In our daily lives, we often face many external incentives that can easily distract us and affect our work and study efficiency. In response to this situation, Teacher An An has carefully prepared three ways to deal with it, hoping to help you better manage distraction problems, focus on your goals, and improve work and study efficiency.
Isolation Triggers
The first way to deal with external triggers is isolation. There was once an interesting experiment. When subjects saw a red notification dot appear on their mobile phones, one group was not allowed to touch it even if they wanted to, while the other group could reply immediately after seeing the red dot. However, the findings showed no significant differences in work concentration between the two groups. This shows that even if you don’t touch it, as long as you see it, your concentration will be affected, so the best thing to do is to isolate your mobile phone.
For example, when I’m working, I keep my phone out of sight and with its back facing up to ensure there are no distractions. Many well-known scriptwriters or directors are accustomed to using paper notebooks when creating. Some even choose to use old-fashioned computers that cannot connect to the Internet to isolate themselves from external interference and focus on creation.
Next, I want to share another interesting experiment. Surveys have found that the third leading cause of death in the United States is medical errors, due to the many distractions present in the medical environment. For example, in the United States, on average, each caregiver encounters 5 to 10 interruptions when administering medication, affecting the correctness of the medication. To improve the situation, the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine conducted an experiment in which caregivers wore orange vests that said, “Don’t interrupt, I’m administering the drug.”
At first, nursing staff resisted the idea, but surprisingly, data showed that within the first four months of the trial at one hospital, the proportion of medication errors made by nursing staff fell by 47%. After three years of a cross-hospital trial, the rate of medication errors by nursing staff wearing orange vests dropped by 88%. This result shows how important it is to actively isolate potentially distracting factors.
Set up Barriers
The second method is to erect barriers. Sometimes we can’t completely isolate something, like a must-use app like WeChat, but we can help ourselves by setting up some barriers.
There is a best-selling product on Amazon called the “Case of Kitchen”, which stands for “Kitchen Safe.” Originally designed to help people lose weight. Suppose you’re on a diet but can’t resist the temptation of chocolate chip cookies, you can put chocolate chip cookies in a box. Imagine eating only once a week and then locking it away. There is also a timer on this box, and it will automatically unlock only when the time comes.
This product is said to be selling like hotcakes on Amazon. It has three different sizes of boxes, the small one is suitable for mobile phones, and the large one is suitable for iPads. By creating barriers for yourself, the items are locked and cannot be accessed unless extreme measures are taken to open them.
There is a similar app for limiting cell phone use called “Focus Forest.” The method of using this APP is very interesting. After you download it, when you need to concentrate on doing something, you can open the APP and start planting trees. If you can successfully stop using your phone, the trees you plant will continue to grow. For example, if you set it to be three hours before you can look at your phone, the tree will grow for three hours until it grows into the tree you want. But if you use your mobile phone an hour later, the tree you planted will wither. People get very serious about planting a tree because they don’t want to waste the time they spend on planting it.
Transform Your Motivation
The third method is transformation, that is, turning incentives into motivation to prompt us to make changes. A concept widely circulated in psychology and behavioral economics is called “loss aversion.” People feel the pain of losing a dollar much more than the joy of gaining a dollar, so people usually try to avoid losses, which is called “loss aversion.”
In an experiment published in the New England Journal of Medicine, participants were divided into three groups, all of whom wanted to quit smoking. The first group was the control group, which received regular education and was informed about the dangers of smoking and the importance of quitting smoking. The second group was told that if they successfully quit smoking they would receive an $800 bonus. The third group was required to pay $150 as a deposit. If they successfully quit smoking, they could get $150 back and receive an additional $650 reward. The results of the study showed that the successful quitting rate of the control group was about 6%, the reward group was 17%, and the rate of the group requiring a deposit increased to 52%. By setting a margin, the success rate is significantly improved because people are afraid of losses, and we can take advantage of this and turn external incentives into motivation.
In my practice, I take a transformational approach to dealing with factors that may distract me. For example, when watching a drama, I did not isolate the inducement or set up obstacles but turned it into an incentive rather than a distraction.
I would divide an episode into four parts, each about 25 minutes long. I will watch the first 1/4 of the video first, and then I will focus on doing things. I told myself that if I could finish the task seriously, I could move on to the next part. But if I divert my attention to other things in the middle, I can’t watch the drama anymore. This method works well for me because I’m eager to watch the entire episode, and already watching 1/4 makes me want to watch the next part, so I try to stay focused on the current task. I learned that divergent mode usually lasts about 20 minutes, so I cut the episode into four segments to control my behavior.
The reason why I chose to watch the first 1/4 first is because I want to create a feeling of loss aversion, that is, I have watched 1/4, and if I don’t continue watching, I will lose it. This is more effective than the reward of watching the entire episode. I transform the joy of gain into feelings of potential future loss, thus building motivation.
This conversion method is effective, but only if you have a certain amount of self-control. If you find yourself unable to control the urge to watch the entire episode, this approach no longer works. Therefore, only when you have a good degree of self-discipline, the transformation method can transform external distractions into focused thrusts, allowing them to push us in the direction of concentration instead of pulling us away from the state of concentration.
By learning the three methods shared in the article, you can isolate triggers, set up obstacles, and transform motivation to effectively manage distraction problems and improve concentration. Put down your phone and take action now!
