Trust me, you’ll check your phone a lot less. Lastly, put your phone on vibrate and turn off notifications when you’re ready to work. No Instagram, Pinterest, or Vine-although that may not be the case for, say, a freelance illustrator. For me, that’s Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Why are you actually using some of these social sites? Only use the ones that can provide some sort of value. I stole this tip from Ryan Holiday, author of The Obstacle Is the Way, and one of the most productive people I know. To start, remove Facebook from your phone. Get on the offensive to eliminate distractions from your laptop, phone, and office space. The best way to get into the flow state is by making your environment work for you, not the other way around. The flow state is when we are most fulfilled, a heightened condition of awareness in which we lose our self-consciousness.
They include having clear goals, getting immediate feedback on what we’re doing, and working on tasks that have a progressive difficulty. Those early silent hours provide the best opportunity to enter what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow.” In a TED talk from 2004 that has been viewed more than 2.5 million times, Csikszentmihalyi spoke about a number of factors that help us get into the flow state. The two hours after becoming fully awake are likely to be the best.” As Shane Parrish of Farnam Street said, “Not only do we think better in the wee hours of the morning, but because everyone else is still sleeping, we’re able to focus on what we want to do rather than what we have to do.”ĭan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, echoed this idea in a recent Reddit AMA: “If we could salvage those precious hours, most of us would be much more successful in accomplishing what we truly want…Generally people are most productive in the morning. Our biggest opportunity for getting distraction-free work done is the simplest-waking up early. That’s why it’s essential to be vigilant about cutting out distractions. We don’t even have to pick up the phone or check our email to disrupt our current state of mind. In a study by Michigan State psychologists, participants made mistakes twice as often during tasks when they experienced distractions of just three seconds, like a phone ringing. The costs of getting distracted and failing to do deep work have recently been found to be more costly than we thought.
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Alternatively, deep work includes the kind of tasks that provides value to others and improves your skills, like writing code or drafting a blog post. Newport, author of So Good They Can’t Ignore You, defines shallow work as things that anyone can do, like checking email, sitting in on conference calls, and posting status updates on social media.
Get Into The FlowĬhanging our environment is how we stay focused on what Cal Newport calls deep work. And freelancers are more than capable of doing both. Remaining focused is a matter of changing your working environment, not just trying harder. The fact is our willpower is limited and should be reserved for important decisions throughout the day. One, we are bombarded by distractions more than ever, and two, we still believe we can simply use our willpower to push through. The reason why we aren’t getting better at staying focused is twofold. Studies by Harvard researchers have also shown that when we are distracted from what we are doing, whether it’s work, sex, or reading, we are less happy. Constantly checking for likes, favorites, and retweets can actually cause anxiety. And that’s before factoring conference calls or meetings into the equation.Įven more, all these distractions can have a detrimental effect on our mental health. Once distracted, it can take workers up to 23 minutes to get back to the task at hand. Today, workers are interrupted about every 10 minutes by instant messages, tweets, and Facebook messages. Without laser-like focus, it’s easier than ever to succumb to “Resistance“ and drift from our work. It’s a battle freelancers fight every day. I could check Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook. I could get food or another cup of coffee. I could check my phone for texts or emails. Looking up from my laptop, there are plenty of ways to procrastinate. Career Advice Fighting Distraction: A Freelancer’s Toolkit for Focused Work By Michael Tunney January 16th, 2015