EPISODE 038 - Organisation: How do I increase my concentration in everyday work?

Michael Seidl: Welcome to a new episode of the Get Shit Done in IT podcast. My name is Michael Seidel and the question of today's episode is how to increase my concentration in everyday work. So I have some advices or something what helped me in the past to increase and those I want to share with you. And one of the, think most important is to find the right place or the right environment to be productive. So it might. One of the previous episodes, we talked about the home office situation. So of course, this is maybe the ideal place. think at least for me, it's easier to be productive in home office because I can close the door. There is no distractions of anyone comes into my office besides sometimes my kids, but maybe you can relate on this. And so to find the right place or the right space. And of course, if you do not have the option or the possibility of doing your work in home office, or maybe not every day, then you have your maybe sitting in a separate space or maybe in a bigger office where you share the room with others. And then it might be a little bit more complicated to have or to reduce distractions by colleagues joining you by other colleagues talking to each other and everything. So this can be destructive. what I would recommend is to at least what helps me in that case is to put on some headphones. No, not some headphones.

Michael Seidl: Headphones.

Michael Seidl: put on some headphones. And I hope that you're not working with any old fashioned supervisors or bosses who doesn't allow you to wear headphones. And of course, you work in an area where the situation is okay to use headphones. you have customer contact or maybe colleague contact, if you work in a service desk, it might be the wrong place to wear headphones. But that helps too. focus to keep away those distractions. And additionally, what helps is to book a focus time or concentrated work time into your calendar for maybe one, two, three hours, or maybe the morning time or the afternoon time. So also your colleagues know that they are not allowed. distract you, they're not allowed to contact you or they should at least try to not contact you in that time because you want to have your focus time and your concentrate work time. Put your headphones on and try your best to focus on your tasks. The second one is for all who are struggling with concentrate work or doing find concentration. For those, I would recommend to try the Pomodoro Technique. It is named by someone who used a tomato clock to stop time. It's called Pomodoro, the Italian name for tomato. The idea is to prepare your things you have to do. So you write down on a sheet of paper or digitally, whatever you prefer, and then you stop the time. you plan time slots where you only focus on that things. No distractions, no cell phone, no smartphone, no outlook, no teams, no chat, no whatever. And that's the idea to use the stopwatch to maybe

Michael Seidl: do 20 minutes of focus work and five minutes of break, distractions, talks, Instagram, TikTok, whatever you prefer. But in those 20 minutes, you only focus on your things you have to do. And you can start with maybe smaller slots, 15 minutes. And from time to time, you can increase to 20, 30, 40 minutes. And so you can... learn the concentrate work without all those distractions. Okay, so that's the way to come back to those things. So that's the method for all who are struggling with concentration, who are struggling to avoid distractions via iPhone or whatever. So that helps. So make yourself ready, write down everything you have to do. Prepare a stopwatch, prepare the time slot, so 20 minutes. Do a focus time appointment into your calendar so nobody distracts you. Put your headphones on if you like and then start the clock and only focus on the things on that paper, on that to-do list, whatever. And then after your preferred slot, you do a five minute break and then you start from scratch, from the beginning. 20 minutes focus work, five minutes break. And you can increase those 20 minutes accordingly to your needs and to what you think is capable of. If you stay on those 20 minutes, I think it's better than nothing, but maybe you can try to increase. And the third one is to remove all your distractions. And the first thing is of course your smartphone. So, I use, often use the Do Not Disturb mode from my iPhone. think it's Android has the same functionality. So you can build or define different Do Not Disturb modes, maybe for private, maybe for business. Then you can configure what apps are still allowed to distract you. So maybe calling from the girlfriend or parents or whatever, or business apps.

Michael Seidl: So if you cannot move it away completely, then at least try those modes to no distractions. And second one is put away your smartwatch or at least configure it the same way to reduce your pop-up messages, your distractions. And second one is close Outlook, close Teams, close all your chat messages on your desk. on your computer desktop or computer system. So at least silence them so they are not popping up at least so that they are not distracting you from your work. And also remove everything from your physical desk. So everything what is in your view and what might distract you or what might remind you on anything else you have to do, remove it. So bring it into your system, write a note, you have to do this or that and remove it from your desk. Otherwise it will always distract you. I have a recent example. So if you see my videos, you see in the background some Lego stuff. So I have some cities built out of Lego and one of my bigger son. joined me last week in my office at home and said he wants to disassemble those LEGO and rebuild it. Because he likes to build LEGO from scratch. But he stopped after I think two or three minutes. So he left my office with all the LEGO parts on my desk and an unfinished LEGO City. And that distracted me, think for nearly a week because the Lego stuff was on my table reminding me I have to build to put it back on the shelf. And this was, yeah, it just was a simple, but every time I walked into my office, I saw that Lego. Every time I started my desk and looked around, I saw that Lego stuff. So we decided on the weekend to build it together and put it back to the shelf. And now my desk is clean.

Michael Seidl: And those simple things can just distract you from being concentrated. So move away all those things from your desk, make it clear, make it clean and yeah, put those things into your single source of shit and put it away from your view so you don't see it. And the last thing is if you do concentrate work, maybe 50 minutes, 60 minutes, at least try and if you're in the flow, that's okay, but at least try to do some breaks in that thing because it helps you to come down, maybe do a coffee break, a tea break, chat to your colleagues, whatever, but try to do at least five minutes break, walk around in the office and then back to work and to try to concentrate work. So this is what helps me to be concentrated in everyday work. If you have any questions for the podcast, please send those to me on LinkedIn via text message or voice message. And for this, I wish you a productive Monday, a nice week, stay productive and bye bye.