We live in a three-second world. Every person with a smartphone has inflicted pseudo-ADHD onto themselves with instant gratification activities, like wasting their speech on Twitter or doom scrolling on TikTok. People wonder why working hard is hard work, when they can't even sit down at a desk and do something meaningful without being forced to.

As pessimistic as that introduction may seem, however, you know I wouldn't be writing about this if I wasn't going to put forward some form of solution. After spending time battling with this myself, I'd like to show you my beliefs and practices for managing distractions.

Beliefs

Every distraction can be classified into 2 categories:

• External: An object or person in the environment who has distracted you from your work (i.e. Your phone ringing, A person barging into your room)
• Internal: Your brain prompting you to complete other less important tasks (i.e. An urge to go watch a YouTube video)

External distractions are easily identifiable and mitigated, but internal distractions are much more difficult. They are formed from old habits which released dopamine, due to their low effort (like clicking a video) and perceived high reward (like watching a very funny meme). Internal distractions have a mental trigger, which releases dopamine, guiding you to an action. This system is useful, but is easily manipulated. (There is a great video on the topic)

In any case, both of these distractions detract from a state of deep work and need to be eliminated or postponed to a later time. A state of deep work means you no longer have to put effort into forcing yourself to work. You only have to put effort into the actual task. It's sometimes also called flow.

An optimal length of flow, according to neurologists is ~90 minutes. This block of work should be followed up with a break of ~30 minutes.

In summary, deep work is what you want, distractions take you away from deep work, these distractions are either physical objects or in your brain, mitigations are necessary. So, what do we need to do?

Practices

In order to actually get into a state of deep work, most people typically need a setup routine and a quiet, clean work environment. I won't tell you everything you should put in your setup routine, nor will I tell you mine. Think about this routine by yourself and make it suit your needs.

One thing I will mention is the importance of intentional work. If I will tell you to put anything in your routine, I would recommend writing down specifically what you're going to do in this time. Grab a piece of paper, get out your pen and write a sentence like this:

From [start time] to [end time] today, I will [action]

This simple act of writing an intention for your work nearly triples the chances of you doing that task. It also allows you to tell those around not to disturb you in this period of time and assure them that you're actually working.

Do not spend more than 2 hours doing deep work. Towards the end you will feel tired and unable to work, this is natural and healthy. If you work past this time, your work will be shallow and not as high-effort as it could be.

One final point is that you can actually do deep work with others on websites like FocusMate, which forces you to state your intention before working alongside the other person. In addition, working alongside other people does actually improve your motivation to work and improves your sociability.

Now, onto getting rid of distractions.

Everyone knows how to get rid of external distractions, but for the sake of completeness I'll put it here.

• Out of sight, out of mind. You are [more likely] to get distracted by an object in your peripheral vision. Keep the object in a different room.
• Use app blockers. ScreenZen is a great mobile app. On Windows, Mac and Linux, a very simple solution is to have seperate users for work and play.
• During work, turn your phone onto monochrome mode. The lack of colour lowers the perceived reward of the phone to your brain and makes it less appealing.

Internal distractions are caused by triggers in your brain. The most common mental triggers are:

• Difficulty in your work
• Boredom
• Habits

The best way I have found to manage these triggers, albeit requiring some discipline, is:

1. Keep a pen and paper besides you at all times.
2. Whenever you feel an urge to do something unrelated to the present activity, write down on this paper:

At [time] today, because of [trigger], I wanted to [action]

1. Now that you've acknowledged the thought, get back to your work.
2. Once you've finished your deep work block, look back through your list of internal distractions and categorise the actions into harmless and harmful.
3. If the action was harmless (like watch a YouTube video), then do it in your break or after the end of the work day.
4. If the action was harmful (like watching porn or doom scrolling), then think about how to remove the trigger. Think of books you need to read or habits you need to adopt in order to convince your brain that the reward for the activity is less than the effort, and that the consequence for the activity is greater than the reward.

Essentially, your workflow should look like this:

1. Setup routine for quiet environment without external distractions and intentioned work
2. Deep Work for 90 minutes
3. Think of distraction during deep work, note it down and continue deep work
4. 30 minute break after deep work, do harmless distractions in break while thinking about fixing harmful ones.
5. Repeat

This workflow should continue for the entire work day, which must have a clear beginning and end. Working for the entire day, while appealing, will only lead to shallow work that doesn't improve your business or life. Personally, my work day goes from 08:00 to 20:00, leaving 2 hours either side of the day to relax. I've found that having the assurance of prolonged free time at the end of a work day promotes focused work, as your efforts will be sufficiently rewarded. To this end, you may even wish to take a 24 hour work break every 2 weeks or every month.

Conclusion

Do note that these are only my personal feelings on the matter and, while most of it is backed up by science, I do take some personal liberties, particularly in my practices.

Overall, I feel that implementing a few of these beliefs and practices does help improve focus and can help us work to bigger and better goals in this three-second world of ours.