Got this link from The Monday Kickoff. Good framework for helping you focus amidst a sea of distractions.

Link: How to Focus in the Age of Distraction

Reason #2: filtering out information takes effort.

Contrary to common sense, ignoring things is not a passive mental process.

Researchers have found that it takes energy to ignore irrelevant stimuli.

In other words, ignoring something still takes a toll on your mental stamina. Think of it this way, we wake up in the morning and our mental stamina bar is at 100% full. If you have to go through the day trying to ignore irrelevant stimuli, your mental stamina bar will probably be down to 50% by lunchtime. By the time you go home, it may be down to 10%. Then you end up just getting fast food because you can't think of anything else better to eat. And you crash down on your sofa to binge-watch Netflix, because your brain is too tired to do something else.

Why do I keep a work journal at the office? I was looking up “journals” and found a blog post from a software developer who kept a work journal. I thought it was interesting and decided to give it a try. A few weeks after, I read Cal Newport's books and found out that he too kept a journal at work. So that was even more incentive to keep one.

There is a saying that goes, “out of sight, out of mind”. That is the basis for the first productivity tip that I'm sharing on this journal. As you can tell by the title though, I added “Out of Reach” in between. The reason for that is explained towards the end of this post.

My usual routine when I got to work was to take out my phone and place it on my desk, right in front of me, between the keyboard and my monitors. The idea being that I would easily spot any notification and can act on them.