The Recovering Perfectionist
The Recovering Perfectionist
How do I stop getting distracted when working from home?
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Hello, gorgeous recovering perfectionists. I'm Claire Riley, and you're listening to episode number 77 of the Recovering Perfectionist Podcast. Today we are talking about how to stop getting distracted when you work from home. This is a big one, and we all are challenged by this at some stage. You can head on over to clairy.co forward slash pod forward slash 77 for the show notes and all the links as well. This is the Recovering Perfectionist Podcast, and I'm your host, Claire Riley. Alrighty, so let's jump in. This is a bit of a juicy one. There are so many distractions as we know when we are working from home. I won't even delve into why we get distracted and what procrastination means, especially for us recovering perfectionists among us. That is a whole other can of fish. Can of worms, whatever that saying is. So I just want to share with you a couple of things that I try and do to eliminate distractions as much as possible, not even delving into things like mindset or strategy or purpose or anything like that. I'm just going to talk about some really practical tips that might help you as well. So the first one is to make sure that your notifications are turned off. Now, when you are working on something very focused, there's all the studies that tell you how long it takes you, once you've been distracted from a task, to get back into it. Some of them say it's an extra 45 seconds, some of them say it's an extra 15 minutes. Who knows? Depends on who you are, depends on what the task is, depends on a whole heap of different factors. But it's pretty bloody obvious that if you're working on a very focused thing and you get distracted doing something else, it does take a little bit of mind power to get back into the thing you're working on. And most of us would rather go and gaze into the fridge or something instead. So turning off notifications on your laptop and your phone and using the do not disturb button, which is available on most devices, is really, really helpful. It helps you to enforce your boundaries, it helps those around you to understand what the boundaries are and what will happen if they try and cross those boundaries. But it definitely just takes less of that mental having to be really self-disciplined to not look at the notifications if you don't even know the notifications are there to start with. So number one, turn off your notifications. Number two, you've heard me talk about this before, Pomodoro work style sessions are absolutely awesome in terms of your brain capacity and following or staying in focus with something for a short amount of time. So in a nutshell, the Pomodoro uh Pomodoro session for work looks like we do focused work for 25 minutes with all distractions and everything else shut down other than the task we're working on. Then we have a five-minute break, also timed. Then we do another 25 minutes of work, five-minute break, 25 minutes of work, and then you have a slightly longer break, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever feels good. Um, I find that when I do Pomodoro sessions, I'm much more productive because I know I've only got 25 minutes to do something. So I'm more likely to be focused so I can get it done, or I can progress as fast as I can through that task. Sometimes you might be able to do two or three small tasks in 25 minutes, sometimes you'll be able to knock off a portion of a bigger task. Whatever it is, it means that you're very focused in what you're working on. The um the third, the third step, which kind of ties in with this one, is to be very mindful and um strategic about how you're going to use those break times as well. So for some people, um, it's really important to be able to do other things around the home. A part of the benefit of working from home is that we uh if we if you structure your structure your week right, you don't have to do so much housework and all the other normal stuff that you do in the evenings and the mornings and the weekends because you're actually there during the day. So you can kind of multitask, which means you get more free time, which is a very big appeal of working for yourself and working from home, if we're going to be smart about it and not let it you not use it as a distraction or a procrastination tool. Um but we're a bit more specific. So to tie these two in together, the Pomodoro sessions and being focused about the breaks, is what there's a couple of really important elements. So during the break time, it is very important to do something that's physically and mentally very different, and you want to get up and move your body. Really important to do that. Stretch your arms, stretch your legs, stretch your eyes, look at something different, um, be really mindful about what your body's doing physically, hydrate and eating and all of that sort of thing. Um, but something that I also really love to do is I jot down a list of things that I'd like to do in my five-minute breaks because what that forces me to do is get up and actually do something different. So I'll get up and I'll make a phone call to a friend, or I'll get up and I will go and hang out the washing, or I'll get up and I'll go and check the mailbox just to go and get some fresh air and sunshine. So I'm really specific about that. Um I need to personally, and a lot of people are probably the same, to be very mindful that I don't get to the 25 minutes and I'm like, oh, I'll just do another 10 minutes so I can finish this one task. Because when we do that, and I love to hear if this has happened to any of you as well, is we do the 25 and then we stretch it out another five and we stretch it out another five. For me, all the distractions start to come back in at about the 35, 40 minute mark, and I'll start going and checking Facebook, or I'll get up and do something random anyway, and then I lose the structure because my brain has said enough. Whereas if I get up and do the break after 25 minutes, I can keep going for a total of an hour and a half. Right? So actually building those breaks in there makes you more productive and you'll last longer anyway. So that's those two bits Pomodoro sessions with breaks and being really strategic about what you're going to do with those break times as well. The next thing is that I love to change where I'm working from. I find if I'm sitting in one spot all day, my brain must get bored, my body gets a bit tired, everything starts to feel a bit sore, and that sort of thing. So during the day, most of the time, I would probably work in three different places minimum during the day. Sometimes I'm sitting at my kitchen desk, sometimes sorry, kitchen desk, it is a kitchen desk, really, it's a kitchen table or desk. Sometimes I sit on the couch, sometimes I go and sit outside, sometimes I stand up at the kitchen counter. I just like to move around. It actually stops me from getting so distracted because I'm not bored and uncomfortable. If I physically pick up my laptop and go somewhere else, I can get back into it fairly quickly. So have a couple of spots around your home that you can go to. That might also just mean having a space where you can sit down and stand up, just having that little change in your brain. It feels like, you know, change in this sense probably isn't quite as good as the holiday, but you know, it is pretty good. So change up where you're working from. And the last thing is to structure your time and social media usage. So your social media usage is one of those things that for anyone, whether we work from home or not, is a massive time suck. It is a massive distraction, and it's one of those things, like I've said in previous episodes, where we sit down to do a two-minute job and it's an hour later and we realize we've just been procrastinating through Instagram. So again, working in some strategy and some um dedicated time for your social media so that your internal need for social media isn't screaming, please let me just have five minutes all day. Um, you know that you've got half an hour at the end of the day or half an hour in your morning routine, which we talked about on a previous episode. Um, that sort of thing. So actually working social media time into your schedule. That might mean putting it into your calendar, it might mean just allowing yourself half an hour to do whatever you want to do on social media for a half an hour before you go and collect the kids from school or whatever it is, but actually give yourself that so that you're not worried that you're going to miss out and you know that you've got this structured and scheduled time in there. So I hope those tips have been helpful. They're some of the things that I find always sort of creep back in and really do impact our productivity if they're not being um looked after. And so hopefully that's helpful. I'd love to know if there's any other distractions or any other things that you do to stop yourself getting distracted when you work from home or what your biggest distractions are. Um, and if there's any specific tips, let me know and I'll do an episode on it as well. Thanks everyone. I'll see you on the next episode. Bye.