Bowl Games & Beyond: 6 Ways To Beat Distractions That Kill Productivity

Think your employees are extra distracted this time of year?

After all, there are a lot of distractions outside of work — the Super Bowl, Oscars, Grammys — in these early months. In fact, sick day requests jump by 45% the day after the big game alone, according to data from Paycom. Another big surge is after the Grammys.

Of course, we can’t just blame movies, sporting events and music awards for distractions. (And we won’t even go down the road of social and mainstream media.) But there will always be something.

It adds up:  Almost 80% of employees said they can’t go a full hour without being distracted, according to research from Insightful. At least 11% get distracted every five minutes, while almost 60% face distractions every 30 minutes.

“Employees struggle to get work done due to constant distractions and find it difficult to regain focus after being disrupted repeatedly,” the researchers said.

We just can’t get as much done when our minds or mouths wander.

Difficult to Beat Distractions

Pop culture is the rarer problem with productivity, pulling people away from work for about a half hour, according to another study. The bigger issues include: chatty co-workers, excessive office noise, office gossip, internet browsing and multi-tasking.

It’s tough to beat distractions, considering they’re everywhere all the time. But we have some remedies — whether you need them or want to pass them on to your staff when productivity slips (or better, before it slips).

6 Tips to Beat Distractions

Here’s why we need help beating distractions: We just can’t make them go away entirely.

You’ll see some of these tips might eliminate one kind of distraction, but there’s always another kind lurking nearby. So, the first tip is to:

1. Identify Your Biggest Distraction

For some, it’s those pop culture and gossip prompts with co-workers. And for goodness sake, whether you’re a lover or hater, nearly everyone has something to say about Taylor Swift, football and the frenzy that follows them.

Meanwhile, some of us lose productivity because we try to do too much at once — aka multi-tasking. So, take a day and note what pulls you from the work you want to get done. From there:

2. Manage Notifications

You can’t always stop people from interrupting your work, but you can control how notifications, pop-ups and other digital distractions affect you.

Switch Slack, email and other work or social notifications off. Turn on “Do Not Disturb” mode when you need to work on critical tasks. 

3. Fix a Schedule for Checking the Inbox

Checking email and other communication apps multiple times an hour causes unnecessary and excessive task-switching. Use your signature line to let others know when you check-in so they know when to expect a response. And then, most importantly, stick to those check-in times.

4. Take Scheduled Breaks

A University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign study found brief diversions can improve focus, productivity and effectiveness when you’re on task. Ideally, you work for about 50 minutes and break 10-15. That break could include some of the distractions you might otherwise fall victim to, such as internet scrolling. But keep a timer on that!

5. Divide and Conquer

Cross an easy task off your to-do early and quickly. Then, once you’re focused, you can work toward bigger, more daunting tasks.

The momentum will make you less susceptible to distractions.

6. Resist the Urge to Multitask

The prescription for this problem is simple: Stop multitasking.

Instead, adopt the practice of single-tasking. You want to put your complete attention to a literal single task. Create a space, time and setting where colleagues or physical interruptions can’t interfere with that single task.