8 Strategies to Remove Distractions to Improve Focus and Productivity

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We think of a distraction as something that has to be negative, but a distraction can be positive. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose.

The number one health podcast in the.

World where we're talking about your personal, emotional, psychological, physical and financial health. And I love diving into different topics with research, science, practical takeaways and real insights that you can start to create an impact in your daily life. I take you on a journey through stories, through science, through strategies, and through steps that you can start applying right away. Thank you so much for being here. I love expressing my gratitude to you because I remember when I used to do events and maybe five people would show up and the fact that we have millions of downloads per episodes now, it makes my heart feel so much joy and I appreciate each and every one of you because you are helping me live my purpose and and I hope I'm helping you live yours as well now. One of the things that gets in the way of our purpose, of our passion, of our potential, one of the things that disturbs our relationships, our productivity, our effectiveness and the biggest thing that takes away joy in our life is distractions. We talk a lot today about the importance of presence, the importance of actually being where we are, of actually being in the moment. We talk about things like mindfulness. How can we be mindful of where we are, who we're with and what we're talking about? But the truth is, all of us, in some way or another, face distractions. Studies show that 70 to 99% of office employees feel distracted. And I want you to take a moment to just reflect on how many times a day you think you get distracted. Is it 0 to 10? Raise your hands unless you're driving. Is it 10 to 20? Keep your hands up. Is it 20 to 30? Keep your hands up. Is It 30 to 40? Keep your hands up. Is IT 50 to 60? So we could go on and on, but I want to share with you. Studies show that we have around 56 disruptions per per day. And we spend a couple of hours every day trying to get back into focus, trying to get back on task. How many of you can say you have felt that? And what are some of our biggest distractions? 55% say their phone. Right. 39% say gossip, which I find fascinating. Another one is emails. Of course, meetings are even considered a distraction. So we have all of these distractions. And psychology shows that there are a few types of distraction. The first is a distraction that is caused by your own mind. This is a Vedic idea that some of our challenges and pain are self inflicted. You've been working too hard, you burnt out, you're burning the candle at both ends. The second is challenges and pain caused by others. Someone brings you a challenge or an issue. And the third, and finally, something's going around in the world. Something's happening outside of that space, but that's affecting you. These are called Adi Atmika, Adi Bhotika and Adi Devika. These are three things that we all experience. Pain and challenges inflicted within our own mind, pain and challenges inflicted by others, and pain and challenges inflicted by what's happening in the world around us. Now, of course we know something here that ultimately the pain that is received from layer two and layer three can be responded to differently and can change how we feel. We can change how we feel by the perspective and story we tell ourselves when we receive information. For example, let's say you receive the information that you didn't get a job. You can either look at that and say, okay, well I guess that job wasn't for me, I'll go find the right one. Or you can look at that and say, it's over. I failed. I don't have any skills. Now notice how neither of those reactions are the truth. Neither of those responses are reality. You could not say that either of them are fact. They are simply subjective responses to a piece of information that you've received. So the first principle for removing distractions is to recognize that you have the power to redefine the story to ask better questions. If I receive someone telling me this needs to be done today, that can be quite alarming. It can feel quite stressful and create pressure and anxiety within me. But then I know that I have the ability to ask the question, when is it due? What does it truly entail? Here's what I'm working on. Do you still want me to prioritize this? Notice how I can either respond in a panic and try and get it all done, or I can process it effectively and discover more information. So when I used to receive that from some of my bosses and managers, I would respond by saying, well, here's what I have on today. Would you like me to prioritize this task over all of these things? Because I believe that some of these things will not get completed. And at the same time, how long do you think this should take? Is there anything I should know about the task? You're now saving yourself time and energy. So panic versus process. The energy we waste in panicking based on the distraction, if that was engaged in the process, would make a huge difference. The second thing I want to share with you today is I want you to think about how you can actually structure how you work so our attention span is better when it's 25 minutes or 55 minutes. We've got in the habit of setting 30 minutes, 60 minute meetings. We don't realize that we can actually set a 15 minute meeting. We can set a 20 minute meeting, we could set a 22 minute meeting. But we know that our attention spans works better in pieces of 25 minutes or 55 minutes. Our max capacity for our attention is 90 minutes roughly. And so you'll see, even on purpose episodes, our podcast episodes, Friday episodes are generally between that 25 to 35 minute mark. And you'll notice that our guest episodes are 55 minutes to 90 minutes mark. We are trying to make it easier for you to digest, to absorb, to immerse. I want you to be able to take out so much from these episodes. So I designed them specifically so that you can get more value out of them. Are you doing that with your tasks? You may be putting two hours aside for something, but you can't work for two hours straight. You might be putting four hours out for something or 15 minutes and you can't get that right. So I want you to divide up your work into 25 minutes, 55 minutes or 90 minutes. I also want you to think about meetings as being more flexible than these hardwired 30 minute, 60 minute meetings as well. Now the third thing here is what you do in that five minute break. It is unbelievable what is achievable in five minutes and what a difference five minutes makes between tasks. Usually what we do is we don't have any time between tasks. We're rushing from one meeting to another and we're multitasking at the same time by scrolling on our phone, on social media, on, you know, looking through our emails, our messages, whatever it may be. Take that five minutes. Instead of having a meeting that ends at 10:30 and another one that starts at 10:30, make the next one start at 10:35. And in those five minutes, you stand up, you walk, you stretch, you hydrate and you look into the distance. You stand up, you stretch and breathe, you walk, you maybe even go outdoors. And then very importantly, you hydrate and you look into the distance. We're so prone at the moment to just be absorbed to things that are close to us. We're looking at our screens, we're looking at our phones can feel quite trapped in. I want you to take an opportunity to expand your vision. Now this third one is really, really interesting. And whether you live with a partner, whether you live with family and you're working from home, or whether you're in an organization and you're working around a team, I want you to think about something. I want you to start creating a teach me how to treat you routine. Some people have called this a user manual or a user guide. So what I mean by this is if I'm working with Radhi, my wife in my house, I will say to her, please do not interrupt me between this time and this time because I'm on a really important call and I won't be available. But I will be available at this time. Now if you do distract me at this time, I won't be able to give you my full attention because I'll be preoccupied. Right. When we educate others on how to connect with us, when we educate others on how to behave with us, we give them a user guide, a user manual or teach me how to treat me right. Teach you how to treat me where I'm saying this is how I feel when I'm in a low mood when I'm tired. This is what I'd love and appreciate. And by the way, what would you like? So this is a two way thing. Because what the Journal of Experimental Psychology found when they covered 300 participants is that being interrupted, even on simple tasks, leads to people making errors more frequently. And the length of the interruption also has its effect on the error rate. As little as 2.8 seconds of interruption doubles the error rate. As little as 4.4 seconds of interruption triples the error rate. Right? And it says that so much that employees usually spend about 11 minutes focused on a project and in one go before being interrupted afterward, they need about 25 minutes to restore their full focus on a project task at hand. Just think about that for yourself. And we may get upset when people distract us and we think they don't know how busy we are. Have we educated them? Have we informed them of what kind of silence we need, what kind of distance we need? Have we actually given them an opportunity to gain an understanding of how to operate with us? Right. Of how to actually deal with us? This can make a huge, huge difference. So create a user guide for how to work with you. Create a user manual of how to work with you. You may be someone who says, I don't like getting lots of notifications. I prefer setting up a time to meet. Or I prefer a phone call. Or you may say, you know what, actually I don't have time for, for phone calls and meetings, I prefer a really well thought out email. Or actually, you know what, just ping me. I love sorting stuff out straight away and that makes it very, very easy for me. This also helps with the idea of helping make your schedule be shared. Having a shared schedule with your partner, having a public schedule in your workplace allows other people to be aware. Now you've got to be careful with that because sometimes if you don't time block out, people just start putting time in your calendar so they shouldn't be able to edit it. But sometimes the visibility is what helps with clarity. Right? Visibility can really, truly help with clarity. Have you ever had one bad moment spoil your entire day or felt overwhelmed for no reason? What about stressed or anxious over that.

