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Many people write to me regarding their inability to carry out their resolve, their vow, to work right to the end, until their goal is accomplished. They are motivated, they have wisdom, resources, capability, yet they let distractions overpower them. Such distractions that cause a tide of emotions to rise, a tsunami of desires, shaking their resolve and crushing their strength to stay course, to stay firm. Yogic and vedic texts talk a great deal about vikṣiptatā, distractions, and how they are great obstacles. They can make all the difference between winning and losing, between success and failure.

Let me help you understand distractions and ways to overcome them. They are of two types, as follows:

1. External distractions triggering inner reactions

Let us assume, you committed to being a vegetarian and giving up alcohol. Everything was going fine until you were invited to that get together you could not afford to skip. Platters of your once favorite non-vegetarian dishes as well as vintage wine adorned the dining table. You feel tempted. Further, your folks around you force you to have some. You are given all sorts of reasoning and arguments to partake of what is at hand and not worry about your vow. Under social pressure and your own latent desire, you give into the temptations.

In this case, an external environment, sighting of delicious food, triggered a whole heap of thoughts that weakened your resolve. Till you came to the party, you were at ease, but now, suddenly your inner world is in a turmoil and you let your heart rule your mind. In every likelihood, a sense of guilt will drape you soon after the party. Guilt weakens one’s consciousness.

There are two ways to emerge winner while battling against external distractions:

• Remove yourself physically. A conducive environment helps a great deal in executing any plan. In the present example, avoid going to such places, parties where it is but natural that you will be offered everything contrary to what’s good for you. After all, chances of emerging spotless working in coal mines are but remote. Unless of course, you exercise great caution, extraordinary care. If changing your physical environment is not possible sometimes, follow step b, as below:
• Make yourself clear. Granted, some people may think you are arrogant, or that, you no longer care, or that you have changed and so forth. Let them. Trust me, let them. If they really love you, they will not think any of these things and if they do not, does it matter anyway what they think? Ultimately, it is you alone who will be bearing the consequences, paying for your choices, at that time, no one else will be able to help you. So, stand by what you stand for. This always worked for me; before I renounced, for years I attended events of all sorts but never even once did I compromise on my own principles. People around me understood and accepted it.

2. Inner thoughts triggering external actions

Distractions of this type can be equally hard to manage. For example, let us say, you recently quit smoking. Day-in-day-out, you were living upto your own expectations and you did not smoke for ten days. One day, out of the blue, you just recollect the image of a cigarette, you try hard to not think of smoking but cigarette is what keeps coming back to your mind. You experience restlessness and the compulsion to smoke. The thought of smoking overpowers you to the degree that you get up and buy yourself a pack.

There are two ways to overcome distraction of this type:

• Take your mind off. Do not think about not doing the prohibited, instead just take a deep breath and focus your mind elsewhere. You cannot overcome thoughts of non-action by thinking about not acting on it! You must simply, gently, shift the spotlight of your thoughts. Change the scenery, get up, move around, win over a distraction with another one, a better one, if necessary. Do whatever it takes but do not give into the temptation.
• Exercise patience (postpone). This method is more powerful than you might think. Just give your mind a bait, tell your mind that you will revisit the idea after an hour or two hours or something like that. Just let the storm of distraction pass, let your thoughts settle, let your mind calm down. If you can rein the horses while distraction comes attacking, you will remain focused, winning the battle. You will emerge a winner, stronger and a more confident person.

Now, regardless of the nature of distraction, let me share with you the two most potent questions you can ask yourself to help you make the right decision, always. Yes, always.

1. Is this my best move? A chess grandmaster unfailingly asks one question before making each move in chess, and that is, is this my best move? That often prompts the player to think more, think better, think out-of-the-box and come up with extraordinary moves. Before you give in to a temptation, just before you decide to do something, a moment before taking an action, ask yourself: is this my best move, or, can I play better? If you are honest with yourself, you will find it easy to dissipate your distractions with minimal effort.
2. What is the most that will happen? One is often not attached to the distraction but the pleasure they get from the fulfillment of such deviation. In removing distractions, you have to ask yourself the golden question- “what’s the most that will happen?”. Let us say you are distracted and really want to smoke, ask yourself, what’s the most that will happen? An ephemeral pleasure of a few hours, if that? Is that it? Is that enough to justify you compromising on your resolve? And if so, is that your best move!?

Do you know who is your greatest friend, the one who can always stand by you and help you make the right decisions and make sure you tread the noble path? You.

And your worst enemy? You.

Ātmaiva hyātmanō bandhurātmaiva ripurātmanaḥ… (Bhagavad Gita, 6.5)

You alone are your best friend and your own worst enemy.

(Photo credit: Compass via Shutterstock)

Learning online can present a few challenges for students, mainly due to how distracting our home lives can be sometimes when we are trying to study. If you are finding it difficult to focus on your work while learning from home, here are a few suggestions to improve your focus and online learning experience.

