Just the other day, I shared with you 10 ways to be more productive in business and in your personal life. One area that I felt needed additional coverage was learning to turn off distractions. Distractions are simply there to help get you off course, to drive you further from your goals. They can be the incessant buzzing of your smartphone, a television in the background, even browsing the web can be a distraction.
To help minimize distractions, I tend to put my phone in a drawer and turn the television off – I know, sounds a lot easier said than done. One area though that I struggled with was browsing the web. One link turns into multiple tabs or windows, which turns into hours of wasted time and that’s not good for productivity.
But there is a solution!
While a lot of people will argue that multi-tasking means having multiple tabs open on a webpage, I find that working with multiple tabs or webpages is anything but productive. Countless seconds are spent hopping from page to page and before you know it, you’ve lost 3 hours through Facebook, email and general browing and gotten very little accomplished.
Sure, sometimes you need to work with multiple tabs — like when you’re reading an email and comparing airline packages, but my philosophy is to focus on one task at a time (the most important ones too). Did you know that we spend 32 hours per month online.
As more of our time is taken away, it’s important to learn how to be more productive – this includes spending time online. Try browsing the web using just one tab and let me know. Do you feel like you’re able to be more productive?
How do you tend to browse the web? One tab at a time or multiple tabs? Please leave a comment on your browsing preferences.