How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life pdfdrive com

REMOVE DISTRACTIONS
The next big breakthrough for Anthony came from training himself to stay
focused in the face of potential distractions. He knew that whatever activity he
was busy with—a call, a chore, some writing—he would do it more intelligently
and quickly if he could focus all his mental energies on the single task at hand.
And, of course, the same is true for you.
Here’s how I suggest you remove unnecessary distractions, to concentrate
your brain’s precious attention on whatever matters most right now:
Turn off alerts.
Once upon a time, the only alert we had to deal with was the
ringing of a telephone. Imagine that! These days, we surround ourselves with
devices clamoring for attention, from the buzzing and chiming of our
smartphone to the visual pop-ups on our computer screens. As long as you
have these notifications coming in all day long, you’re not going to make best
use of your time, since processing each ping takes a bite out of your brain’s
working memory, whether you respond to it or not. It’s easy to turn them off
when you really need to focus—for example, you can use your phone’s
airplane mode or turn off your computer’s Wi-Fi access. For added IQ points,
you can also permanently switch off the least valuable, most intrusive
notifications in your device settings.
Remove temptation.
Every visual distraction uses another bit of your
working memory and makes it a little more tempting to veer off into
multitasking mode. So when you need to do some focused work, close your
email program entirely. Close your browser, or at least the tabs you’re not
using. In the days before wireless Internet access, the author Jonathan
Franzen locked down his focus on writing his novel 
Freedom
by working on
a computer that was unable to connect to the Internet—because he had glued
an Ethernet cable into his laptop’s network port, and then cut it off. More
modern versions of Franzen’s trick exist for the wireless age, in the form of
apps that can block your access to certain websites for designated blocks of
time (without requiring any glue).