Paper and pen: a simple strategy to combatting distraction

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

At times, we’ll sit down to work and do everything right. We’ll move our phone to another room, silence all notifications on our laptop, block off the next hour in our schedule and have a singular task in front of us. No task-switching (believed to be “multi-tasking”), no distractions, nothing but undisturbed focus. But then, we’ll remember we have to call person X to book an appointment, so we’ll do that to get it out of our mind. As we begin to re-focus, we’ll have a really good idea about the project we’ve been working on and quickly spend ten minutes on that. While we’re at it, we realise we haven’t got anything for dinner, so we’ll order some food online.

And before you know it, thirty minutes have passed. Vanished, just like that.

So how do we stay committed to the task at hand?

With a piece of paper and a pen.

The technique is simple, write down all these thoughts on a piece of paper. I suggest paper rather than on a document online or a note on your phone because there are no distractions on paper. There’s no temptation to check your emails just in case there’s anything urgent, no reason to have a quick glance at social media. But is it really that simple?

Well, sort of. That’s all you have to do for that moment.

Just writing it down will not ensure the technique is successful repeatedly. You have to follow through and do the actions you wrote down.

Calling person X, adding that idea to your project and ordering dinner are still important right? And if you don’t follow through, you don’t just go hungry (without dinner), you lose focus. While writing thoughts down is important, we have to be able to trust we will see to these actions later. Otherwise, we can’t properly let the thoughts go from our mind.

You might be wondering, when do we follow through?

It depends on what works for you. I like to have paper with me the whole day and then complete the actions the next morning (unless there’s something urgent like dinner, which I’ll circle and complete as soon as I finish my work). But it would be equally valid to perform the actions immediately after completing the task to get them out of your head. Find what works best, based on how you like to work.

Finally, when you are comfortable with this technique, you can expand it further to include thoughts and reflection. For example, while you don’t have any specific actions to perform, you might be struggling to focus because you had an argument that morning. You could write that down and perhaps, what specifically is upsetting you. Then, later on, you could spend a brief while learning from the situation and/or deciding on actions you’ll take next time, to de-escalate the conflict or prevent it all together. Often, these kinds of actions are best done the next day, once you’ve had time to clear your head and can look at the situation more objectively.