6 Essential Tips For Distraction Free Blogging
November 16, 2007
Recently, I’ve started noticing and removing small distractions that can sometimes lead to serious concentration lapses.
A distraction free work environment can boost your productivity a great deal. Just like a stress free mind can help you get to the pinnacle of creativity.
When writing a post, if your mind wanders off for a while, it clings to something else that is lying nearby, and refuses to regain the focus. And if you are like me, you never get into the creative mindset again for that particular session.
Here’s what you should do to achieve a distraction free environment and stress free mind to get the most out of your work sessions at home.
- Clean your keyboard - Most computer workers (yes, bloggers) eat and drink near the keyboard. So it gets dirty, and sometimes, because of a big bread crumb doing the sabotage, the keys get stuck when you are in the middle of typing a post. Clean your keyboard, or better still don’t eat around your keyboard.
- Move the books to another room - Here’s another distraction. I often had my favorite poetry books lying on my computer desk, and sometimes when I felt lazy, I’d pick up the book and start reading. I could never get back to what I was doing before the damn book allured me. So now I’ve moved the books to another room, making my desk slightly cleaner and my work environment more conducive to productivity.
- Move the DVDs to DVD rack - There was also a pile of DVDs and CDs scattered around on my computer desk. Some watched and some unwatched. Catchy cover pictures were too good to be ignored. While I didn’t always succumb to the temptation, it sure as heck broke my concentration. Realizing the problem, I keep all the DVDs neatly stacked in the rack that sits beyond my arm’s reach.
- Unplug your speakers - While some people work better with music playing in the background, most don’t. Unplug your audio speakers so you don’t start recalling a song’s lyrics amidst writing your next blockbuster post.
- Turn off your cell phone - There is one thing I don’t like about cell phones: they keep ringing all the time. Turn off your cell phone (or put it on silent mode) while you are busy. Trust me, you’ll have plenty of time to talk to your friends if you get your work done in time. And you’ll do all this without feeling guilty!
- Stick a ‘don’t disturb’ notice on the door - Finally, you have to keep your household members at bay too. It happens all too often that when you settle down to work on computer, someone knocks on your door because they’ve got to discuss something very (un)important with you. UGH! Let your family members know that you don’t want to be disturbed when you are working, and that they should respect your schedule.
What do you do to keep your work environment productive?
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Good points. It also helps me to work at times of the day when I’m able to focus the best.
My biggest distractions would be the Internet connection! LOL. I am most productive (in terms of writing blog posts) when I’m disconnected because otherwise, I would stray into reading feeds and online news and visit pages that friends have stumbled, you get the flow..
I can’t concentrate with the background music as well, but I’m too messy a person to keep my desk clean for a week. I may clear the books and papers away but within a week, things get piled up again, LOL.
Steven, exactly. The ‘zzz’ feeling doesn’t get into your way in the early part of the day.
Pelf, Oh my, the same problem here.. I get back to the unfinished projects only when for some reason I can not connect to the internet. There are just too many distractions online.
I’ve been trying to keep my desk clean, though as you said, it’s kinda hard to start with, because books and stuff slowly pile up. But if I try hard enough, I’ll hopefully develop a distaste for desk clutter.
thanks for the points, I always find I can write much better without being distracted. Scott
I used to have a bunch of tabs open all the time in my browser and that included my email. The name of the tab changes when I get a new email come in so I see something like Inbox (1) which makes me want to go check it out straight away. I now get a lot more email than I used to so I shut off email before blogging or settling down to any serious work.
Writing the articles offline and applying all the tips above will be the best.
One of my biggest distraction when writing a post is that when I am writing, I tend to bloghop concurrently. When I saw a catchy title, I tend to stop writing and read it.
Scott, you are welcome.
Caroline, I used to have Gmail open in a separate tab, but as you said, it was distracting as I kept looking at the tab to see if there were any new emails. Now I check my emails with Outlook only when I am free. It saves me a lot of time.
Wayne, writing offline is a great idea. However, it has a downside. What do you do if, during writing, you have to look something up on the web? Also, I find it hard to stay offline for more than 5 minutes (when I am in front of computer).
I find that when I start writing I will write until I stop. But this is because I write for the love of writing. But I do need to work on this for my other internet projects - because I get way to disctracted!
I totally agree with you. Things that distract should be kept at bay while working. Once the concentration is lost it gets very difficult to start all over again and work.