Distractions while working had always been a huge problem for me. Whether it was school or job, I've just always had too much distracting stuff around me. TV, internet, books, music and the list goes on and on. And for years it seemed like not a big problem for me. Until a few months ago when I discovered this blog called zenhabits.net. It's created by a blogger, journalist and published author Leo Babauta. Main topics of it are productivity, self organisation and simplifying ones life. This blog has been such a big inspiration for me that I decided to try out some tips and tricks that Leo is offering us.
So what can you do to minimize distractions and be able to get more things done? Simply put, cut out all the things from your routine that aren't absolutely necessary to get the job done. For example if I'm writing something I won't have 20 different tabs open in my browser, I won't play guitar, eat, check e-mail or communicate on social networks at the same time.
And I also won't listen to music. This may sound silly to you but I recently noticed how distracting music can be to me. Even though I'm a huge music fan, guitarist and music photographer, I decided that it will be better for me to stay away from music while working and save it for a treat later. There's a couple of reasons for that. At first it's very easy to get distracted from work and suddently notice that you had spent last three hours listening to music and watching videos on youtube. Secondly if you limit your consumption of something, you also limit the time you waste on it and make it more enjoyable. It's like with candies. You just can't enjoy them as much when you're eating them all day long as opposed to only once a month.
So I decided to follow Leo's advice and set myself a strict limit. To make sure I will not wander around Youtube for hours I will allow myself to listen to only five songs every day. I can listen to five different songs or one song five times. Ultimately this means that I will listen to music for about 20 minutes a day or less. A year or two ago that might be impossible to me but now I'm ready to do it and see how will it affect my life.
Today was the first day of this experiment and to my surprise it wasn't hard at all. I only listened to songs I wanted to hear the most. I wanted to listen to one more but I convinced myself to stay within the limit and wrote that song in a list to listen to it tomorrow.
At first I wanted to listen to Iiris because I really liked their concert at Palladium Riga. After listening to their song Weirdo I wanted to listen to something heavier but not all from one band. So I made up a small list which consisted of following songs. Drowning Pool - Numb, Damageplan - Save Me, Amorphis - Sky Is Mine and Poets Of The Fall - Lift.
If you're interested in how this experiment goes on, stay tuned because I'll soon post a report and my thoughts on what has changed and how can you benefit from this challenge.
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