Actions Against Distractions: Managing Your Scattered, Disorganized, and Forgetful Mind

by Geraldine Markel Phd

Overview

Don’t Blame the Demons of Distraction—Conquer Them!

On average, dealing with interruptions at work consumes more than two hours a day—or 28% of your whole workday.
Is that true for you, too? Do mysterious forces thwart your efforts to be productive at work and beyond? How many times have you said, “I wish I weren’t constantly interrupted” or “I need to stop wasting time on the computer” or “I’m misplacing my keys and glasses all the time”?
Don’t dismiss these concerns. They matter. And you definitely don’t have to “live with them.”

You don’t have to let your life spin out of control. Take action against your distractions now!

Whether you’re a business person, community leader, stay-at-home parent, or retiree, play an active role in enhancing your quality of life—distraction free!

You’ll find the systematic approach especially helpful if you constantly:
• Struggle to find or maintain a job
• Need greater focus to return to school
• Strive to keep ahead of competitors
• Fight the battle with rushing and over-commitment

Use Actions Against Distractions to help you:
• Discover your strengths and vulnerabilities
• Go from “good intention” to “effective action”
• Gain and maintain improved attention, memory and organization
• Ultimately enjoy greater peace of mind and life satisfaction

Don’t let your life spin out of control! Take advantage of this guide’s:
• Self-Checks and Engaging Worksheets
• A Personalized 5-Step Action Plan
• 7 Strategies to Implement Your Plan
• Actions Against Distraction: technology, others, activities, spaces, stress, fatigue, medication/illness, and an unruly mind

“This book can benefit everyone. . . . professionals, business owners, artists, musicians, parents, and anyone trying to juggle a busy life. Dr. Markel’s book is remarkable in that it helps you identify your own ‘Demons of Distraction,’ and through reflection, to mobilize yourself to overcome both internal and external interferences in achieving your goals. I found it funny, profoundly truthful and enormously helpful.”
—SALLY ROSENBERG, M.D., Associate Clinical Professor,
Department of Psychiatry, Michigan State University

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781475992724
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	08/27/2013
Pages:	246
Product dimensions:	8.25(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.52(d)

Read an Excerpt

ACTIONS Against Distractions

Managing Your Scattered, Disorganized, and Forgetful Mind

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By Geraldine Markel

iUniverse LLC

Copyright © 2013 Geraldine Markel, PhD
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-9272-4

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CHAPTER 1

Your Demons of Distraction

Bill and his officemates are engaged in teasing banter and hearty laughter over drinks and dinner. The egg rolls and fried wontons taste delicious, despite being rather greasy. Reveling in food, friends, and fun, Bill grabs a cloth napkin and wipes his mouth with gusto. When his friends suddenly whoop and point, he realizes that he's used his new designer silk tie as his napkin. Oops!

Does this story represent a silly incident or a more serious problem? Bill's expensive cleaning bills attest to his frequent carelessness at social occasions. How much do distractions like this foster a messy work style and tarnish Bill's professional image—which could cost him dearly?

How about you? Have you been embarrassed by similar performance slippages? If you experience work/life distractions that diminish your best efforts, it's time to pay attention. You don't want occasional incidents to develop into nasty habits that pose significant barriers to attaining your work/life goals.

It's time to ask these questions:

• Am I suffering constant and irritating distractions?

• To what degree do distractions lead to inattention, forgetfulness, and disorganization?

• What are the costs and consequences of distractions at work or home?

• How do distractions undermine my attempts to live a life aligned with my deepest values?

This chapter addresses these questions and provides self-checks, activities, and daily logs to identify your demons and their costs and to set preliminary goals.

Define the Consequences of Your Distraction

Charlie Ponte, my dad, built a musical instrument business in midtown Manhattan. On one hand, he loved selling, and he enjoyed the camaraderie of other musicians. On the other hand, he was inattentive to management responsibilities like signing insurance policies and leases. When the Rockefellers bought the block of buildings on Forty-Eighth Street, all the storeowners who had signed their leases received a million dollars to vacate. Because Mr. Ponte hadn't signed his lease, not only did he not get a million dollars, he suffered a lawsuit because he didn't vacate before the Christmas season sales.

