Tip #3: Go Dark while Working on your Sui Generis Tasks
To block potential media and technological distractions, turn off notifications and use Airplane Mode and the Freedom App or turn off your Wi-Fi.
The science shows that interruptions of sophisticated work cause quality of performance to decrease. When you are interrupted in your sui generis work, your work results in inferior quality product. In lab settings, interruptions of trivial tasks cause there to be a certain measurable time before resumption of work on the task takes place. Interruptions in the lab setting of complicated work—which can stand in for what we’ve been calling sui generis work—cause there to be a significantly longer resumption time. That is, it takes longer to get your concentration and flow back.
[This is part of a series. See main series page “My Best Productivity Recommendations, Boiled Down and Annotated.” ]
Interruptions of your sui generis work increase stress. And overtime these interruptions decrease your attention span, because interruptions break your focus and the attention or focus “muscle” atrophies when not used regularly. So when you are doing your sui generis work, concentrate on it and don’t do anything else; don’t engage anything that would distract you from your work.