Reduce Stress by Minimizing Distractions

How to Stay Focused to Increase Productivity

To increase productivity, you can adopt some effective yet simple strategies to reduce stress caused by distractions. These distractions come in many forms: from ringing doorbells and telephones, to emails and voicemails. It can be a real challenge to stay focused!

Here are some strategies you can use to control your distractions:

1. Ringing Telephone: Unless you're expecting an important call, turn off your ringers and direct your calls to voicemail. Then only check your voicemail once or twice a day.

Return the calls you must, but if you can reply via email, that's even better. When you send an email reply, you can keep the conversation succinct.

2. Email distractions: Gleaning over a ton of emails is big wastage of time. It can cause you lots of stress and anxiety when you are concentrating on some important tasks. You can reduce stress to a large extent by unsubscribing from email lists you don't need.

Another useful step would be to set up separate email accounts for business and pleasure. This way, when you're attending to your work, you don't find yourself bombarded with jokes, videos, party invites, or Facebook messages.

Reduce the frequency of emails delivered to your Inbox or set your email utility so that you only receive emails when you go in and manually retrieve them in batches.

3. Purposeless Surfing: If you don't need the internet for your work, stay away from it. You'll save yourself a lot of wasted time.

Fully close web browsers so you eliminate the temptation to surf online. As much as web is a storehouse of information, it can also cost you lots of wasted hours, if you don't keep track of your surfing habits.

4. Distraction by Co-workers: If you find that your co-workers annoy you, try wearing headphones while you work to give the illusion you can't hear them. It might sound silly, but helps to reduce stress by eliminating endless babble that might be bringing down your productivity.

Another option is to post a Do Not Disturb sign outside of your workspace. Hopefully, your co-workers will know that you mean business and honor it.

5. Work Space Clutter: Get rid of any visual clutter - it's distracting and kills productivity. Seeing unfinished projects or pending work can cause unnecessary stress that can have negative results, like making you unable to focus on the task at hand. Reduce stress by organizing your surroundings, for which you may do the following-

i) Put everything you don't need for your current project into a drawer or box, out of sight if you have to. You can always sort it out carefully later on when you're less busy.

ii) The same should be done for computer clutter. Eliminate unneeded computer programs and icons to make your computer more efficient. The quicker you're able to find the file you need, the faster you'll be able to get back on track.

6. Work-at-home Distractions: If you work from home, make sure friends and family members respect the fact that you're truly working just like anyone who goes into an office. Some people may have a difficult time understanding this concept, but they'll comply if you explain it.

Avoid doing household chores during your work time. Train your mind to think about these tasks when your work is finished.When distractions do arise, whether at home or at the office, make notes and deal with them at an appropriate time at the end of the day. If someone pops by to chat, stand up to let them know your chatting time is limited. Don't allow them to sit or get cozy.

Of course, you still need to set aside time to handle these distractions. You don't want to be so restrictive on yourself that you burn out. After all, a little guilt-free downtime is also a good method to reduce stress. Sometimes, just let your mind wander, browse the web, or do whatever appeals to you, just make sure it doesn't creep into your work time.

Follow these tips every day to make effective use of your time and energy. When you eliminate distractions, you find that you can get more done in half the time.

Further Reading

Reduce Stress Levels With 10 Practical Time Saving Tips

Poor Stress And Time Management Symptoms

How to Relieve Stress When You Are Overwhelmed

Seven Stress Reduction Techniques To Improve Quality of Your Live

Top 10 relaxation CD, DVDs, tapes and MP3 downloads

Reduce Stress at Home and Find Peace: 6 Things To Remember

Why Proper Breathing is so important for a low stress life?

Relieving Stress By Exercise

The Five Causes Of Procrastination

The Importance Of Time Management

Seven Time Management Skills That You Must Have

The Secret To Writing A To Do List That Gets Things Done

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