Distractions — 9 Practical Ways to Deal With Them

One of the biggest obsta­cles from work­ing at home is dis­trac­tions. There are all kinds of things that can inter­rupt or even com­pletely throw you off. This is espe­cially true if you have kids as well.

I per­son­ally jug­gle tak­ing care of kids and fam­ily, work­ing a 9–5 job (more like a 3–11, but same dif­fer­ence) and run­ning my busi­ness. To say the least get­ting solid, unin­ter­rupted time to work on my blog or other projects comes few and far between. There are a few things that have helped elim­i­nate some dis­trac­tions and deal with oth­ers. It’s not per­fect but it may give you some ideas.

1. Set Work­ing Hours

Pick some time each day to set aside specif­i­cally for work­ing on your busi­ness. Even if it is just an hour or two. The point is to set aside time where all you are going to do is focus on the task at hand, noth­ing else. This will help you focus on what you are doing and not every­thing else that’s going on around the house.

2. Your Own Sep­a­rate Office

One of the most obvi­ous but not always eas­i­est things to do is to have your own space that is just for work­ing on your busi­ness. This gives you the oppor­tu­nity to shut the door and get rid of out­side dis­trac­tions altogether.

3. Turn Off Alerts

The inter­net itself is a huge dis­trac­tion in itself. Espe­cially with the advent of Twit­ter and pro­grams to alert you of new tweets and DMs. So here is some­thing extremely sim­ple to do. Turn off your alerts. Close your mes­sen­gers, shut off pro­grams. Silence the noise a bit. All those “impor­tant” mes­sages will still be there after you do some work.

4. Do Your Chores First

Of course your going to have chores to do around the house. And event these things can be a dis­trac­tion. So get them out of the way. Obvi­ously I wouldn’t try to do every­thing but pick a cou­ple impor­tant chores and do them up real quick before you set­tle in for work. Two things hap­pen here; You will get those chores off your mind and won’t think about it any­more. And it may get your focus going enough to really dig into your work.

5. Find Some Quiet Time

Even with a busy fam­ily run­ning about through­out the day there are small moments when the house is quiet. I have a small time frame when my youngest takes a nap and the house is quiet. This is a great time to get some things done unin­ter­rupted. The chal­lenge is to use this time for some­thing pro­duc­tive instead some­thing else, like sleeping.

6. Embrace It

My chil­dren are one of my biggest dis­trac­tions but that’s not always a bad thing. A post I read some time ago (which I can’t find for the life of me, sorry) talked about how their office is right in the mid­dle of the busiest room of the house. But instead of this being a bad thing, he took advan­tage of it and saw it as an oppor­tu­nity to spend time with his kids and enjoy his fam­ily. While a bit unortho­dox com­pared to what we are used to hear­ing, it makes sense in a way. That’s part of the rea­son to work from home is to spend more time with fam­ily right?

7. Find an Account­abil­ity Partner

Thanks to Anne Way­man for this idea (read post). The gen­eral idea here is to have some­one that you give your goals and plans to and they hold you account­able. Announc­ing your goals is a great way help you focus more on the task at hand and should help you get past some of those dis­trac­tions. Your less likely to fail for your­self then for some­one else.

8. One Thing at a Time

Peo­ple talk about multi-tasking all the time but it’s really not all that effec­tive. Think about it; do you think you can do some­thing more effec­tively by putting all your energy into one thing or split­ting it into sev­eral dif­fer­ent tasks? Pick one thing and get rid of all the other things as they are dis­trac­tions at this point in time.

9. Set a Timer

Along the lines of the Pomodoro Tech­nique, get your­self a timer and set a cer­tain amount of time for the task at hand. Hav­ing a time limit helps you con­cen­trate on get­ting the work done instead of pay­ing atten­tion to the dis­trac­tions around you.

As you can see most of these are about focus­ing on the task at hand. While there are ways to actu­ally get rid of dis­trac­tions, it’s also just as effec­tive to train your­self to ignore them. Focus can help you get past the distractions.

When it’s all said and done there are just times when a dis­trac­tion just hap­pens no mat­ter how much you pre­pare for it. In that case just take it and move on. Keep mov­ing for­ward and never give up, things will work out.

~Chris

What other ideas do you have to help deal with dis­trac­tions? Have you used any of these?

Sim­i­lar Posts:

• What to Do With Those Lit­tle Bug­gers Called Distractions
• 9 Ways to Free Up Time in Your Day
• Become a Mar­ket­ing Addict

I’m glad to see you back at The OMV. I hope your enjoy­ing your time. Feel free to con­tact me for any­thing and if you haven’t already, don’t for­get to sub­scribe to The OMV Newslet­ter. Leave a com­ment too! I’d love to hear from you.