Pub. 3 2018 Issue 5

18 www.ctaahq.org Our goal here is to keep you as focused as possible on the task at hand and any kind of notification you receive will instantly distract you. So, give this a chance and actually turn off your email notifications, social media notifications, app updates, text messages, and anything that will ding, buzz, or tick! Oh, and if you use an app like Slack to communicate with your team, you better believe that needs to get turned off as well while you're working. Step 2: Put on headphones Even though I work from home, distracting noises are ev- erywhere! Whether, it is my dog barking, a car driving by, or just people making noise, I don't want to get distracted by these things while I'm working. So, in order to avoid this distraction, I put on comfortable, noise cancelling headphones. Right now, I use my husband's wireless Bose headphones. They're so comfortable I can wear them all day long! Step 3: Put on a focused playlist I've always loved listening to music, but I've found that if I want to be as focused as possible, I can't listen to music with words. If you think about it, when you listen to music with words, your brain is always processing the words that it's hearing. So, by listening to music with words, you're wasting valuable brain processing power! Instead of listening to music with words, I listen to playlists that are designed to help you focus. My favorite website and app to listen to is Brain.fm. You can choose between three activities: Focus, Relax, and Sleep. When I sit down to work, I'll choose the Focus play- list. But I actually end up listening to Brain.fm almost the entire day because I go to bed listening to the Sleep playlist every night! If you're a Spotify user, they have a whole Genre called "Focus" where you can choose from different playlists that are designed to help you stay focused. Step 4: Close ALL tabs, windows, and apps you don’t need If you want to stop getting distracted, you have to close every single tab, window, and application that you don't need to do the work you're focusing on. This includes your project man- agement system and communication applications too! If you leave these open, you're going to get distracted by new messages you get from your team, notifications from your clients, and all the other work you have on your plate. And if you're not doing work online, then close the laptop! Step 5: Capture ideas on a notepad When you're trying staying focused, it is normal for your brain to suddenly have a brilliant idea, remind you of some- thing important you need to do, or to just have thoughts that are distracting. Instead of getting immediately distracted by these thoughts and trying to take action on them, you need to create a temporary place to capture them. The key to this technique is that you need to be completely focused during this 25-minute work session. So when we talked about Step 1 of turning off your notifications, it really just has to be for 25 minutes at a time! Working and staying focused for 25 minutes at a time is easy and still allows you to actually make an impact on the task you're working on.