October 2019 – HRZN HNTR

Managing Distractions in the Home Office

I want to get a bit more specific on how I manage distractions. I have mentioned before that the distractions of a home office can often be the biggest obstacle to productivity. Distractions increase the time it takes to get things done, impact the overall quality of our output and even prevent us from completing tasks altogether.

This is a bit of an extension and follow up to my previous posts, “Is Working From Home Awesome? Here are my Pros and Cons”, “Working From Home Survival Guide – The Fundamentals of Doing Well.” In these posts, I highlight my perspective on the different challenges of working from and then go a bit further into how to overcome some of these challenges. If you haven’t had a chance to check out either of those posts I encourage you to give them a quick read.

Before I get into it, I am aware that different households offer their own unique distractions. I can’t cover every distraction out there but I feel this can help with just about any.

First off, there are really two types of distractions to understand. The first type is the external distractions. These external distractions are things that are going on outside of your office in your surrounding environment that you can not really control. An example would be in my case, my kids running around the house playing, often passing just outside my office doors. It’s the noisy stuff that can break focus and concentration. Another example is things like emails, texts, phone calls, notifications, etc. Essentially all the things your technology wants to throw at you to get your attention.

The second type of distraction is what I refer to as an internal distraction. For me, this is all the mental stuff and honestly where I struggle the most. All the ideas, worries, thoughts, things to remember, things to do and so on. The funny thing about the internal distractions is that they really have nothing to do with working from home. Of course, since being at home can keep you in a home state of mind, often there are things on your mind that may not be if you were working elsewhere.

Some of these are specific to either external or internal but there is a lot of overlap and fixing one seems to help the other.

Isolate yourself

I talk about this in the “Survival Guide” post. It is important to have a dedicated area that is separate from the rest of the house. Not only is this important for a handful of other reasons when it comes to working in general, but it is also a clear physical separation from the most common distractions. In addition, I find that using a dedicated office space in my house helps me get into the right state of mind for work. This on its own quiets a lot of the internal distractions and allows me to focus on what I need to be doing.

Do not try to control what you can’t control

It might seem a little counterintuitive at first. Even though I am in a dedicated office space with doors, there can still be a lot of noise and chaos in the house. In the example I gave of my kids running around making noise, the initial thought might be to make them be quiet. Here is why I don’t like the idea of trying to control what happens in the house. First of all, I don’t think it’s fair for me to say how loud or playful they can be, so long as it’s within reason. After all, this is their house too. Just because my office is in the house, it doesn’t mean I should expect my house to become like an office. I wouldn’t tell my neighbor not to cut their grass during the day. This is because I know it’s unreasonable and that it won’t work. Even if I did try to create the unreasonable expectation of quiet while I work, I know kids are kids. Honestly, I want them to play and have fun and run around the house. So if I insist on quiet, but know it is an unlikely outcome, the noise will only become more distracting. In the long run, by embracing the reality of the noise and chaos in and out of the house, I have become so accustomed to it that I don’t even notice it anymore. If I don’t notice it, it’s not a distraction. Think about this for any distractions that you really don’t have control over, if you accept it, you will get used to it.

Control what you can control

While there is a lot I don’t feel I can control around me, there is a lot that I can. The other example I used of technology being a distraction is representative of something I can control. I use my computer and my phone all day long for work. This means I have things popping up constantly with their little notification noises. For a long time, I felt captive to these notifications allowing them to distract me and change my behavior. There were two ways I could handle this, turn off all notifications, or train myself to work through them. Like I mentioned, for a long time the notifications prompted my immediate response because I knew the communications behind the notifications are really the lifeblood of my business. While turning them off and selecting specific times to check and respond to messages is a great approach, I knew it wouldn’t work for me. Rather, I forced myself to take control of the way I responded by making my priority whatever I was currently doing. I eventually noticed that if I got myself focused strictly on completing the task in front of me, the anticipation and urge to check messages went away. It took time, but now I can work right through all the messages as they come in because I know I will get to it when I am ready. As a matter of fact, as I type this, both my phone and computer are dinging with emails but I know I want to finish this paragraph first. All I do is remind myself that I am in control of where I look and what I do in response and then adjust accordingly. This works for me but if it wasn’t working or it stops, I will just turn off my notifications and start checking things periodically.

The important take away here is to honestly confront what it is that you can take control of and make the adjustments. A lot of it comes down to discipline. You are in control of whether you spend your day on social media or working. The internet offers an endless menu of potential distractions, you just have to confront whether you are in control or not, and adjust accordingly if needed.

