How to Stay Focused and Highly Productive Under Any Circumstances

It’s easy to be productive when you’re in the right circumstances. Quiet coffee shops and empty offices are great for your productivity. But you may find working from home to be more of a challenge. Your favorite websites are only a click away and your favorite at-home distractions are only in the other room. And that’s to say nothing about spouses or children who deservedly want your attention. How do you stay productive in the real world?

The short answer: Distractions can only distract you if you let them.

If you don’t do anything to prep yourself or your environment for your work, you can expect temptation and distraction around every corner. It’s inevitable. But if you take the time to prepare properly to get work done, distractions can largely become a thing of the past.

Disable Notifications and Other Beeping Distractions

It doesn’t matter how strong your willpower is, how disciplined you are, or how motivated you are — ringing and beeping from your phone and computer will distract you. You’ll get less done and your work will be worse.

You don’t get distracted because you’re undisciplined. It’s just biology. Animals evolved to be sensitive to danger. In the wild, sudden loud noises often correspond to danger, so we evolved to be attentive to them. Tech manufacturers take advantage of this instinct by loading smartphones up with urgent dings and beeps.

Most smartphones ship with something called “focus mode” or “work mode” that disables all notifications except repeat calls from people on your contacts list (in case of an emergency). If you plan on getting some serious work done, enable your phone’s focus mode.

Use Content Blockers to Stop Yourself from Habitually Procrastinating

Just as dangerous as external distractions are internal distractions. You know the feeling — you want to get some work done, but you aren’t sure what your next step is, or you really don’t want to do the work, and the next thing you know you’re scrolling /r/houseplants for the third time that day.

Again, no need to beat yourself up for this. There are many reasons people’s attention chronically wanders, from evolutionary and biological pressures to modern early childhood environments that promote the development of disorders such as ADHD. The best thing for you to do is accept that your wandering attention is a natural part of being human.

That doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about it. You can install content blockers like SelfControl. These applications allow you to block certain websites and apps for a fixed amount of time. They are a great tool for helping you stay focused.

Clean Your Workspace and Prep Your Tools Before Getting Started

When you’re used to a cluttered environment, you don’t notice the effect it has on your productivity. When your desk is always a mess and finding documents and resources you need always takes ten or fifteen minutes, you regard it as a natural part of work.

But it’s not. Far from it. When you have a tidy and organized workspace — digital or physical — you are far more productive. Instead of spending ten or fifteen minutes looking for the resource you need, you spend less than ten seconds on it. Instead of only having the time or energy for a little paperwork or a few phone calls, you can plow through all your tasks.

I meet a lot of disorganized digital professionals. They don’t know where their assets are and they always need a few days to dig through their files to get me the resources I’m requesting. It’s no surprise to me that their projects come in over time and budget. It’s much more efficient to stay organized and never lose or need to reproduce assets in the first place.

Break Tasks into Smaller Steps so You Don’t Feel Overwhelmed

We’ve all sat down to get something done and thought “Ugh, wow, I don’t want to do this.” We identify the feeling as demotivation or procrastination, but a big part of that feeling comes from overwhelm. We look at the entire project as one and feel tired just thinking about doing it.

One way to manage this feeling is to break projects down into smaller parts. Instead of imagining yourself doing the whole project and feeling tired already, think about doing the next smallest part of the project.

• If you need to declutter your entire house, pick one corner of one room and declutter that corner.
• If you need to do a paper for academic work, sit down and write a 200-word outline of your paper. Then write one 300-word intro paragraph for one of the headers.
• If you need to call all your vendors and check numbers on something, start by making a spreadsheet with all the calls you need to make and the questions you need to ask. Then you can make the calls one at a time without feeling overwhelmed.

In Conclusion

Productivity isn’t a matter of willpower, personal discipline, or moral superiority. The only thing keeping a lot of people from being productive is simply that they haven’t built productive habits for themselves. You can make yourself much more productive with these simple changes:

1. Turn off your phone and other distractions when you want to work.
2. Use content blockers to keep yourself on task.
3. Clean your workspace before you begin, whether that’s your desk at home or your computer desktop.
4. Break larger tasks down into smaller steps so you don’t feel overwhelmed.

Want to Quickly & Easily Boost Your Productivity?

Imagine what life would be like if you had the time for what matters most. What could you accomplish if busywork didn’t take all your time?

My free ebook 5 Easy Ways to Boost Your Productivity will help. 5 Easy Ways to Boost Your Productivity will teach you simple techniques you can use to dramatically increase your productivity without any additional work.

Get 5 Easy Ways to Boost Your Productivity now!