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Are Constant Interruptions Ruining Your Focus?
by Joel Steidl in General on Jun 17, 2009
One of the things I love most about the Paramore|Redd office are the sweet views of downtown Nashville and the Gulch.
This morning started off with a distraction, a huge t-storm rolling through downtown. It got me thinking about how many interruptions happen during the course of the day and how I try to stay focused in spite of them.
First off, I’m a huge checklist person, so if you aren’t… you can probably stop here.
For the past six months I’ve been consistently using Netvibes, mainly their incredible “to do list widget.“ I’ve gotten into a habit where I use the checklists for pretty much everything. One checklist is named “Hot List” and another appropriately named “Not as Hot List.“ When people drop by my office or send me a request via email, I add it to one of the two lists and order it (it has sweet drag-and-drop reordering) based on the priority it needs. As tasks are completed, they are checked off and moved to the bottom.
On busy days when the interruptions are abundant, rather than shutting down, my organized life on Netvibes allows me to stay calm, cool and remained focused on my “Hot List.“
How do you stay focused?
FYI, I heard about Netvibes from a February 2008 blog post from Cameron Moll titled GTD with Netvibes.
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Being a fan of the GTD method of organization, I have found the OmniFocus for the Mac and the accompanying Omnifocus iPhone app are hard to beat. Check em out.
@Jeff We love Omni-Outliner and Graffle! I can’t believe I’ve never heard of OmniFocus…will be checking out immediately. Thanks!
sweet.. i’m gonna check out both of those. i remember when you show’d me how to effectively use MAMP… and now how to keep my life together. joel = greatness
Totally agree.
I really dig BaseCamp by 37signals.
Seems really simular to what your using Joel. It has some other features for teams… It helps us GTD!
They wrote a book called “Get Real.“ Another great resource for keeping things focused and moving!
Really digging your blog.