Write it down, Organize, Prioritize, Execute

Often one of the most significant distractions for me is the feeling of being overwhelmed. It makes it difficult to know where to start and furthermore makes it almost impossible to stay focused on anything. An exisiting part of my daily morning routine is to sit down and actually write out everything I need to do in my notebook. This keeps me from feeling overwhelmed but even still, things come up that can upset the balance of my entire day quite regularly. When this happens, in addition to everything I else I have to do I find myself getting distracted by the volume of work that just came across my desk. So I do the same thing again. I write it down, not necessarily just what I have to do but everything. I write out on paper what questions I have, what I know, what information I need etc. Then I organize all the info, prioritize my next task and get into it. It seems simple because it is, but often people fail to do this. The feeling of being overwhelmed can lead to anxiety quickly so getting a jump on this keeps my logical brain in control and subsequently keeps me moving forward.

Do this. Even if you are not overwhelmed but finding yourself distracted, write down everything you need to do or even everything on your mind. By simply externalizing my thoughts I find I can approach them more logically and act on them without feeling distracted.

Music

Music can become a constant that drowns out everything around which then allows you to focus more effectively. I listen to quite a bit of music of all types depending on what I am doing and what is working. I don’t get fancy about it, just some headphones and a playlist. The important thing is to be aware of when the music goes from eliminating distractions to becoming a distraction of its own. Lately, I have switched to instrumental music like classical and playlists like “Sounds of Power”. The key is to find what works best for you.

Work Toward Specific Objectives

This one is a bit of a no brainer for sure. Of course, specific goals and objectives are critical in business and in life. The reason I bring it up is in my experience, working from home can make it a bit tricky to always stay in the work mindset. Not having any oversight or someone telling you what to do makes it easy to lose sight of keeping specific objectives in front of you. What can happen is work can become more about reacting rather than being proactive. Again, I get into this more in my “Survival Guide” post but this is specifically important when it comes to distractions. There is a common phrase about how an idle mind is the devil’s playground. When I catch myself not really driving toward something specific, it’s like there are all kinds of room in my brain for distractions to dig in and take up space. On the contrary, when I am busy working on specific tasks and projects, it’s almost like the resulting focus builds up a shield against distractions. So that’s really it. If you are finding yourself struggling to stay busy, it is likely that the distractions will find you or rather, you will find them.

One Foot In

Among the many challenges of being self-employed, one in particular recently came up for me. The idea that regardless of what you are doing, it seems that there always has to be at least one foot in your business at all times. Of course, there is a nuance to how different businesses operate and therefore the role of a business owner will be different, but to me, this hits home.

I recently went on vacation with my family. An actual proper vacation to someplace we had never been before. Most people when they travel like this will put it for their paid time off, set up an out of office message and then check out.

One of the many benefits of self-employment is freedom and flexibility with my time and schedule. Because of this, I get access to more travel and time out of the office than the average vacation benefits package allows. However, most of these little trips and excursions I am always aware that I may have to do some work. To be honest, I am certain I will have to work, therefore I fully expect it and plan for it. Vacations are about new experiences, spending time with family and relaxing. So what makes this a problem is the fact that I never completely check out. This prevents me from feeling fully immersed in a trip, consequently, robbing me of the experiences and time with my family.

I referred to this most recent trip as a “proper vacation” due to the unique nature of the planning, the location and everything about it. It was just different, it was new, bigger, and expectations were higher. This caused me to want to immerse myself in the trip with my family and not have to work at all. Going into the trip I knew it was unlikely I could disconnect this way, but I was going to try. Once on the trip, I tried not to work and to trust my out of office messages and go all in. But just a few days in, I found myself getting aggravated, frustrated and seemed to have a short fuse. Traveling with kids can be challenging sure, but this was different. I realized that I was feeling guilty like I had abandoned something. it was becoming apparent this approach of ignoring work was ruining my vacation more than it was enhancing it.

What I realized was, that by ignoring all work I felt a complete lack of control. The feeling of not having control over my business was causing me to get frustrated and angry. I had to think about this for a while because giving up control over your work while on vacation was the idea right? Aren’t you supposed to check out and disconnect from work on vacation? That’s what I had always been lead to believe.

What was troubling to me was knowing that things that were going on that were not being handled. My emails weren’t being forwarded to someone else. There was no customer service department to cover for me. It was knowing that at the end of the trip I was going to have to deal with everything and I had no idea what that was looking like.

It ultimately came down to me acknowledging to myself that no matter how badly I want to and might need to, at this stage of my career I simply can not check out completely. Even if for my sanity and ability to enjoy my trip, I had to keep that one foot in. So I thought about it a bit and decided that rather than stew in the aggravation or give in completely to working throughout the trip, I had to figure out a balance that made sense. I decided I would give work just 20 minutes.