Like Charlie Ponte, many Americans don't complete their important financial responsibilities. For example, putting off filing their taxes costs Americans a collective $400 million dollars a year in penalties (Steele, 2007).

Financial consequences can be critical but aren't fatal. Yet many stories in the news report the serious and even deadly results of inattention and distraction. For example, pilots' social interaction and inattention appear to contribute to plane crashes (Kavanagh, 2009). Add that to reports about drivers killing themselves (and others) due to distractions like texting or cell phone use while driving.

Wherever inattention and distraction occur, their consequences warrant your immediate review. In the chart that follows, check any of the items that apply to you. Be sure to jot down any other consequences that apply.

Self-Check: Negative Consequences of Distractions

Work Life

____ Performance. Allowing performance to falter due to forgetfulness or overlooked details

____ Organization. Losing and misplacing papers or dealing with constant clutter

____ Planning. Responding reactively rather than proactively to opportunities

____ Communication. Neglecting team or supervisor responsibilities, providing incomplete directions, frequently changing your mind or second-guessing others

____ Career Path. Struggling on a slow career track or moving from job to job

____ Other. __________________________________________________________________

Personal Life

____ Finance. Incurring unnecessary finance charges, losing invoices, misplacing tax receipts, or overspending

____ Time Management. Arriving late for meetings, procrastinating, or taking too long to complete chores

____ Health. Postponing medical and dental checkups, arriving late or missing appointments, or forgetting to comply with medical routines

____ Legal. Ignoring requests for information from tax or insurance agencies, losing or not paying traffic tickets, or not signing important papers, such as wills, taxes, or leases

____ Stress. Lacking awareness of your emotional needs and vulnerabilities or succumbing to needless irritability, frustration, or stress

____ Home Maintenance. Neglecting the upkeep of your car, home, or personal items or allowing excessive clutter in your closets, attic, garage, and/or basement

____ Other. _______________________________________________________________

Social Life

____ Personal Relationships. Lacking sensitivity to social cues and not adjusting your behavior; lacking sensitivity about when to stop teasing or when to be empathetic

____ Communication. Being inattentive when listening and lax about keeping in touch with others; forgetting to reply to phone calls, correspondence, invitations, or e-mail

____ Commitment. Failing to follow through on obligations and promises, despite your good intentions

____ Stability. Behaving in an absentminded, inconsistent, or unpredictable way due to a loss of focus on your cherished values or goals

____ Responsibility and Respect. Lapsing into disorganization or messiness without regard to its effect on others

____ Other: _______________________________________________________________________

When you identify your own negative consequences, you increase the likelihood that you'll commit to setting goals and sticking to a plan. To reinforce what you've noticed, play a video in your mind about the role that distraction has played in your life/work in the last few months. Then, for each, briefly list the negative consequences you've experienced.

• Work Life ___________________________________________________________________

• Personal Life _______________________________________________________________

• Social Life _________________________________________________________________

Next, ask and answer these core questions:

• Am I suffering constant, irritating distractions?

• To what degree do distractions lead to inattention, forgetfulness, and disorganization?

• What are the costs and consequences of distractions at work or home?

• How do distractions undermine my attempts to live a life that is aligned with my deepest values?

What Positive Outcomes Do You Seek?

Jolie, a personal trainer, has identified situations that need her attention. Specifically, she gets distracted while talking to service personnel at banks, restaurants, and stores. During business transactions, she loses receipts and wastes time balancing her accounts. Consequently, she fails to collect the reimbursements to which she is entitled. Under Professional Life, she wrote the following goal: "More consistency when doing business activities, especially when storing receipts. Take fifteen seconds to put the receipts in my wallet as soon as they are received."

Follow Jolie's lead. Once you've identified problems and decided to make changes, take these steps:

1. Determine and list the overall positive outcomes you desire.

2. Mull over the items you've checked under each category.

3. Choose goals that will enhance work/life performance, boost profits, and increase your level of satisfaction.

It's easy to identify lots of areas, but start small and be specific. Select no more than two items from the following list. For example, if you seek greater accuracy in your performance at work or home, jot down something like, "Improve addition and completion on check registry and deposit slips."

