How to Plan for Distractions
I spend a lot of time at my computer. Whether it's for work or play, the screen commands a lot of my daytime and nighttime attention. But because it's such a versatile tool, I tend to fall for distraction traps throughout the day.
I've tried employing strategies to disincentivize bad habits such as deleting native desktop applications from my computer (like Twitter), but I'd always find myself on the web app instead. I've used website blockers to help control my time spend on social media sites (again, like Twitter), but I'd find myself needing it for research or marketing and I'd hit a hard block that ends up slowing down my productivity flow.
In short, my strategy to limit distractions was to block them.
The Pomodoro Method 🍅
I consider myself a productive person. I'm the type of worker who can work through meals if I enter a state of flow. It's a wonderful feeling to be so engrossed in a subject matter that you don't want to be removed from your state of concentration.
The flip side to flow channels is periods of heavy disengagement and distraction. Despite experiencing these lulls in motivation, I often still try to squeeze productivity out of a task, often finding myself 10 taps down an Instagram rabbit hole feeling like I’ve wasted so much time.
I've been trying to reprogram my process and apply the Pomodoro Method — a time management methodology designed to break the workday into small segments of focused work sessions of 25 minutes followed by 5-minute breaks. It’s said that this technique will enhance productivity, reduce distractions, and promote a healthier balance of work and rest.
Plan Your Work and Your Distractions
Over the last week, I began implementing this strategy and have already noticed a marked decrease in the number of social media distractions throughout the day. I've learned that the problem wasn't distractions after all, but the lack of structure.
I wrote an article last week (Do It With Intention) that described my prescribed mentality for tackling any task, whether work on pleasure. The underlying concept behind intent is to be planful — in essence, creating a plan of execution for what you want to accomplish.
With Pomodoro, I planned a requisite number of sessions (🍅) per task. After each 🍅, I would start my scheduled distraction period — 5 minutes of uninterrupted, guilt-free social media browsing, news browsing, or YouTube watching.
This shift in mentality — from forcibly blocking distractions to planning for structured relax time — completely altered my workflow. It enhanced my intent-based, focused work periods and encouraged guiltless dopamine-boosting social media browsing. In fact, it even enhanced my relaxation time by encouraging me to skip over negative content since I only had 5 minutes to spend.
Planning 🍅
Planning sessions each day by allocating 🍅 to each task
Pomodoro takes intent-based work one step further by capturing the time spent data related to your work sessions so you can review time allocations and optimize your time spend on the things that need the most time and attention.
Take this blog post as an example. Without Pomodoro, I might find myself bouncing around between outlining, researching, writing, or editing, with no defined end. With Pomodoro, I lead with intent and set out to spend only 2 🍅 per day (if you don't know what this means, read this summary). I can spend the rest of my 10 🍅 on other tasks that require my attention each day. At the end of the week, I can confirm whether I've spent the allocated 🍅 on writing (10), or if I've spent more or less. With this data, I can adjust or reassess the amount of time the task takes.
To be productive beings, we need to give ourselves a chance to take breaks and recover. Just like your muscles, your brain needs time to rest in between sets. When we don’t schedule breaks, our brains tend to lose focus and gravitate towards new activities that are engaging and less intense. Be it Instagram, Reddit, or even TikTok, we need to give ourselves permission to relax our minds so we can be focused and productive when we need to be.