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Now, I'm really been talking a lot about how to manage your time, but also how other people affect you. One of the things I find is that when you look at the distraction of social media, phone, tv, streaming, whatever it may be, often that happens because we're trying to read a book or you're trying to listen to an audiobook. You're trying to do something that you think makes you more productive. It makes you happy, it makes you focused. But then naturally you get a bit bored and you think, oh, well, I might as well switch on that show. I might as well scroll on TikTok or Instagram and see what's going on. Here's something that I want you to consider. Cheat on your book with another book, right? You could be reading multiple books at the same time or listening to multiple books at the same time. You can listen to multiple episodes of on purpose at the same time. This really changes the game because what happens is we think that the substitute for our reading is tv. So we go. So I need. I'm tired of education. Let me go to entertainment. Well, what if you cheated on education with more education, right? What if you were able to. To recognize that you can read multiple books at the same time? Why? And how? Because you may be bored of this topic. You may not need to learn more about it. But there may be another book that you really want to read around sport or entertainment as well. So cheat on education with more education. You don't need to cheat on education with entertainment. So sometimes people say, I'm so distracted by my phone, I'm so distracted by this. But really what they're saying is I got bored of doing this thing and instead of finding another thing as a backup, this is why I'm constantly probably have around. You know, I'd say probably about two to three books per month that I'm dabbling in at the same time. And when I'm dabbling in two to three books at the same time, I may read one chapter of each per night because I want to rotate and move around. And that allows me to not only keep my brain moving, it allows me to stop feeling distracted because I'm distracting myself with Something that's beneficial for me. We think of a distraction as something that has to be negative, but a distraction can be positive. And that's where the fifth one comes in, which is this idea of planning your own distractions. Plan your own distractions. Allow yourself to watch a YouTube video, allow yourself to listen to a song. And music's really interesting, actually, because you can listen to music in the background and it almost acts as a distraction. Or you can listen to a podcast in the background of your work, and.