Performance at work or home:

____ Greater accuracy

____ More consistency

____ Better organization

____ Improved attention and memory

____ Other: _______________________

Profitability:

____ Greater productivity

____ Greater financial gain

____ Greater security

____ Other: __________________________

Peacefulness at work or home:

____ Less frustration

____ Less stress

____ More motivation

____ More fun

____ Other: _____________________

The 8 Demons of Distraction

When you feel lazy, crazy, or dumb, it probably means you've encountered a Demon of Distraction. These demons come in a variety of forms. In sometimes insidious ways, one or more demons strike. The result? They wreak havoc on your performance, productivity, and peacefulness. "Know thy enemy" and prepare, so you can avoid the worst of their damage.

All eight Demons of Distraction are summarized here (Markel, 2008). An illustration of each demon is featured at the beginning of chapters three through ten.

• The Technology Demon prowls day and night. It invites you to get lost in a maze of texting, chatting, surfing, and gaming long after the time spent is appropriate or useful.

• The Others Demon has many faces: coworkers, bosses, significant others, and/ or children who believe you should be available twenty-four/seven. When you can't stop interruptions, set boundaries, or say no, you lose numerous opportunities for creativity.

• The Activities Demon attacks when you inappropriately multitask, travel, rush, or face tedious, difficult tasks. You're easy prey for distractions during emotional events, such as holidays and family gatherings.

• The Spaces Demon lurks where you live, work, or play. Distracted by sights and sounds or wallowing in messy, unpleasant settings, you are prone to feeling overwhelmed, producing inaccurate work, and working at a slow pace.

• The Stress Demon robs you of the psychic energy you need to pay attention. Internal or external triggers, or a combination of both, activates this demon. Without conscious attention to your stress levels, you can make many mistakes and poor choices.

• The Fatigue Demon saps the energy you need to focus and maintain concentration. Although you try to deny it, feeling exhausted leaves you spinning your wheels, committing errors, or even causing accidents.

• The Illness/Medication Demon robs you of your vigor and can lead to emotional ups and downs. Your performance can plummet due to poor concentration, memory loss, confusion, insomnia, nausea, or headaches (often side effects of medication).

• The Unruly-Mind Demon can have three heads: hyper-focus, racing thoughts, or daydreaming. The more unruly your mind, the less productive you are.

Self-Check: My Demons of Distraction

Directions: Read each statement and check all that apply to you.

____ 1. I text, tweet, play games, or check sport or financial statistics excessively. (Technology Demon)

____ 2. I have a hard time saying no, I'm overcommitted, and I'm interrupted all day. (Others Demon)

____ 3. I feel pressure to multitask, but it doesn't work for me. (Activities Demon)

____ 4. My workspace is so noisy that I have trouble thinking. (Spaces Demon)

____ 5. I lack specific strategies to manage stress, so when I begin to work, I ruminate about problems and pressures. (Stress Demon)

____ 6. I'm frequently tired and find it hard to focus. (Fatigue Demon)

____ 7. I take medications that interfere with my attention and/or memory. (Medication/Illness Demon)

____ 8. Once I start to concentrate, I get lost in the task, and ignore everything—even when I'm not achieving much. (Unruly-Mind Demon: Hyper-focus)

____ 9. I try to finish tasks or chores but frequently find myself daydreaming. (Unruly Mind: Daydreaming)

____ 10. My mind races, and I can't seem to focus on one thing at a time. (Unruly Mind: Racing thoughts)

Assess: Current Distraction Attacks

A distraction attack is a momentary slippage of focus, often producing an amusing, inconsequential result. Perhaps you're aware that technology or other people can mess up your ability to concentrate. For example, you're holding a hardboiled egg in one hand and a cell phone in the other. The phone rings. You smack the egg into your ear!

What about factors like fatigue or stress? Dig deep to identify demons like this that may be interfering with your performance or peace of mind. To do so, visualize what happened during the past few days and list the peskiest demons you experienced. For each one, describe where you were, what the result was, and how you felt.

