What You'll Discover In This Episode:
Consider this scenario:
You’re working on a big project with a big, looming deadline. Suddenly, it pops into your mind that you need to order cups for your kid’s class at school. So, you grab your phone with the intent to swipe over to Amazon but you see a red circle letting you know you have five new notifications on Facebook so you first open that app. This won’t take longer than a minute, you think to yourself.
You glance at your notifications and click on each one because God forbid you don’t know which picture Aunt May hearted or what sarcastic remark neighbor Dave made about your AC company referral request. You then scroll down your feed because, well, FOMO, then wind up commenting on how amazing your friend’s vacation destination looks.
You close the Facebook app and look up, curiously wondering why you were on your phone in the first place. Oh yeah, the cups! You open the Amazon app and order the cups but not before also researching and adding a kitchen scale to your cart. Mission accomplished. You look back up to your glaringly bright computer monitor. Now, what was I doing? As you ponder that thought your eyes wander over to the time. 18 minutes. 18 minutes?!
Indeed. The simple thought of needing to order cups just stole 18 minutes of your time, precious time that you were supposed to be working on your big project with that big, looming deadline. Ugh.
Frustrating, right? You chide yourself for not staying focused on what you were supposed to be doing and anxiety creeps in knowing you’ll have to make up that time. You’ll either have to work late or get back to work after your family goes to bed because this project isn’t going to complete itself.
And that’s just one time you lost focus and got sidetracked today. There were others, too, others that were just as costly to your work time.
Does that scenario sound familiar? I think it hits home for a lot of business owners.
Allowing yourself to get distracted and lose focus can only hurt your business because it pulls you away from the high-value activities you should be doing during scheduled work time. The good news is you have the power to significantly minimize pesky distractions, both internal and external, so you can get in and stay in your focused zone when desired.
In this episode of the Small Business Straight Talk Podcast, I dive into strategies to ruthlessly starve your distractions and feed your focus so you can consistently show up your best during scheduled work time.
