Even though you know you should turn off pop-up alerts, silence your phone,
and stop checking email every five minutes, this knowledge doesn’t change your
behavior. I could bury you with research about how bad this is, but it wouldn’t
change your behavior. This is where the #5SecondRule comes into play—you don’t
have to want to do it, you just have to push yourself to do it.
First you must decide that distractions are not good. Interruptions of any sort
are the kiss of death for your productivity. Research shows open office spaces are a
nightmare for focus. Checking email can become an addiction because of what
behavioral researchers call “random rewards.” You have to decide that your goals
are more important than push notifications. It’s that simple.
Then you just remove them. I’m not claiming this is rocket science. I’m also
not going to tell you that it’s easy. But I promise you that if you use the
#5SecondRule, you’ll actually do it. When you start to remove distractions and are
able to focus on the moment-to-moment things that matter you will have “no idea”
how much it will help, as Karen wrote:
Recently, I was talking about this with my high school-aged daughter Kendall.
She loves social media, but would spend so much time on her phone that it was
seriously distracting her from her schoolwork. Plus, it was making her feel insecure
to constantly compare herself to the social media posts of celebrities and
supermodels.