Two Tips To Fight Screen ADD
Business Technology | August 31, 2012
Do you suffer from computer-screen attention deficit disorder? Here are a few indicators: You have five Internet Explorer tabs open simultaneously. You’re working away at three Word documents at the same time, and you are messing with two open spreadsheets, too. In other words, you are balancing so many on-screen tasks all at once, you’re struggling to complete any one of them.
With tabbed browsing, it’s easy to open dozens of browser pages, Word documents, and apps at the same time. Problem is, this is also a terrific way to distract yourself from the most crucial jobs on your “to do” list.
This can totally wreck your productivity. Fortunately, there are a couple things you can do to battle this. Learn about them below.
Resist the minimization urge
First, never minimize windows. This might be difficult at first. By minimizing windows, you can tackle numerous projects at once. However, if you do not minimize anything, you’ll be forced to react to issues promptly. As opposed to minimizing that business report and forgetting about it until tomorrow morning, you’ll have to proof it immediately. Rather than shrinking that email message about setting a meeting later in the week, you’ll need to take care of it now, actually setting up that meeting. You can see how this “no-minimization” rule can force you to develop into a more productive person: It makes sure that you take care of problems and jobs quickly, not at some unspecified future time.
Email filters
This might seem too simple to be helpful, but by creating some filters that move, for example, emails from your boss into your inbox, and emails from everyone else into a second inbox, you’ll be forced to pay attention to the most important ones. You will be astonished at how often you skim over more essential emails because another one is easier to deal with, or more fun. These things can just be distractions. It’s more helpful to focus on the important ones and when you have time, get to the less important ones.
>
Do you suffer from computer-screen attention deficit disorder? Here are a few indicators: You have five Internet Explorer tabs open simultaneously. You’re working away at three Word documents at the same time, and you are messing with two open spreadsheets, too. In other words, you are balancing so many on-screen tasks all at once, you’re struggling to complete any one of them.
With tabbed browsing, it’s easy to open dozens of browser pages, Word documents, and apps at the same time. Problem is, this is also a terrific way to distract yourself from the most crucial jobs on your “to do” list.
This can totally wreck your productivity. Fortunately, there are a couple things you can do to battle this. Learn about them below.
Resist the minimization urge
First, never minimize windows. This might be difficult at first. By minimizing windows, you can tackle numerous projects at once. However, if you do not minimize anything, you’ll be forced to react to issues promptly. As opposed to minimizing that business report and forgetting about it until tomorrow morning, you’ll have to proof it immediately. Rather than shrinking that email message about setting a meeting later in the week, you’ll need to take care of it now, actually setting up that meeting. You can see how this “no-minimization” rule can force you to develop into a more productive person: It makes sure that you take care of problems and jobs quickly, not at some unspecified future time.
Email filters
This might seem too simple to be helpful, but by creating some filters that move, for example, emails from your boss into your inbox, and emails from everyone else into a second inbox, you’ll be forced to pay attention to the most important ones. You will be astonished at how often you skim over more essential emails because another one is easier to deal with, or more fun. These things can just be distractions. It’s more helpful to focus on the important ones and when you have time, get to the less important ones.
>