Work is hard, and staying on task in the face of digital distractions is harder still, but you can do it. My philosophy is that in order to battle distractions

Work is hard, and staying on task in the face of digital distractions is harder still, but you can do it. My philosophy is that in order to battle distractions, you need a more structured environment. Sure, some can manage without, but I think those people are probably outliers. Most of us are click-happy, trivia collecting pseudo-information junkies. In school, that structure was created by classes, tests, assignments, due dates, etc. Those may seem like external factors, and yet they can be traced back to you: at some point you probably chose your course load and schedule, you likely chose your degree, and even the act of attending a college in the first place was, arguably, a choice. College was a maze of your own creation, and you were the mouse running through it. After academia, though, that structure disappears. If you want it back, you have to go back to playing the roles of two different people: the visionary CEO of your life, who sets the broad agenda, milestones and deadlines, and the engineer who implements that vision. Concretely, that means you need to break down big tasks into smaller ones, and deciding that those smaller tasks need to be done in a concrete amount of time, such as "today", "this week", or "this month". Make a calendar, put it up on a wall, make it visible. The structure dissolves if you ignore it, so make it hard to ignore it. Oh, and invest in some of that "grit" everyone seems to be talking about: http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/09/measuring-self-control-a-marshmallow-test-for-the-digital-age/ http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/09/measuring-self-contr...