Ep. 14: How to deal with distractions
About this Episode
Ring riiing! ☎️ In this episode of 1-800-HEYPUNO, a friend of the show texts and asks “How do I deal with distractions?” A lot of the time, technology gets a bad rep for distracting us. The rub is, as creative slashies, a lot of our time and work happens in harmony with technology. So what can you do if you want to avoid distractions, but can’t escape your phone/ computer?
In this episode we unpack —
(1) Why we get distracted in the first place and
(2) how can we deal with it.
The @ilovecreatives team headed to WeWork Maxwell in the Arts District to do some investigative research!
Spoiler alert, Puno is trying to find a more helpful outlook on distractions.
Book references: Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life
⭐️ Don’t forget to check out our Squarespace Design Course⭐️
Transcript
Intro
Puno: Hello?
Oh, text message. This is different. ‘Hey Puno recently I've been feeling pretty distracted and I just wish I had more time. Yeah. I've gotten pretty good at setting goals for myself, but I'm having trouble sticking to them.’
I think what you need is, non-distracting glue.
‘Do you have any advice for dealing with distractions. Also, where are you right now?’ Where are you right now?
Ooh, do doo doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.
Both of those questions are amazing, but yes. First, where am I?
Cause this does not look like a one 1-800-HEYPUNO episode. But it is because we've got the phones still.
So today I'm actually working at a co-working space. This is the, WeWork in Arts District.
It's brand spanking new. I'm like one of the first people here. I'm really more of a no pants kind of person.
They have a pants policy at the we work, but otherwise it's pretty nice. The vibe is right. I know. I was surprised too. I was like, what's going on? Everything in the arts district is cute. It's like they have a cute customs officer and he's like, excuse me, ma'am. Do you have anything? That's cute. Okay, proceed. So I booked a conference room, but I want to show you around. Roll it.
We're just checking in here. No big deal. That's right. Hi. How are, how is everybody doing?
I want to get information.
Joshua trees so hot.
This place is just like basically a sleeping pad.
Oh, that's cute. I have not seen one of these in forever. This is great. It's not working. Where's my friend. I guess we're done now.
Ooh. All right. All right. That was enough of the B roll.
Distraction Police put your hands up. You are distracted. Let's bring it back a little. Let's bring it back. Let's talk about distractions cause really distractions are everywhere.
They're everywhere. I mean, I'm surrounded by four phones right now. Three of them are unplugged. You never know.
All right, so your question is how do I deal with distractions?
Getting distracted is something that I noticed a lot more when I started freelancing, I guess because you're the one who's managing your time.
You don't have another boss that's looking at you. Not that I ever had bosses that would just look at me, but you're kind of on your own, but I'm wondering, do other people feel this way as well?
I'm all alone here. I think we should take it to the streets.
Puno: Hey Puno
Puno: Thanks. Puno. We're here on the third floor of the, we work Maxwell building, and I'm gonna say hello.
Puno: Hi. How's it going?
Rika: Hi, you great.
Puno: Hi, how are you?
Shawn: Hi….How's it going?
Puno: Sorry. I know I be creepy. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Do you guys know each other?
Shawn: Yeah, we're friends.
Puno: Oh, friends that work together.
Rika: Uh, no, we're not working together. We're just freelancers.
Puno: Oh, very convenient. I have a quick question for you. When you first started freelancing, did you get more distracted?
Shawn: Definitely. All the time. You know, no one around to watch over me. Total free reign of what I was doing and when that's very dangerous at times.
Puno: So what was the main distraction trigger for you?
Shawn: I think my phone probably was a big one. And you know, probably tasty videos.
Puno: Are you a freelance chef?
Shawn: No, they're all aspirational. They're all aspirational.
Puno: Sometimes when you pick up your phone. There might be like something else that's going on. Does that resonate with you?
Shawn: Absolutely. I think when I started freelancing, it was so scary that sometimes it was easier to allow myself to be distracted than like deal with what I was afraid of.
Puno: This is amazing. We are having a moment right now. So let's peel. Let's both, can you peel that onion? Can you also let, let's peel it. Great. Okay. That was a great peel. Are you guys crying? It's a lot of onion.
Puno: Gee, thanks. Puno. So I just recently read this book called. Indestructible and he had a lot of really good insights. It's kind of weird and maybe you feel this way, but a lot of people blame technology.
You know, they're like, Oh man, I could just get so much more done. If there was an Instagram or a dang, like I've only, there wasn't Netflix and I wouldn't be wasting so much time. I got to say this. It's not really the technology that's causing the distractions.
It's what's going on inside. Your emotions.
Technology's all like in army is you honey, you too real.
So this is what our homeboy Nirs saying. “Tech is only a proximate cause. We blame it for inability to get things done and fail to look at the under lying problem.”
What's nuts is that it's not really our fault. Our brains are hardwired to do that. I mean, if you think about how did we evolve, it's because our ancestors were like, you know what? I don't like this. I'm going to learn how to do something better.
That's lame. We need electricity, and then we figured it out and we just keep growing and learning and surviving and evolving because we humans love discomfort.
It just is the fuel to our human fire. A cave man was probably super bored one day and was like, I feel creative and I need an outlet for that.