It acts as a distraction because your.

Mind hooks onto it. It feels like it's distracted while you're doing something, and it allows you to even get into a state of flow. I'm sure many of you experience that. It's why people love working out to music. The music kind of becomes the soundtrack of your life, and you're kind of lost in it as you're doing this activity as well.

So it's really fascinating when you can.

Play music in the background to keep the mind preoccupied, or play a podcast in the background to keep your mind preoccupied as well. Now, principle number six. I read from the American Society for Training and Development that the probability of achieving a goal. Listen to this. 10%. If you have an idea, how many people do you meet that have the most brilliant ideas and they think that that idea is worth something, that that idea is going to get them there because their idea is fantastic? The probability of achieving a goal if you have an idea is 10%. Now, that improves to 40% if you decide you will do it. So it shows that that 30% gap is the decision. So often we have a good idea. I've had so many good ideas for a new app, a new delivery service, a new website, a new Web3 platform, but you have to make a decision to do it. So for those of you that feel like you're procrastinating or you're distracted, it's because maybe what you're trying to work on, it's just an idea and you haven't even decided on it. And even if you decide on it, the probability of achieving a goal is still only 40%. That's less than half even when you've decided. Now, that increases to 50% if you make a plan to do it. We've heard this before. You need to make a plan, right? An idea needs to have implementation behind it. But that's only halfway there. That's only halfway there. So if you're one of those people that's saying, jay, I keep getting distracted, but I have a plan, then there's still 50% of growth left. So I don't want you to get discouraged by that. I want you to be encouraged that you're not doing anything wrong. You're just halfway there. And so if you're saying, I have.

A plan, I'm ready to go, I've.

Made a decision, I have a great idea. That's still only 50% probability of achieving a goal. That goes up to 65%. If you promise someone else you will do it. You may promise a family member, you may promise your partner, you may promise your child. Promises make us more focused, right? When we promise someone, I will definitely do that, we feel the pressure. We have the fear that we don't want to let them down. We don't want them to think we're flaky. And that pressure is positive. We use it to focus. We use it to overcome distractions. But here's the part that blows my mind. This number, the probability of achieving a goal skyrockets to 95% if you have a specific accountability appointment with the person to whom you commit. This is why personal trainers, coaches, therapists make such a big difference in our life, because that is an accountability appointment. A class at the gym is an accountability appointment. An art class is an accountability appointment. A mastermind with entrepreneurs and CEOs and networking is an accountability appointment. If you are not doing something as an accountability appointment in your calendar, it won't reach 95%. A lot of the distractions we have is we don't become accountable to someone else. You may say, well, Jay, how can I be accountable to someone else when I'm working from home? I'm working digitally. Maybe I work on my own. Well, why don't you work online with a zoom? You can have a zoom open with a friend who's also working in their home. You're not talking, you're just working together, even if you're virtual. And every time you get distracted, you say, hey, I'm getting distracted. And you have the ability for both of you to remind each other, well, let's get back to it. Or let's. Let's get distracted for five minutes. Let's read a book.

Let's pick up a page.

The idea is that you have an accountability appointment to help you grow. I recently spoke at this amazing company called Atlassian, and they had a survey that shows that employees lose about 31 hours per month in meetings. I think it's even a lot more, but that seems like a fair number because that's numbers lost and it goes on to say that as much as 71% of people define meetings as unproductive, they're still compelled to spend from 15 to 50% of their work time on meetings. Right? And what distracts meetings is 54% of people say small talk and office gossip, side discussions about other projects, 45%, late arrivals and early departures, that's 37% say that. And problems with technology or connectivity, that's 33% say that. So what does that mean? It goes back to the point I made earlier, that we have to be really careful about how much time we place in appointments and meetings versus how much we place on accountability appointments. Now, the next principle is to take a social media fast for a week, seven days. Now, I don't often recommend this, and the reason I'm recommending here is maybe you're just burnt out. Maybe the distractions are just overwhelming. You feel stuck, you feel like you can't move.

