While distractions are a terrible burden on logical thinking, they may be useful when you’re trying to solve insight problems or conjure up creative ideas. A recent study found that your optimal productivity times are actually suboptimal when you need to use your brain in new and different ways. Scientific American’s Cindi May explains:
Brothers Alex (Gizmodo) and Angus (Lifehacker) work in the same pod at Allure Media. Alex spends much of the working day listening to music through his headphones; Angus never does. Which approach is better for productivity? Gizmodo and Lifehacker duke it out.
With the iPad 3 (supposedly) launching soon, movie spoilers hitting the internet before a trailer is released, and the general overabundance of news online, it can be difficult to avoid learning things you don’t want (or care) to. Here’s how to set up automatic blocks both globally and on specific websites so you can avoid any type of news.
In order to get your best work done, you need to buckle down, eliminate as many distractions as possible, and focus on each task at a time as much as possible. However, few of us have the luxury to wall ourselves off from the world all day.
It happens to all of us. We get home from work but continue to check email, waste time on social networking sites or stare blankly at a computer. It’s not healthy, but you can use the same tech that’s binding you to help you break your habit.
It’s a familiar problem: you’re so overwhelmed with dealing with the incoming stream of urgent email demands, Twitter updates, Facebook requests and other demands that nothing substantial ever gets done. Behance CEO Scott Belsky calls it “reactionary workflow”, and it’s probably ruining your life.
I’ve never had myself tested for ADD, but I know for sure that I’m very easily distracted. The fact that my job requires me to sit in front of the computer with an Internet connection all day means that tempting trajectories (“I wonder if YouTube has a commercial for Six Finger?… Yep!“) are just a click away. For years I suffered with distractions that diminish my daily productivity. But in the last year or so I’ve refined a simple system to keep me on track throughout the day.
Staring at a pair of monitors for 10+ hours a day can get rather taxing. That’s why I pepper in small breaks throughout the day, like most people. When I need five minutes to untangle my brain I reach for my pile of art pens and the closest post-it note (the back of a printout will also suffice) and do some sketching
Chrome/Firefox/Safari: If you’re tired of all the distracting, annoying content surrounding your videos on YouTube, you can hide them with simple browser extension Clea.Nr.
