3 ms·

Gets distracted. Thinks long and hard about distraction. Has an insight on how not to get distracted. Writes a book about it. Writes a blog post to market the b

by gexla 7y ago

Gets distracted. Thinks long and hard about distraction. Has an insight on how not to get distracted. Writes a book about it. Writes a blog post to market the book. Future book reviews complain that you could have just read the blog post. Some of this seems to be a rehash of GTD. Sometimes your distractions are something which you really need to do. Write it down so that you can feel at ease forgetting about it again. Then when you are doing your GTD thing, you can take care of your list. The rest just doesn't sit easy for me. It seems like he's over-rationalizing a certain slice of life and it feels strange, like a bad aesthetic. There's work time and then there's personal time. In each case, distraction is okay, it's just that you need to herd the distractions so that you are seeing more of X distractions and less of Y. A client walking in the door may be a valuable distraction. Getting a FB notification while working may be a costly distraction. Personal time is also all about the right distractions. Interesting things are distractions. In the author's example, the child asking a question is a distraction. We can argue semantics, maybe an interesting thing which captures your attention is called something other than a distraction, but it's still the same thing. Your brain is pointed in one direction and something comes along to redirect that attention to something else. This is just more productivity porn. Schedule fun time. Look, it's fun time on my calendar. I will enjoy it. I'm having fun... for 20 minutes.

deepGem 7y ago
"Sometimes your distractions are something which you really need to do" The key is to be able to determine the validity of the distraction, without getting distracted, meaning without even diverting your mind a bit to think about the distraction. I don't think you can. You need to context switch a bit, examine what the distraction is and then switch back. Easier said than done. It leads to a trail of IFTTTs since every distraction has it's own context and lifespan. If someone has ways of accomplishing this, I'm all ears.
- gexla 7y ago
  I'm getting into personal anecdote territory which I hate because it likely only works for me, but here I go... When I'm working in front of my computer, I manage this stream by keeping a log of what I'm doing in an editor. When I step into something, I make a quick note of what I'm about to do. I may annotate it with what I DID rather than what I'm about to do. It's fully shooting from the hip. The point of it is that I can always bring it up and see the last thing my brain was on and the stream leading up to that point. I call that section "stream." I'll add other "sections" for other items I need to take down. Maybe I think of a todo, then I'll make a section for "Todo" and maybe even multiple lists for multiple projects. This document is only meant for things which collect in my head as I'm trying to do this other thing. It's not meant to be storage space for project management. The starting of a disaster day is finding myself getting bogged down in reading a pile of browser tabs in the morning during my "putter" time. In that case I'll open a blank editor tab to start the "stream" and create a section for reading. I'll jot down the items which interest me the most, bookmark those items, then clear all tabs. I'll NEVER get back to reading those things, but I took care of the problem in my head and then I get back to "streaming." It's all about one of the core GTD ideas of clearing your space and writing things down to comfort your brain. The main stream section then keeps me on task. I have also trained myself that this is the most important rule and if I don't have this document open in an editor, then I'm asking for trouble.
- em-bee 7y ago
  what works for me is that i got into the habit of never answering a message immediately. in one way it's a form of ignoring distraction, but for me it's actually about not letting others control my time. i don't want to give others the power to make me jump and do what they need whenever they request it. so even if i see the message, i'll push it away so that i can remain in control of the moment, and i'll get back to it when i choose. the key here i think is to hold on to the focus that i had before the distraction came in as good as i can. it depends on what you are doing, but in the example the author gave, i'd have said: "hold on for a moment, i just want to get rid of this distraction", and then do the absolute minimum necessary to get rid of it before returning my focus to the activity at hand.
skohan 7y ago
> This is just more productivity porn. Schedule fun time. Look, it's fun time on my calendar. I will enjoy it. I'm having fun... for 20 minutes. I've long since accepted that I am not the type of person who can work from a strict hourly schedule (or time-boxing in general). Yet somehow I manage to have quite good output, especially if I look at what I've accomplished personally and professionally over the last month or the last year. I think the real story with productivity is that you have to figure out how you work best as an individual, and figure out a system which helps to take advantage of that. I think it's worth reading up on how other people approach the problem because often it can lead to useful insight, but prescriptions and magic bullets rarely hold much weight with me.
- afarrell 7y ago
  I also think its worth writing blog posts like this as a way of clarifying your own thoughts. In life, its worth being active at the risk of being silly. “Productivity porn” is merely silly. Passively feeling a lack of agency over your own time is tragic.
em-bee 7y ago
"fun will now commence"