Removing Electronic Distractions

You are probably tempted to keep your phone at your desk while studying and working on assignments. Keep it out of sight, put away your tablet, and stop checking social media while you are studying. Stay focused on what you have in front of you with as few electronic distractions as possible.

If you still find yourself opening new tabs and checking social media or the news, try downloading browser extensions such as StayFocusd or Work Mode to keep yourself in check.

Get a Still Background

It’s nice to see trees blowing in the wind, people walking their dogs down the street, and our kids playing in the living room; although they tend to distract us from what we are focusing on if they remain in our line of sight.

Take a second and look around the house for an open area against a wall that you can set your computer up against. A blank wall behind your monitor might seem a little boring, but a still background is less likely to take your attention away from your studies.

Noise

A noisy tv and loud cars driving down the street might interrupt your study sessions, but so can a silent home. Noises and sounds stand out even more in a near silent environment, easily stealing your attention away from what you are working on.

So, find yourself a pair of nice headphones and listen to a mellow playlist at a low volume or turn on the tv in another room to make abrupt noises stand out less.

Getting Prepared Ahead of Time

You are going to have a few moments where you get distracted by something outside of your control. You might get hungry, feel cold, or get restless sitting at your desk after a little while. Bring a snack to your desk, put on a hoodie, and try to go for a walk before sitting down to prevent these feelings from pulling you out of your focus.

Stop Creating Distractions

Sometimes we create our own distractions when we don’t feel motivated to study or complete assignments. We might start cleaning, browse social media, or focus on anything not school related. Despite what you might feel, you still need to learn new materials and work on assignments. So be sure to reward yourself with something you would like to do once you’ve finished studying for the day, such as playing games, seeing friends, or watching a movie.

You’ll look forward to getting your homework and studying done so you can get to something else fun or productive without relentless interruptions.

Keeping a Checklist

Take a few minutes to outline the assignments and quizzes you have for the week. Keeping a detailed list of everything will help you track of what to focus on first, and you can start working on assignments as you cover the topics in class. You’ll feel organized and satisfied checking everything off towards the end of the week.

Keeping a Clean Environment

A cluttered work environment sometimes gets the best of us, so be sure to keep your desk clear of empty mugs, scattered papers, and other items. A clean environment will motivate you more and distract you less than if you had to work with a messy desk.

Knowing what Keeps You from Studying

Use these tips to keep you focused while studying at home and remember that you know what takes your attention away from learning the most. Keep track of what distracts you so you can prepare for them the next time you sit down for your classes.

Last Updated: August 10, 2020 References

This article was co-authored by Rahti Gorfien, PCC. Rahti Gorfien is a Life Coach and the Founder of Creative Calling Coaching, LLC. Rahti is an International Coach Federation accredited Professional Certified Coach (PCC), ACCG Accredited ADHD Coach by the ADD Coach Academy, and a Career Specialty Services Provider (CSS). She was voted one of the 15 Best Life Coaches in New York City by Expertise in 2018. She is an alumni of the New York University Graduate Acting program and has been a working theater artist for over 30 years.

There are 19 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page.

This article has been viewed 13,961 times.

Distractions can impact your productivity at work, school, and at home. If you want to curb the habit and make distractions a thing of the past, start adding some structure to your life. Manage your time by sticking to a schedule and taking breaks. Get rid of things that interrupt your work or that tend to distract you. Making small changes like clearing your desk or turning off your phone notifications can help keep your concentration high.

Rahti Gorfien, PCC
Life Coach Expert Interview. 17 December 2019. If you know your smartphone or tablet will distract you, keep them away from you. Put your electronics out of sight or power them down if you tend to get wrapped up in them. Keep your electronics in another room, in a drawer, or somewhere where you cannot easily access them. [2] X Research source

• Turn off sounds so that they don’t distract you.
• If you’re working on a computer or use your smartphone to aid in your work, consider using applications that encourage productivity and limit distractions. For example, download a browser extension that blocks or limits time on social media.

Rahti Gorfien, PCC
Life Coach Expert Interview. 17 December 2019. If you can’t figure out where all your time goes throughout the day, consider tracking your activities one by one each day for an entire week. You might be surprised at how much time you waste or the number of distractions that occur. Once you track your activities, you can begin to notice patterns of when you tend to get distracted and how you distract yourself. [14] X Research source

• Once you recognize your own patterns, you can begin to change your habits. For example, instead of spending 30 minutes on social media, you can take a 15-minute walk instead.
• Providing yourself with deadlines may also help if you find that you frequently get sidetracked during the day due to a perceived lack of a deadline. For example, you could set a deadline for what day and time you want to have finished a project for school or work and sue this to help motivate you.

Avoiding interruptions in a workplace full of them.

