Avoiding those distractions

I think all of us have things that can so easily pull us away from what we should be doing. It could be anything from someone just wanting to chat, a pop-up on your computer or an event or an email or just wanting to check out social media for “just a minute or two”.

For a lot of us that have a busy schedule we need to figure out how to avoid some of those distractions so that we can get things achieved. It doesn’t matter what you do I think we have all lost time getting distractions by checking out social media. social media, be it Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter or any of the other social media platforms. You think you are going to just spend a minute or two and before long you realize it has been 15 minutes or even more and what have you accomplished. I know for me I have had to set rules for myself because for a while social media was taking over quite a bit of my time and I wasn’t getting stuff done that I wanted to do. Instagram was one of my big distractions because of course as you are scrolling through notices of people you follow there are other people suggested so that means you end up checking out some of those and then follow them. The Instagram reels are something that can take a long time to go through so what I have done now is said I can watch reels twice a day and that is it so yes it may take some time, but I have set that time aside and it helps keep me focused.

I know for a lot of people YouTube can be a major distraction because you want to wait that one video that someone suggested you want and before long you realize that an hour or two has suddenly disappeared because you didn’t just watch that one video that was suggested you then watched a bunch of videos that YouTube suggested based on the video you watched. I think all social media can become a major distraction if you allow it to be.

A lot of companies don’t allow social media channels on company devices but that doesn’t prevent people from checking out social media on their personal devices during work hours. I understand we all want to keep up to date with what is going on in the world, but we also need to understand that there is a time and place or checking out our social media channels.

For me figuring out just how to avoid those distractions during the day has meant that I have been able to get more work done quicker. Sure, there are times when I do give into the social media platforms and waste a bit of time, but I have been able to at least figure out ways that I can maintain a focus on what needs to be done and then give myself that bit of a reward. Being able to understand what your distractions are and how to manage them can make a bit difference on how you get things done.