Whats your way to stay focused?

Robin Lutz
27 replies
In the mean time we have many tools in our that interrupt my work: Slack, Gitlab, Email, Trello, etc. All these plattforms are always open in my computer and send me constant interruptions. On the one hand I rely on them for stuff like alerts and failed software integration pipelines, on the other hand I don't have hours of uninterrupted work anymore. What are your strategies? How do you find a middle ground of being reachable and being focused?

Replies

Nik Hazell
For whatever reason, a busy coffee shop is where I can most easily focus! It also has the plus side of great coffee - but the downside of spending far too much on coffee ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Matthew Johnson
My top tip is to plan your day each morning. Take a look at your calendar and see what calls/meetings you have. Then take a look at your backlog of to-dos, and pick the 5-10 top priorities for the day from your various tools, and only focus on those. If you can, close those tools, and don't let noisy new items in your inbox dictate how you spend your day (might be hard if there are things that come up throughout the day that require immediate attention). I just wrote an article on this as it happens if helpful: https://taskablehq.com/blog/star... As a shameless plug - you might find what we're building at Taskable useful
Robin Lutz
@mattcrail Switching off the annoying tabs was also my first try today, but here I am ;-)
Ruben Wolff
Plan the must-dos of your day and work on them one by one before starting anything else, plan your day lightly so that you can take your time doing things properly and no rush and jump from one task to another. When one task is over, you might want to take a small break to breathe
Robin Lutz
@rubenwolff That sounds reasonable, but my tasks are mostly big and they need a lot of concentration. Thats also why interruptions are so painful. I will need to devide my tasks in smaller portions that can be planed better. Thank you!
Julia Doronina
Plan my day, make a check-list with deadlines and try not to take breaks and dive into the social networks only after a difficult and time-wasting task to relax a little bit
Robin Lutz
@julia_demyanchuk As I am very fast addicted to them, I stay away from social media all together. Especially on the phone and especially doom scrolling apps. I am a very emotional person and that's what these apps use to make me stay engaged. PH is a welcome other platform, with limited input daily and many people I can feel connected to and empathize.
Julia Doronina
@robin_lutz Yes, I absolutely agree with you that PH has another effect and is more useful than social media that only take your time without valuable returns such as new connections and ideas.
Dillon Peterson
@robin_lutz @julia_demyanchuk Agree with y’all, Product Hunt is a different animal. It feels great to be connected with people that are passionate early adopter and maker types: Everyone here understands each other well. 😌
Inna Proshkina
My main strategy is to stay away from social media during my productive hours when I need to focus on creative work. Check email every 2 hours. Mute group notifications in Slack. And keep my door locked so that my kids couldn't get in :)
Robin Lutz
@inna_proshkina I tried that with the door, but then I have quickly a protest outside my door that could turn into a riot every moment :-) they are only 1 and 3
Inna Proshkina
@robin_lutz @alex_papageorge BTW we have launched Neuton today, please check us out, we are #5 on the homepage
Anton Ross
Sometimes I completely remove all interfering applications from the phone and the work begins to move from the dead point. Analytics also makes you constantly look into it. But I didn't come up with anything here)
Robin Lutz
@rosssaris I reduced the Grafana board to only counter that will become red, if something happens, then I can investigate. Don't bother with diagrams, write an alert for things you need to keep an eye on.
Becky Ming Qi
Having goals and knowing what I am doing is so much important to keep myself on the right track.
Robin Lutz
@scoups Oh yeah, thats right, having some OKRs helps me also a lot to prioritize my backlog, but its the little disturbances throughout the day that I need to reduce to raise my productivity.
Dadior Chen
Every day, I run about 6km(2+miles), I run in a sports field, about 400 meters per lap, I count the laps I run, tell me this is my N lap, it's my target.
Robin Lutz
@dadior_chen I wont even talk about sports. Corona destroyed my teams sport and made me to fat, lazy and old to start again :( But I have to children below 5, does that count as sport?
Dadior Chen
@robin_lutz but locking down I suppose should give you more time to work out?
Sharkes Monken
Over the past few weeks, I noticed a major shift by stop interacting with any social media platforms during work hours to maintain a productive day whilst creating a must-do list early morning after yoga or workout then work through them all. After work or during resting hours, I made sure all of these app notifications are paused to avoid getting distracted while recharging. Hope you can find a balance as well and don't beat yourself on this just ensure your mental state is cared for.
Dillon Peterson
@sharke12 The switching off of social media during work hours sounds helpful, I will try that. 🤠 You have a morning routine I presume? Like yoga or workout, to-do list writing, … What else is part of your routine?
Sharkes Monken
@dillon_peterson Currently am trying to incorporate meditation as part of my schedule with the goal of lowering the chances of overthinking during the day and apply gratitude as well.
Robin Lutz
@dillon_peterson @sharke12 I have 3 times Yoga in my "habit tracker" for some time, but I hardly find the motivation, mostly because it takes too long to find a nice video etc. Do you use some kind of app or what kind of resources do you use to guide meditation or yoga? Anything you would recommend?
Sharkes Monken
@dillon_peterson @robin_lutz With meditation, I tend to use Omvana as It contains a lot of useful meditations, cheaper compared to other apps plus it has some of my personal favorite authors. And for Yoga usually, rely on YT channels such as Boho Beautiful Yoga, she has some great content, and retreats. Give them a look and let me know your thoughts about it Omvana App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/om... YT Channel: Boho Beautiful Yoga
Robin Lutz
@dillon_peterson @sharke12 I was quite into Tara Stiles some years ago, but this "bedtime" yoga/meditation from Boho is quite on another level:
If you don't know him, after the yoga I finally found the power to do a Wim Hof meditation again, had a really good sleep, thank you :-*