Dealing with Distractions

If you want to get stuff done, if you want to work less hours and earn more money, 0:00 you need to deal with the distractions that surround you everyday. 0:04 The starting point for that is being aware of what they are, 0:09 and boy are there a lot of them in the world of a web designer. 0:12 There is instant messaging, there's Twitter, Facebook, RSS, web browsing, 0:17 email, phone calls. The whole environment can be distracting if it's not designed right. 0:23 You need to take some active steps to remove those distractions. 0:29 Otherwise you're going to find yourself working at midnight every night. 0:33 Now if you're a night owl that might be perfectly fine, 0:37 but you don't want to be working from 6 in the morning too. 0:40 First thing you need to do is get rid of Twitter and Facebook. 0:44 Don't have them constantly open. 0:47 I know this is a stupid little thing, 0:50 but it makes a huge difference to the amount of time you work. 0:52 I'll let you in on a secret. Most days I only work about 6-½ hours. 0:56 Reason? Closing Facebook and Twitter. 1:00 Well at least some of the time anyway. 1:04 Keep your faffing activities to a minimum. 1:07 I don't even know if faffing is an American word you can understand, 1:09 but I'm talking about things like RSS, web browsing, all of those things that you do 1:13 as a distraction from what you should actually be doing. 1:18 One of the ways of doing that is to isolate those activities 1:23 away from your work environment. 1:26 So in other words, do your web browsing and your RSS feeds 1:29 and your social networks and that kind of stuff— 1:32 do it on your iPhone or your iPad, not on your work machine. 1:34 Get them out of sight while you're trying to get stuff done. 1:37 Another piece of advice when it comes to getting work done 1:43 is never try and multitask. It just doesn't work. 1:46 We don't, as human beings, have the capability to multitask. 1:51 Yes we can switch very fast from one task to another, 1:56 but that's not the same. 1:59 Moving from task to task will ultimately slow you down. 2:01 If you're somebody that struggles to concentrate for a long length of time 2:05 like myself—I consider me to have the attention span of a small child— 2:09 but the way I get round this problem is by working in sprints. 2:15 There's something called the Pomodoro Technique which is really simple. 2:19 You work for 25 minutes, you have a 5-minute rest, 2:23 and then you work for another 25 minutes. 2:26 So you have 25 minutes solid on one task before moving to another. 2:29 So it means that you can get significant work done. 2:34 Talking of distractions, turn off those automatic notifications. 2:39 I calculated, for example, that with the average email client like Outlook, 2:43 on its default settings you will get interrupted 31,680 times per year 2:48 by that little ping notification of a new email coming in. 2:55 Now that is a huge amount of interruptions, 3:01 and let's be honest, every time it pings we have to go and look 3:04 even though 90% of the time it's just spam and doesn't matter anyway. 3:08 So turn off those notifications. 3:13 You don't need to spend your whole life in your email client. 3:15 Only answer the phone or check email or even IM at set times within the day. 3:19 That's why the sprints work quite well because you can have 3:26 certain sprints at certain times of the day for making phone calls or answering email 3:29 or using IM. 3:34 Now you might be getting a bit twitchy at this point. 3:36 The thing is is closing email, not answering the phone, and not having IM on 3:40 is very alien to us as web designers. 3:47 We're used to being connected all the time, 3:51 and most of us can't comprehend a world where we're not constantly checking email. 3:53 What if a client has an urgent inquiry? 3:58 What if they need me to do something right now? 4:01 I can understand that and that fear of being out of touch, 4:04 but the reality is is 90% of the communications that come in 4:08 are not time-sensitive. 4:13 So all of those interruptions disrupt you from the work you should be doing, 4:15 but for those 10% of communications that are urgent, 4:21 I'd encourage you to look at various tools out there that help you manage it. 4:26 For example, there is a tool called awayfind.com 4:30 which basically allows you to identify certain emails that you know are urgent 4:34 from a certain person or mentioning a certain keyword, 4:39 and they will then forward those on as a notification to your phone. 4:42 That way you don't need to have your email client open the whole time, 4:46 and you will only be interrupted with the most vital of emails. 4:50 There are also virtual services that will answer the telephone for you. 4:55 For example, in the U.K. there is a service called moneypenny, 5:00 but there are equal other services in various other countries 5:03 that provide the same service. 5:06 What you do is you forward your phone number onto this, 5:08 and a real person will answer the phone, take a message, 5:11 and will contact you if it's urgent. 5:14 So there are ways where you can close down those distractions, 5:17 where you can close down email and the things that interrupt you 5:21 allowing you to get big chunks of work done without alienating clients 5:24 and without getting all twitchy. 5:28