Like Arya Stark, distraction comes in many guises, and she is here to fuck your shit up.*
I’m not talking about legit last-minute “must-dos,” but rather about an insidious venom that poisons your best-laid plans from within. If focus is akin to the phone on which you schedule your life, distraction is like losing said phone. Your day is turned completely upside down. You’re flailing around like a chicken with its SIM card cut off. Suddenly you feel compelled to drop everything, run to the nearest computer, and inform everyone you know Lost my phone. If you need me, email! (Which, if you think about it, is only adding to your level of distraction—I could get so much more done in a day if people would stop emailing me.) Nothing is getting accomplished until you have that device back in your hot little hand and your ability to focus is restored.
Therefore, much like you need to improve your relationship to time, you need to distance yourself from distraction.
There are three easy ways to do this:
Take evasive action.
Just like you know you should board up your house’s windows before a hurricane, you know your own weaknesses. Don’t let Arya exploit them! If you have a compulsive Twitter-checking problem that eats into your productivity, don’t keep the site/app open while you’re trying to get shit done. Board it up and throw away the nail gun.
Stop, drop, and roll.
If, despite your best intentions, you find yourself coming out of a fugue state with Twitter open on your screen and you don’t remember how you got there, treat the situation like you would if you were literally on fire. Stop scrolling, drop your hands to your sides, and roll away from your device long enough to snuff out the urge.
Pencil it in.
There’s no harm in taking a mental break every once in a while. A break only becomes a dangerous distraction when it’s unplanned or goes on way too long. (Fine, maybe not Arya Stark–level dangerous, but life isn’t going to win itself, guys.) If you know you can’t resist the lure of that little blue bird, just pad your overall notion of “how long it’s going to take me to do X task” with an extra ten minutes of recharging, whatever that looks like for you—catching up with the latest on Rob and Blac Chyna, diving into Nate Silver’s analysis of the current sports season, or clicking on through to see what @EmergencyKittens has to offer. Meow, that’s more like it.