Hieroglyphics, all of this boredom and this discomfort and our feelings about how we're not satisfied, those feelings make us a bit vulnerable to distractions. But here's the good news.
We don't have to be slaves to negative feelings about this.
We have a choice. We can harness this knowledge and do something about it. That is so human of you.
So, what is our best defense against distractions?
It's recognizing our distraction triggers. We have to look at the reasons why we're getting distracted in the first place.
So there's actually two types of triggers!
There's external triggers, and that's stuff like pop up notifications, this TV, people, you know, and then we've got internal triggers.
That's like being bored, being stressed out, being unhappy, being unsatisfied.
The feelings triggers can lead to a path of traction or distraction. Actually, the best way to describe this is with a little roleplay.
So we're going to go back to Puno and she's going to help us out with this. Back to you Puno.
Puno: All right, so what you two represent are two paths.
You’re the path of productivity. And you are the path of distraction. So essentially what happens is whenever you get triggered by a distraction, you've really got two options. You can either go with it and get distracted, or you can fight it and get distracted later when you want to. Okay. So, ah, I just got triggered.
Shawn: I'm a cute Panda bear. Hi, I'm Etsy. Hi. I'm Instagram.
Puno: Wow.
Rika: No. Stop. Remember your goal of wanting to finish your emails?
Puno: Hmm? Idunno…. No, this Panda's pretty cute.
Shawn: I know I am.
Rika: But you said that if you finished your emails today, you get to watch pandas.
Puno: Wow, you're right. Sorry. Pandas. I'm going to be productive today and scene.
Puno: thanks Puno those beautiful way of showing that you have the option to pick the distracted path or the non distracted path. So let's do a play by play. The first part is there's a trigger and you're like, Oh man, what is this?
Then you're going to assess it and be like, what am I feeling right now? Are you feeling anxious? Are you feeling sad? Are you feeling like you can't finish something because you feel like you're not good at your job?
Go deep, go real deep. There's more there and you need to peel that onion, and once you've peeled that onion, then you can just start practicing. Letting it go.
Psychologist Jonathan Bricker suggest this really weird, corny visualization exercise, but I'm all for an exercise. Let's try it. He says, imagine sitting next to a stream and watching your distracting thoughts being carried away on leaves. That's right. Leaves floating on water. All right. I'll try this. Oh, there goes that Panda by Panda. Oh, there goes that Korean YouTube cake. ASMR video.
There it goes sushi….I already had a snack. I don't need that. Don't eat that. I don't need that. Okay. I feel a little bit better. All that water sound made me want to pee, but you know, I feel pretty good.
Technology isn't the cause of why you being distracted, but it can be an external trigger. So if you're ever feeling like, damn it, I'm getting just too distracted, then just take a second, write down what your feelings are, and then peel that layer, if you will.
As a freelancer, you just have to be a bit more disciplined. I feel like these days, a lot of people want to set their own hours and feel like if I am able to do the work whenever I need to do the work, I know I'll get my stuff done and I know I'll just be happier.
But when people go through that transition, it's not that easy because for all the crap that we give full time jobs, it is a lot of management and thinking and discipline that you don't have to do, but then when you do it, the actual day to day of managing yourself is a skill that you've just never practiced before.
But the fact that you want it is a great start. So if you really want it and you're in this transition, then just know if it gets hard, it's totally because it's hard because you never had to think about it before. Anybody that's doing full time, anyone that's in freelance, there's a lot that you can do.
Understanding what's distracting you is a skill that you can totally get really good at. Even with full time work. That kind of discipline is super important for your relationships. We prioritize the things that have deadlines and your relationships, your husband, your wife, your partner, your dog, your cat.
They don't give you deadlines, so you end up putting them at the back end. But if you're more disciplined about your time and utilize your time more by not getting distracted, then your relationships are no longer going to be at the backend. They're up here in the front end.
You're structuring your day so that that is your priority, but you gotta earn it. One of my favorite ways of doing that. Is Pomodoro also known as super productive time, and I love creative.
Basically, Pomodoro is time boxing. What timeboxing does is it guarantees a framework to make success possible. When you start managing your own time. I find a lot of people feel this way. They just don't think they're good at it and then because they don't think they're good at it. Then they think, Oh, well I'm not good at freelancing.
And that's not necessarily the case. So maybe try this Pomodoro technique, and actually since Puno is still bothering those other two people, we can just go to her and see how it's done. Back to you, Puno.
Puno: So we're back here with our, our new friends.
So have you guys ever done a Pomodoro session?
Shawn: No. What is that?
Puno: Essentially, it's time blocking. You've got 25 minutes of no distractions, just work, and then we're going to take a five minute break.
So if you need to empty liquids that are in your body, that would be the time to do it. If you need longer than that, you're going to have to break it up.
Then we're going to go back and work for another 25 minutes. Then we're going to take a break for five minutes. Then we're going to go back to work for 25 minutes then we're going to take a break for five minutes.
Then we're going to go back to work for 25 minutes, and hopefully that equals two hours.
Are you guys ready for Palmy? Come come. We need to get started. Ready? Get your chair, get your chair. Okay. We've got 25 minutes ready? No distractions, and get Super Productive. No distractions, no distractions. Focus. Woo. All right.
🎵Music 🎵
