3 Ways to Fight Writing Distractions
Distractions come in two forms: external and internal.
The external ones are obvious — the dog barking outside, the roaring engine of a car passing by, conversations you can overhear at home.
The internal ones are a little trickier to realize. There are many kinds, but the ones I’ll be talking about here are ones that attack while writing (since, as a content writer, that’s most of what I do).
The internal distractions include that clarifying voice in your head that constantly interrupts your workflow to ask, “Does this make sense?” or the doubtful, party-pooping one that goes, “Is anyone even going to like this?”
Regardless of the distraction, they’re all the same thing: noise. Piercing noise. It’s the kind that reverberates at a pitch that doesn’t shatter glass but instead your focus. That kind. And when your focus is shattered, nothing can get finished well.
So in this article, I’ll be sharing three ways I protect my focus while writing.
3 Ways to Protect Focus
1. Listen to red noise
Not white noise. Red. The difference? It sounds less aggressive than white.
Imagine the sound of rain outside but your windows are shut so its sound is muffled. That’s red noise. Then imagine you open your windows to the sound of rain pattering on a thin sheet of metal. That’s white noise (more or less).
Red noise has a calming, focusing sound to it. Give this super deep red noise a listen here to hear what I’m talking about.
Listening to this steady stream of gentle static is a nice way to listen to something without actually listening to something. It’s a noise that blocks out the noise, both internal and external. I did more research on it and it’s even scientifically sound (pun intended).
Researchers found that red noise helps increase work efficiency. They went on to say that red and pink noise — there’s a whole spectrum of colored noises — can “increase the possibility of better judgment, implementation, and overall environment.”
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2. Start small
Common productivity advice is that you should complete the hardest tasks in the morning; “eat the frog,” as they say. While I’d agree that it’s good advice, I also think there’s a caveat to that.
You should do the hardest task, but perform it one easy action at a time.
In my case, it’s to write a few articles. The easiest actions I take are to open the document, name the document, and review the given outline. Then I read for research and write one section at a time.
Since I perform and accomplish an easy action, it makes it easier to do the next. Then the next. I build momentum for myself. It’s always easier to cross off tasks on your to-do list when you’ve built up the energy for it.
3. Take an honest break
Say you’re chatting with someone on your phone while working. It takes them a little bit to reply, so you decide to work a little while waiting. Then they reply. You pause your work. Then you reply. There’s a delay in their response, so you work again. But then your phone lights up again.
Then you get into this start-stop dance while working that forces you to switch your focus really fast between the two. You start to multitask.
When you switch, your brain has to re-focus on the new task, which takes some time. That’s because of attention residue; your attention on the chat with your friend lingers for a little even when you’ve switched to the working already.
At those times — when I’m trying to juggle two things at once — I just admit to myself to take a break already. It’s the same with feeling sleepy while working.
Sometimes I feel like I want to power through the sleepiness, but my writing just gets worse and worse. At that point, it’s better to just stop everything and take a short nap.
I call these “honest breaks” because, well, it forces you to be honest with yourself. As much as you might want to multitask or fight through exhaustion, it won’t lead to good outcomes.
It’s like what Ron Swanson said: “Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing.”
Defend your focus
Distractions are everywhere and they come in all shapes and notification sounds. If you aren’t careful, they’ll pull you away from your work and leave you feeling like you could’ve done more.
So the next time you try to get more things done, try to safeguard your focus as much as you can. You don’t have to let distractions win all the time.
