We all know how bad a slow day can be. It’s not even lunch and already the grind seems endless as the latest report or data entry needs finishing. Worse yet, you find yourself constantly tinkering with your phone, checking emails, looking at Facebook. All this, unfortunately, leads to an unproductive and dull day.
While dealing with a slow day is challenging enough, it’s bad for both employees and business to be surrounded by distractions. Worse yet, if the day isn’t slow, having concentration broken by unrelated tech can be problematic as well. To stay on task, there are several attention-hungry things to avoid all together.
Social media
Nothing is quite as popular or time devouring as social media. From Facebook to Instagram, Twitter to Tumblr, social media can constantly nip at concentration and turn a productive day into a messy one. Because of its constant updates, messages, and nonstop feed of information, keeping away from social media is a big distraction to avoid.
Mobile games
Smartphones and tablets are already tempting enough. A phone is easy to pull out and check, cycling through updates, checking messages, and so on. With mobile games, it can be worse for focus. Designed to constantly assault the senses with updates, energy draining gimmicks and flashy visuals, they can be a total leech on getting things done. A quick game of Candy Crush can turn into 10 minutes of lost work time.
Emails
It goes hand-in-hand with messaging. In general, emails at work are part of a usual day. However, when not on task, it’s tempting to get caught up in a back and forth between individuals which slowly drags the mind away from whatever task needed doing.
Texting
Along with emails, texting is the electronic workplace discussion. Having thoughtful discussions or quick hellos with coworkers, friends, or family is fine and dandy, but on a work day this can quickly spiral into what the brain focuses on. Employees are no longer thinking about their job if they’re wrapped up in a talk about politics or what they thought of the latest movie.
Internet browsing
The king of all tech distractions is of course the Internet. With modern utility and hours of endless entertainment, the Internet will provide nonstop distractions for anyone who can’t break away from it. Everything listed so far has to be utilized through the Internet anyway, so you can see why it’s an issue. It’s best to be careful when on a Google spree, because that can easily turn into an entire day of wasted time.
Distractions are all about practicing personal discipline and staying away from things that break concentration. It’s easier said than done, but once the brain realizes it can have a mental “snack” every few minutes, you may find yourself breaking from work more often than you like.