7 Common Workplace Distractions and How to Avoid Them

Being consistently productive is hard enough already, and our shrinking attention spans make the task more difficult. One of the biggest reasons for poor performance is workplace distractions.

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While some of us are able to simply ignore distractions, others need help blocking them out in order to remain productive. Here are some common workplace distractions and how to avoid them.

1. Noisy Office

Workplaces are often filled with noise. It could be your co-workers chatting, the keyboard typing, the beeping office printer, or the construction work in the next building.

All of these can decrease your focus and increase stress, making it harder to perform. If your office doesn’t have a quiet room you can go to, buying a pair of active noise-canceling headphones can be a good investment.

With the ANC feature turned on, you can block out most, if not all, of the surrounding noise at your workplace. While you’re at it, you can also try playing ambient and white noise tracks to drown out any background humming to regain focus.

2. Email and Message

At work, you are expected to be available online throughout the workday to communicate with your team or respond to customer emails. However, constantly having to step away from current work to respond to emails or messages can make it challenging to get back in the zone.

A study shows that frequent interruptions not only make it difficult to achieve focus, but also increase the chances of making mistakes. Therefore, it is important to schedule a time to reply to unread messages and a portion of email at a time instead of doing it immediately.

Another way to deal with these distractions is to turn off notifications on your browser and phone. To avoid disrupting your workflow with irrelevant group emails, you can use Gmail features like muting conversations.

3. Internet and Social Media

It is not news that the Internet and social media are very addictive; You decide to take a short five-minute break and scroll for an hour. To deal with the temptation to use your phone during work hours, you can set customized timers on your favorite apps.

Some apps like YouTube and Instagram have features that remind you to take a break after you’ve spent a certain amount of time on the app. You can enable them to alert you when you spend enough time on apps and need to put them down.

4. Unproductive Meetings

Meetings are an inevitable part of your workday. And while they’re important for making sure everyone is on the same page, about 71 percent of work meetings are ineffective and unproductive.

Unproductive meetings waste everyone’s time and energy. If cutting out some meetings altogether isn’t an option, you can practice holding better meetings. James Macanufo’s 7Ps Meeting Framework is an effective agile meeting tool for planning and conducting productive meetings.

This framework helps you be prepared and ensures that everything goes according to plan. If you are not in charge of the meeting, you can suggest this tool to the organizer. If implemented well, it can greatly improve the usefulness of a meeting, be it virtual or otherwise.

5. Workspace Clutter

A cluttered workstation and desktop are obviously distracting, as it becomes difficult to concentrate when there is so much to take care of. This is why it is important to keep both your digital and physical workspaces clean and minimal.

First of all organize your desk by removing all the unnecessary things. Next, optimize your digital workspace by cleaning out your email inbox, organizing your desktop folders, bookmarking important tools, disabling pop-ups on browsers, and more.

6. Multitasking

You may feel like multitasking is getting more done, but it actually has the opposite effect. Instead, it’s better to prioritize one task at a time, complete it, and then move on to the next. Project management tools like Asana, Monday, and Taskboard can help you better organize your tasks.

You can use these time blocking tips to break down your day into multiple blocks of time, assign tasks to each block, and then stick to the schedule. It’s a great way to avoid multitasking, build a strong work ethic, and increase your productivity.

7. Micro Management

It is a known fact that micromanagement is one of the biggest distractions employees face at work. Not only does this hinder your productivity, but it also negatively affects morale and job satisfaction. Fortunately, many software products today allow you to share your document with others for real-time collaboration.

For example, if you use Google Docs, you have the option of inviting a team member as a viewer, commentator, or editor.