by gexla 7y ago

deepGem 7y ago

"Sometimes your distractions are something which you really need to do" The key is to be able to determine the validity of the distraction, without getting distracted, meaning without even diverting your mind a bit to think about the distraction. I don't think you can. You need to context switch a bit, examine what the distraction is and then switch back. Easier said than done. It leads to a trail of IFTTTs since every distraction has it's own context and lifespan. If someone has ways of accomplishing this, I'm all ears.

gexla 7y ago
I'm getting into personal anecdote territory which I hate because it likely only works for me, but here I go... When I'm working in front of my computer, I manage this stream by keeping a log of what I'm doing in an editor. When I step into something, I make a quick note of what I'm about to do. I may annotate it with what I DID rather than what I'm about to do. It's fully shooting from the hip. The point of it is that I can always bring it up and see the last thing my brain was on and the stream leading up to that point. I call that section "stream." I'll add other "sections" for other items I need to take down. Maybe I think of a todo, then I'll make a section for "Todo" and maybe even multiple lists for multiple projects. This document is only meant for things which collect in my head as I'm trying to do this other thing. It's not meant to be storage space for project management. The starting of a disaster day is finding myself getting bogged down in reading a pile of browser tabs in the morning during my "putter" time. In that case I'll open a blank editor tab to start the "stream" and create a section for reading. I'll jot down the items which interest me the most, bookmark those items, then clear all tabs. I'll NEVER get back to reading those things, but I took care of the problem in my head and then I get back to "streaming." It's all about one of the core GTD ideas of clearing your space and writing things down to comfort your brain. The main stream section then keeps me on task. I have also trained myself that this is the most important rule and if I don't have this document open in an editor, then I'm asking for trouble.
em-bee 7y ago
what works for me is that i got into the habit of never answering a message immediately. in one way it's a form of ignoring distraction, but for me it's actually about not letting others control my time. i don't want to give others the power to make me jump and do what they need whenever they request it. so even if i see the message, i'll push it away so that i can remain in control of the moment, and i'll get back to it when i choose. the key here i think is to hold on to the focus that i had before the distraction came in as good as i can. it depends on what you are doing, but in the example the author gave, i'd have said: "hold on for a moment, i just want to get rid of this distraction", and then do the absolute minimum necessary to get rid of it before returning my focus to the activity at hand.

skohan 7y ago

> This is just more productivity porn. Schedule fun time. Look, it's fun time on my calendar. I will enjoy it. I'm having fun... for 20 minutes. I've long since accepted that I am not the type of person who can work from a strict hourly schedule (or time-boxing in general). Yet somehow I manage to have quite good output, especially if I look at what I've accomplished personally and professionally over the last month or the last year. I think the real story with productivity is that you have to figure out how you work best as an individual, and figure out a system which helps to take advantage of that. I think it's worth reading up on how other people approach the problem because often it can lead to useful insight, but prescriptions and magic bullets rarely hold much weight with me.

afarrell 7y ago
I also think its worth writing blog posts like this as a way of clarifying your own thoughts. In life, its worth being active at the risk of being silly. “Productivity porn” is merely silly. Passively feeling a lack of agency over your own time is tragic.

em-bee 7y ago

"fun will now commence"