In the flurry of statistics that exist around personal productivity, there’s one I find especially alarming: The average person is distracted or interrupted every 40 seconds when working in front of their computer. When our attention is completely derailed, research shows, it can take 29 minutes to refocus. How can you gain back control? Start by creating a distraction-free ritual, setting three daily intentions, working on more-challenging projects, and setting artificial project deadlines.

Avoiding interruptions in a workplace full of them.

In the flurry of statistics that exist around personal productivity, there’s one I find especially alarming: The average person is distracted or interrupted every 40 seconds when working in front of their computer. In other words, we can’t work for even a single minute before we focus on something else. Sure, sometimes it’s easy to get back on track. But when our attention is completely derailed, research shows, it can take more than 20 minutes to refocus.

Why? Humans are hardwired for distraction. Our brain’s attentional system is programmed to respond to anything that’s pleasurable, threatening, or novel. We even have a novelty bias, wherein our brain is flooded with a pleasure chemical, dopamine, whenever we focus on something new.

In terms of our evolutionary history, this makes sense. Instead of focusing exclusively on, say, starting a fire, our ancient ancestors were distracted by novel threats — an approaching saber-toothed tiger, for example — and survived to see another day because of it.

While your situation may vary, I personally no longer face too many saber-toothed tigers in my daily life. The distractions that are novel, pleasurable, and threatening no longer aid our survival — instead, they tug our attention from what’s productive and meaningful. Facebook will forever be a more attractive object of attention than an Excel spreadsheet; checking email will always offer a bigger dopamine hit than the report we’re writing.

So how can you gain back control? After reading hundreds of studies, interviewing dozens of experts, and running the gamut of self-experiments (including attending meditation retreats and slogging through a monthlong period of self-induced boredom), I learned that countless strategies can help us mitigate distraction. Here are four of my favorites.

Create a distraction-free ritual. With so many distractions competing for our attention, we need to tame as many as we can in advance. A distraction-free mode — an ideal environment in which to hunker down and focus on your most important, complex tasks — will help. For my distraction-free mode, I enable a distractions blocker on my computer (I use an app named Freedom), put on noise-canceling headphones, leave my phone and tablet in another room, grab a coffee, and set an intention for what I want to accomplish. After focusing for 45 minutes, I treat myself to a 10-minute all-you-can-eat distraction buffet.

I tend to work from home; those who work in an open office may need to literally get up for a change of scenery for their distraction-free mode. After all, distractions happen 64% more often in an open office, and we’re interrupted by others more often in that environment as well.

Set three daily intentions. When you work with greater intent, you focus on what’s actually important. To accomplish this, I have a favorite ritual called the Rule of Three. First thing in the morning, ask yourself: What three things will I want to accomplish by day’s end? Put your other, less important tasks on a separate to-do list. Part of what makes this rule so powerful is that three things fit comfortably within our attention at once, and prioritizing them ensures that these tasks stand out from a laundry list of other, less important things.

For example, today I set three intentions: finish a draft of this article, have fun in two media interviews that have been scheduled, and finalize a slide deck for a talk next week. I’ll tackle other things over the course of the day, but these are easily the three most important ones I’ll focus on.

Work on hard stuff, and do more of it. Our work tends to expand to fill the time we have available for its completion, and any excess time remaining is usually filled with distractions. In productivity circles, this phenomenon is known as Parkinson’s law. Sometimes distractions come from internal and external factors, but other times they happen because we’re not being challenged enough by our work. Assess your busywork level. If it’s high, that’s usually a sign that you have the capacity to take on more-challenging projects, and perhaps even more work in general.

I noticed this phenomenon firsthand when I began to do significantly more busywork after submitting my previous book manuscript; I tended to social media, email, and mindless apps on my smartphone way more often than usual. That’s when I realized that my work was simply expanding to fit how much time I had available for it. At this point, I took on more-challenging work and more projects in general. The distraction was a sign I had room for it.

Set an artificial project deadline. It’s up to you to introduce a novel and threatening factor to long-term projects lacking urgency. Have an entire afternoon to write a monotonous report? Give yourself 50 minutes. Making a task into a game forces you to spend more attention and energy on that project because it can no longer occupy hours of your time.

I personally do this for most articles I write. Instead of giving myself an entire afternoon to write this piece, for example, I set a timer and gave myself 60 minutes. Because I gave myself such a limited amount of time, I trapped myself into focusing on it — instead of focusing on the more pleasurable, threatening, and novel distractions that are available to me.

We can’t help that our minds crave distraction. But what we can do is set ourselves up for success by adopting strategies to block distractions ahead of time, work with greater intention, and reclaim our attention, once and for all.

Active listening is a critical soft skill in developing your leadership capabilities. However, certain personal and workplace distractions may become barriers that keep you from listening as effectively as you would like. When you recognize these obstacles and learn how to overcome them, you can vastly improve your listening skills. In this article, we review some common barriers to effective listening and provide advice on how to limit them.