I recently came across a habit to reduce distraction that is very simple and becomes easy after a few days.
To reduce distraction, first you must understand what it consists of, for you. For me, it’s the triad of 1) email 2) whatsapp 3) online news. Social media used to be part of it, but it dropped out of the picture for me. Whatever it is, you probably have a cycle of activities that you engage on to become distracted. It’s important to identify it.
For my distraction triad, what I do is to not engage in it at all until a certain time of the day (usually 6 or 7pm). This is quite radical, but works much better than any other approach I’ve tried so far. My current workflow allows me to work without reference to my email; if it was different, I’d put filters in place that would let me see only work emails, and filter the rest.
I think this approach could be called intermittent distraction, as an echo of intermittent fasting. It’s definitely where I got the idea from.
Interestingly enough, I’ve been more in touch with people, because I do phone calls during the day. But phone calls are very different from asynchronous messaging.
If you’re struggling with distractions during the day, I suggest you try an approach where you go until X time of the day without them at all. So far, it’s been the only thing that has worked for me. Besides the extra time, I perceive its main benefit to be the extra head space it creates.