Dealing with Distractions, Getting Past the Blank Page, and More
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How to Deal with Distractions and Protect Your Focus »
In a world of distraction, focus is hard. But that doesn’t mean we should fight to protect our attention.
In this post, I want to share some tips for staying focused — and what to do when the inevitable distractions come.
In his book Hyperfocus, author Chris Bailey shares the most effective framework I’ve ever come across for dealing with distraction. It resembles one of those 2×2 productivity grids you’re probably familiar with and is incredibly simple. On the y-axis are Things you control and Things you don’t control, and on the x-axis are Things that are fun and Things that are annoying.
How to Eliminate the Blank Page »
Have you ever sat down to do some writing and you’re just staring at the blank page? You’re stuck trying to come up with the idea, or you’re ready to do the work and you’re just lost. It’s the worst.
When you should be focusing on doing the creative work and doing the writing that you want to do, you’re spending all your time thinking about what to write about in the first place.
How to Create Margin For Your Thoughts »
As someone who basically writes for a living, I find it very important to have undistracted time to actually do the work — the writing. This may seem obvious, but just because the time itself is set aside in my schedule or during my day, that doesn’t always mean that it’s going to be productive time. Being able to focus for an extended period of time without any distractions is actually becoming a very rare skill. This means that if it’s something you can figure out how to do, it actually can be to your competitive advantage.
Seven Tips for Eliminating Inbox Addiction »
Of all the things you can do to make your inbox more calm, the biggest thing BY FAR is to eliminate what I call the Just Checks.
The Just Checks are all the times when you’re not quite sure what to do, so you reach for your phone to “just check” social media. Or “just check” your messages. Or “just check” your email.
You don’t really have anything specific you need to do, you just have a few moments to fill, so you’re magnetically pulled towards the screen in your pocket. That’s a just check.
My biggest pet peeve in life are people who are checking their phones when at a stop light. Seriously??
The problem is that these “just checks” can become an actual addiction. I call it inbox addiction.
How to be Productive with the Apple Reminders App »
Over the next couple of months, we are going to explore how to get the most out of the Apple Stock Apps. Apple has stepped up its game with the newest iterations of their stock Apps (Notes, Calendar, Mail, Reminders…), and in this article we are going to focus on the Apple Reminders App.
If you would have said, “I only use the Apple stock apps for my tech stack” a few years ago, the nerd-productivity community would have laughed in your face. But in the past few years, Apple has made huge strides in engineering their native apps to do more. It’s no longer far-fetched to see yourself relying more on stock Apple apps.
The Ownership Matrix (What to Do When You’re Overwhelmed) »
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, then perhaps you feel as though you have been given too much. In fact, you’ve been given so much that you’re to the point of feeling buried and drowning beneath a huge mass of stuff — from urgent issues, undone tasks, incoming requests of your time and energy, and more. As a result, you feel overpowered and defeated.
When you’re overwhelmed with too many priorities, it can feel impossible to find the time you need to get everything done.
Even worse is when everything is important.
How can you possibly put aside 99% of your responsibilities for a few hours in order to focus on just one thing?
I don’t know about you, but I used to feel guilty about neglecting all the other important things I wasn’t doing when I would try to focus on at least one thing that was important.
It’s nonsensical that you can work on everything all at the same time, but who says we humans are rational, sensical people?
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Interesting Links From Our Friends and Around the Web »
- (Casey Liss) Announcing Callsheet
- (Six Colors) In iOS 17, Siri can make the web speak
- (Mac Power Users) #704: “The Details Matter,” with Shahid Kamal Ahmad
- (MacStories) Apple Music Gains New Algorithmic ‘Discovery Station’
- (Tools & Toys) Spigen “Ultra Hybrid Zero:One” Teardown Cases for iPhone 14 Pro & Pro Max
Our Must-Have, Most Used Productivity Apps
We spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through hundreds of apps to find the very best. We put together a short list of our must-have, most-used apps for increasing productivity.