5 Helpful Hints to Stay Focused Working a Desk Job in the Digital Age

We’ve all been there.

The day is just starting. You just brewed some tea, sat down, and are ready to finish up the project that you have been working on. BEEP! Oh, look, I got a text from my mom. Surely it is important, so you pull out your phone and see that she wants to know when you are coming back home again. Next thing you know, you wonder, I wonder what’s on the front page of Reddit right now? I’ll just check for a second. Aaaaaaand 30 minutes have gone, and you have yet to accomplish anything. Initiate guilt and self-berating because yesterday when you did the same thing you said tomorrow you wouldn’t waste 15 minutes trapped /r/awww. 

If you are like me and have been through this more times than you should, you want it to stop. Luckily,  I’ve compiled a list of tips and tricks that I have started implementing into my daily work routine in order to maximize productivity while reducing the amount of time distracted by the ever increasing number of distractions we find at our disposal in this increasingly connected world. 

 

1. Put Your Phone Out of View

Just hide it, put it in your backpack, or even just behind your succulent’s pot. We humans are like flies and just seeing the phone light up will draw our attention away from the work we are doing. I have found that if I just simply put my phone in my backpack, then set a specific amount of time before I am allowed to look at, I am much less inclined to try to look at whatever is happening in it.

2. Use A Self Control App

 

For Phones: Forest

One trick that I have found recently is the app, Forest. While you have the open, there is a little tree that is growing in your phone. You set the duration, so if you say I want to be off my phone for 30 minutes, you can set the timer, and in 30 minutes your tree will have grown and is added to your forest for the day. It may sound simple, but it is surprising how effective the motivation to keep your tree alive can be. At one point, I went to check reddit for a second, suddently a notification told me that my tree would die if I didn’t immediately return to the app. So, I returned, didn’t check reddit, and got back to my work. 

 

For Desktop: Self Control 

My go-to app for self control on my desktop is the Self Control app. It is pretty simple. You just add websites to your “black list,” which is a list of websites that you want blocked for a specific amount of time. Once you hit the start button, you won’t be able to access these websites until the time you have set is finished. So, if you chronically read Wired articles or are addicted to BBC, you can block these websites for an hour to really knock through some work. 

 

3. Disable Notifications

Now, this suggestion depends on how much your job requires communication. If you are a sales representative who needs to constantly be in contact with people, this may not be the best for you; however, for designers, programmers, and coders alike this can be helpful. Just, disable any notifications on your computer that don’t directly relate to your day’s objectives. So, mute the messages app, the silly GIFS slack channel, the e-mail notifications, really anything that might pop up and interupt your flow. Sometimes it can be difficult, and your friends and family might be mad at you for not responding to their messages immediately, but in the end things can wait until you have reached a point in your work that warrants pause. 

 

4. Set Up Long Music Playlists

If you are a music lover like many of the people on my office there will always be something playing either in your headphones or the background throughout the day. Music is a wonderful tool to stay engaged with your work, but it can also be distracting. My biggest issue is what I can only refer to as MADD or Musical Attention Deficit Disorder. I put on one album, get to work, then the album is over. Welp, guess I need to go look for another album that I enjoy, ACTUALLY, I want to listen to this song, no maybe that one. Picking the music you want to listen to can take time and be distracting, so I recommend creating playlists that are at least an hour long to listen to. Make sure the most you might have to do is hit the next button, and let them roll as you crank out your work. 

 

5. Split Your Workload Into Short, Specific Goals

Whenever you are given a giant task it complete it is easy to get overwhelmed. This feeling can make starting difficult: think the artist with a blank canvas. When the boss hands a giant stack of tasks into your Asana, it can be crippling.  I recommend thinking not about the workload at large, but work tiny step by tiny step, and don’t take breaks until you have completed a certain task. For me, if I work a one hour sprint to complete one subtask that I have set for myself, then I may allow myself one Mashable article as a sort of “cookie.” It may seem simple, but I’ve found myself much more distracted when I just work away with no small tasks set in place to accomplish before giving my mind a mental pause. 

Life can get distracting, especially in an age where working at a desk is filled with the potential for an infinite number of distractions. I hope that some of these tips and tricks will help you stay focused while at your desk.