• Demon: ________________________________________________________________________________

• Demon: ________________________________________________________________________________

• Demon: ________________________________________________________________________________

More often than you'd like, demons attack en masse. For example, when you feel tired and under pressure, you're more vulnerable to distraction from the Fatigue and Stress Demons. You might be especially vulnerable to the Others Demon, which shows up when you fly off the handle rather than ignore your coworker's interruption. Think about your current work/life situations and describe your most lethal combination of demons:

• Combination 1: ______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________

• Combination 2: ______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________

Once you identify your demons, explore ways these demons can influence your work/life.

Assess the Past: Successful and Unsuccessful Experiences

Can you remember life experiences when you dealt both successfully and unsuccessfully with distractions? By visualizing those occasions, you can more clearly identify what you did or didn't do to thwart distractions so they won't interfere with your actions again. When you write about previous experiences, you shed light on long-standing tendencies. Usually, it's more motivating to start with the successful experiences.

Your definition of success in doing this varies based on your interests and talents. For example, success is viewed different for a CEO or teacher. Here's an example of one describing a jazz singer/songwriter:

How could a beginning songwriter beat a racing mind, attain focus, and retain memory of her ideas and melodies? In the past, her thoughts about new songs would disappear faster than her glasses or keys. Now she records her creative ideas on her cell phone. Since setting this up, the number of songs she's created has increased significantly.

This aspiring musician defines success as finding an aid against distraction. An accountant, on the other hand, might define success as getting away from office distractions by going to a library to complete an annual report.

The songwriter, like many people, likes to talk about her experiences. Others prefer to write about their experiences in a journal; still others choose to use a chart to organize their thoughts. For example, suppose the songwriter jotted notes on a chart about the lessons she learned. It would look like this:

To use a chart like this productively, remember or visualize times when you successfully warded off distractions, and then answer the questions. No need to include all the stages of your life; select the most memorable ones. After writing about a successful experience on the chart, you'll tackle an unsuccessful one next.

The goal is to gain an historical perspective. Look for the positive patterns you used over time to avoid or defeat distractions. Then you can remember and repeat them.

Once you're aware of your successful distraction-defeating experiences, consider your less successful experiences and look for patterns in them. For example, Roger jotted down notes in chart form because for him, that was quick and easy. Roger's unsuccessful experience shows the disruption caused by a combined attack of the Activities and the Stress Demons before his vacation.

Remember or visualize times in your life when you didn't successfully ward off distractions; write them in the following chart. Jog your memory by addressing such questions as:

• What mistakes have occurred due to distractions during travel or while rushing?

• What frustrating experience could have been avoided if I was paying more careful attention to what I was doing?

Review your successful and unsuccessful past distraction-related experiences, and identify patterns or trends. Take the time to discuss your insights with others. Consider addressing such questions as:

• What patterns emerge?

• Where and when have I been most vulnerable to distractions?

• When and where have I been most successful in my attempts to reduce distractions?

• How do distractions undermine my attempts to live a life aligned with my deepest values?

Assess the Present: Keep a Distraction Attack Log

Keep a log of the demons that attack you. For at least three days, preferably longer, record the specifics: where, when, and for how long each distraction attack lasts. Describe how you felt during and after such attacks, and list consequences of the distraction attacks.
(Continues...)

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Excerpted from ACTIONS Against Distractions by Geraldine Markel. Copyright © 2013 Geraldine Markel, PhD. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments....................     xi     

Preface....................     xv     

Introduction....................     xvii     

1 Your Demons of Distraction....................     1     

2 Your 5-Step Plan of Attack....................     17     

3 7 Strategies to Implement Your Plan....................     29     

4 Actions Against the Technology Demon....................     39     

5 Actions Against the Others Demon....................     57     

6 Actions Against the Activities Demon....................     75     

7 Actions Against the Spaces Demon....................     99     

8 Actions Against the Stress Demon....................     117     

9 Actions Against the Fatigue Demon....................     137     

10 Actions Against the Illness/Medication Demon....................     155     

11 Actions Against the Unruly-Mind Demon....................     175     

12 Maintenance, Meltdowns, and Peacefulness....................     193     

References and Resources....................     201     

About the Author....................     215     

Index....................     217