So one morning I grabbed my computer, sat on my bed and got to it. It is important to emphasize that I didn’t do any real work as I refer to it, only basic communication. I sent a handful of emails, keeping it short and brief, reminding everyone I was out of the country and couldn’t do anything until I got back in the office.

So, did it help? For sure, and for the same reasons that getting work done always helps. I felt back in control and out of the dark. Furthermore, I felt like I had a good idea of what I needed to do when I did get back. Just eliminating the questions mark of what faced me on Monday morning was enough to calm the temper.

I expected to go on this trip and not leave one foot in but it didn’t work. I learned a lot about how I operate in this position and adjusted which is all I can do. For now, I guess I will always have one foot in. It’s not ideal and likely not recommended but learning to confront it, and find the correct balance is the best way forward.

How I Conquer Demotivation

Let me know if this is familiar to you? Everything is going well. You are getting things done at work as well as getting after new goals. You feel motivated, creative, and in control. You are firing on all cylinders, cranking out good work with a lot of optimism and an almost subconscious clarity. Then this happens. One morning, you walk into your office, sit down, and nothing. For whatever reason, the drive and motivation that seemed like it was just there, is nowhere in sight. You think, maybe you are overtired or perhaps the weekend was a little too rough and it’s just a bad day.

But what about when that is not the case and it’s not just a bad day? Rather, a day you had wanted to get a lot done but, it’s just not there. It doesn’t make sense, does it?

This was a very familiar pattern for me. In addition to running my business, I take on new projects in both my personal and professional life regularly. I experience a massive amount of motivation to take action in directions I want to go, but, for whatever reason, it can all seem to disappear. My creativity and optimism replaced with frustration and doubt. Ending up in survival mode only getting the things done that need to get done while ignoring everything else. Essentially, I stall out.

So how do I deal with this? What adjustments did I make to eliminate this stalled out effect from demotivation?

First, I had to confront this idea of motivation. For me, motivation has two separate types. The first type is like a microburst. This motivation is full of confidence that aggressively drives change through new ideas and actions. The second is a more long term general motivation. It focuses on big-picture stuff, paying for life’s necessities and being able to retire one day. After differentiating between the two, I became aware that these microbursts are where I struggled the most.

By acknowledging this, I also became aware of the patterns and that the pattern repeats. The motivation never truly goes away, it just takes breaks and unfortunately, I can not control that.

The solution I realized was that I needed to get consistent. That regardless of how I felt, I needed to keep working on my goals. I knew that If I only took meaningful action during the periods of motivation, I wasn’t going to get anywhere. To truly get where I wanted to go I had to build momentum, not stall it. Consistency is critical to build momentum and to be truly consistent means working through the days of demotivation.

So how to get consistent? It starts with how I approach a goal or objective. I essentially reverse engineer my goals and break them down into their critical success factors. Depending on the size of the goal and what is truly involved will dictate how formal this needs to be. In new business ventures, we call this the Business Plan. For smaller goals and objectives I don’t believe it needs to be as formal. The important first step is making sure I understand what I ultimately want to accomplish and then clearly write it out. Not just the what, but the why. Also known as a “Mission and Vision Statement.” Sometimes, simply reading this is enough to get back in gear when I am feeling demotivated. This first step helps align my new goals and objectives with my long term big-picture goals and objectives. This helps move the microburst’s motivation into the general big picture motivation.

Taking time to do this in the height of the microburst also creates clarity. I realized that by aligning my goals and achieving clarity, I also reaffirmed my purpose or, the why.

Now it made sense, without clarity, goal alignment, and purpose, how could I ever expect myself to stick to anything?

Now that my purpose is established, I pull the critical success factors further apart into the required steps and actions to get me from where I am, to where I want to go. Then I make a plan.

In the past, I would rely on the aggressive periods of motivation and drive to get everything done. I realized this is because when I felt like this I could shoot from the hip and do alright. I never took the time to make a good plan.

Simply having a plan does not prevent the motivation from going away. What changes is what I am now prepared to do when it is gone. Rather than shut down, I fall back on the plan. I don’t need to be motivated to execute actions, I need to be disciplined. I may not be able to control my motivation, but I can control my discipline. Discipline is what separates those who do, from those who don’t do. Successful people do not wake up every morning firing on all cylinders, they just have the discipline and grit to keep working on the things they know they believe in.

Yet still, I am not perfect, far from it. I still slack off and have days that I would rather do nothing at all than a little bit of work. Making these adjustments has significantly improved how I operate by making sure I always have something to do. I no longer can make the excuse that I will work on something when I am motivated and in the right headspace. That excuse came from not knowing what to be doing.

It is these things that have helped me conquer demotivation. Realizing that the goal is not staying motivated, it is building momentum through consistent action. Sure I may just be going through the motions but at the end of the day, that is all it takes.