You just feel like you're grappling with.

The stress and pressure of having to respond, having to reply. And in that scenario, in that situation, I want you to consider that you don't need to put that pressure on yourself, that it is okay to let go. And actually, if you let go for seven days, you notice how life improves and you notice how little you needed it. I think that's more what it is for me. When I lived as a monk, it's not that I don't do all the things that I stopped doing during those three years. Now I do. Like we didn't watch TV for three years. We didn't listen to other music for three years. Three years. Of course, I listen to those things now. But when you've gone to one extreme, you can actually find the middle better. And I find that's what happens. We're so extremely obsessed. When you look at your screen time and you see 20 hours, hopefully not. Maybe you see 18 hours, maybe you see 16 hours on your screen time, 10 hours on your screen time, and you go, well, wait a minute, I'm at one extreme. Maybe if I go to the other extreme of zero, I'll end up at five. Whereas when you try to get to five, you're still at seven and a half or eight, which feels high, right? If you're at 10 hours of screen time a day and you go to zero, when you come back, you can find that healthy middle ground of five. And I think that's what happens when you go from one extreme to another extreme in any habit is you gain the ability to Come back to the middle ground. And that's a question for yourself. Are you an extremist, or are you a middle person already? If you're a middle person already, you can take more gentle nudges and gentle steps. But if you're someone who's an extremist, sometimes it helps to go to the other extreme. And in order to balance it out, the last way to overcome distractions is to stop being so hard on yourself when you do give in to them. There are some days where I'm so distracted and I just don't beat myself up, and the next day I'm really productive.

And I think what happens to a.

Lot of us is that that day that we're not productive, we beat ourselves up, and that actually reduces our energy. And so the next day, we have even less energy to bring to our tasks. For me, if I have an off day, I allow myself that off day, and the next day, I just get back on with it. Now, you may say, jay, how do you do that? How do you stop. Stop being critical or judgmental of yourself? It's simply by recognizing that it breaks you, that actually it slows you down when you beat yourself up, that you don't become better because you beat yourself up. You don't actually improve. You actually reduce your energy when you go down that road. Right? So I want you to be a bit more compassionate with yourself, be a bit more graceful with yourself. If you had a day of distractions, let it go. It's okay. Tomorrow you get back to it. Tomorrow you stand up to it and you go for it immediately. And distractions are something we're always going to face. So trying to remove distractions completely is a bad idea. We're trying to reduce the amount of time we get distracted so that we can be more focused. My biggest realization, I said this years ago. My biggest realization around this is that the real cure to distraction is not focus or productivity or efficiency. It's attraction. When you're attracted to something, you can't be distracted from it. Have you ever seen someone that you're attracted to? No matter how many people walk in the way, no matter how far they are, you're just glued to that person. Right? You know what that feels like? When you're attracted to something, you can't take your eyes off that person. It's a beautiful experience that we all have. You can't be distracted when you're attracted. Right. When you're attracted to someone, you're not distracted by what else is going on around you. Just glued to them. Even if there's a conversation, you can't hear it. Even if someone's saying something really mean to you, you won't be able to hear it because you're so fixated. We're looking for fixation in our work. When you feel you're too distracted, ask yourself, how can I become more attracted to this? What do I need to do? How do I need to think about this task to become more attracted to it? I'll give you an example. You can convince yourself either through the opportunity you're getting, you can convince yourself through the financial gain. You can convince yourself through the purpose and the meaning behind the task you're doing. Don't give up. Keep looking for attraction, and slowly but surely, you will overcome distraction. I wish you all the best on this journey. I'm sending you so much love. Make sure you tag me on Instagram with your biggest takeaways from this episode, the biggest headlines, the biggest statements that connect with you, the practices that you're going to employ this week, and I'll see you again next week. Thanks for joining me.

Hey, it's Joel and Matt from how to Money. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back prices, they're still high, and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress. That's right, yeah. Each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to how to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is Dr. Jesse Mills, host of the Mailroom podcast. Each January, men promise to get stronger, work harder, and fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? I sat down with psychologist Dr. Steve Poulter to unpack Shame, anxiety and the emotional pain were never taught how to name.

Part of the way through the valley of despair is realizing this has happened and you have to make a choice whether you're going to stay in it or move forward.

Our two part conversation is available now. Listen to the mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your favorite shows.

Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wali.

And I'm Hari Kundabolu.

It's a new year and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health, which means.

Being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that, or am I just depressed? Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone.

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