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Yeah. Somebody said start your terminal before chrome, right? Yeah, exactly. Start the productivity tool that you need to use first. Some the actual work you got to get done. Open up the word processor before your email. Hello, and welcome to the Pibytes podcast, where we talk about Python career and mindset. We're your hosts. I'm Julian Sequeira. And I am Bob Baldebos. If you're looking to improve your python, your career, and learn the mindset for success, this is the podcast for you. Let's get started. All right. Welcome to another Pie Bytes podcast episode. I'm Julian. How's it going, Bob? Hey, man. All good. Happy to be back. It's Wednesday today, not a Monday. I know. Don't know what happened this week. I think we might have gotten distracted. We got distracted. The perfect, terrible segue to our topic of the day of the week, which is distraction and how we deal with distraction. It. I think all signs pointed to this, Bob, because I think maybe four different things in the past week have said, let's talk about distractions. So why don't you. Why don't you kick it off? Once you get on today, what are we going to do? The pain is real, right? We hear it too much, so we have to reflect on this a little bit. All right, you go first. What do we talk about? How to beat distractions. Number one, numero uno is always focus on the 80 20 have goals. And I think we have said this many times, if you don't know where to aim at, you're inevitably going to be distracted or have other people determine your schedule. If you have a clear goal and you can really focus down on what the most important thing is or the 80 20, you automatically get focused and it's automatically more tentative to work on your goals instead of checking social media yet again. Yeah. And just. Just remember, right, almost the definition of distraction in this context is something that takes you further away from your goals. So if you don't have the goals set, then you're already, you know, you're already at a disadvantage. You already. You don't know what you're supposed to be working on. So, yeah, if you get pulled away by a Facebook post popping up or twitter nagging at you, whatever it is, you aren't even aware that you're being distracted from the goal because you don't have anything to be distracted from. Yeah. You had that great quote the other day from Nir Al. Distractions take you away from your goals. Traction. Yeah. Yeah. Distraction takes you away from your goal and traction brings you towards your goal, closer to your goal. So you want to try and focus on the things that get you traction. And that's the purpose of the 80 20. Right. Focus on the things that give you the biggest bang for the buck and towards your goal. So perfect. Nice. But yeah, like, distractions are kind of inevitable, right? We are living, we're not living in a silo. We have to interact with a lot of people. There are a lot of meetings. There are a lot of tools, a lot of slacks. So one thing that really works for us is time boxing. Right. Just setting segments of the day that are for deep work and other segments that are for meetings and socializing. And if you stay within those boundaries, that's a great help. Yeah. And people talk a lot about time boxing tasks. Right. Time boxing, the activities that'll get you closer to the goals. Tasks. And that's great. The one thing I like to do that I encourage everyone to do is also create a time slot for the tasks that are distracting. So if you find that Facebook and social media in general are things that pull you away from your goals, that, you know, waste your time, essentially, you know, there's, there's not necessarily saying that they're bad things because I use Facebook to keep in touch with family overseas. That's why it's got value to me. But I limit myself. I set the time and I say at this specific time every day, this is when it's acceptable to use it, and you stick to that time. So that 20 minutes or 15 minutes that you might set aside for it. And that's the way to use time boxing to also contain the distraction to an acceptable time. Yeah. Are you still using the Pomodoro technique? Yeah, not, not so much for social media, though, because I just stay away from it for the most part. But Pomodoro for getting work done, especially things like email that can take hours to get through. I set a pomodoro and timer, and then I just do 15 minutes and say, that's what I got through in this slot. So back to actual work and I'll get back to the rest of the email later. Yeah. That's a great tip because all these tools, apart from how they are designed and apart from the instant gratification they can give you, they really blow up in the time you allude to them. So. Yeah. Having that Parkinson's law. Right. By limiting the time you're going to spend on them, that's really a good enforcer. I think that happens to me sometimes. I have all my emails and socials done yet? I'm going to check again. So they got me, right? They got me. That's exactly how they're designed, you sucker. Yeah. So you have to put those constraints in place. Yeah. Well, another thing you can do, and, you know, just for everyone listening, Bob and I, we're just spitballing through ideas and stuff here. Don't expect anything too structured from us this week. Another thing that we can do here, Bob, is, you know, set the airplane mode. I think everyone's heard this sort of thing before from a productivity perspective. But let's talk about it from a distraction perspective, right. Throw your airplane mode on, on your phone and just talk for the first part of the day, which for us is when we tend to be most productive and just disconnect from the Internet. Now that's extreme, right. But if there is a task that you are trying to get done, such as writing a report, even doing some coding, something that doesn't need the Internet for that writing or for that activity, disconnect it. Pull out the Ethernet cable out of your computer. Turn off wifi again, throw the phone in the other room on airplane mode, actually disconnect. So if you were to instinctively open up a browser or one of your apps, it just doesn't work and it says, sorry, you got no Internet connection, that's a great way to snap back to it and remind yourself that you shouldn't be even looking at it. Yeah, somebody said start your terminal before chrome, right? Yeah, exactly. Start the productivity tool that you need to use first. Some, the actual work you gotta get done. Open up the word processor before your, your email. Yeah, no, I love airplane mode. I did it this morning, actually. Sorry, sorry, bro, I muted you so I. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Of course. That's. That's why I was 20 minutes late to this, this recording. But yeah, I did get a lot of stuff done because I was not interrupted. So it's also like willpower, right? As the day progresses, your willpower generally goes down. So while the willpower is high, early in the day, you better get that deep work in. Everybody's wired different. Right. But usually for me, that works like that, to do the important stuff first. Yeah. So, yeah, the longer you can procrastinate a little bit on those distractions by using airplane mode. It's a power, a power tool. Love it. And speaking of willpower and everyone being wired differently, that's a good point. That's worth mentioning. Everyone knows when they're most productive or you should be able to figure it out. When do you get your best work done? Do you have more energy in the morning, at midday, in the evening? Whatever it is? That's when you should be setting up these distraction free environment times. Uh, there's no point setting yourself on airplane mode first thing in the morning if you're just a walking zombie every morning. But if you're a night owl and that happens to be your best time, well, then, yeah, keep the phone in the other room at in the evening. So you need to listen to your own body and recognize when you're working at your best. Um, recognize when you're not rested as well, because an unrested brain and an unrested person, just constant distraction because you can't focus. Right? Yeah, totally, totally. Like, the better your sleep and your habits. Yeah. The more stronger you are to battle those distractions. That's definitely true. Yeah. A funny thing. I'll drop in here. That happened the other day to my wife and I. We had, like, a sort of guilt free evening. I mean, you and I, Bob, we were meeting to do some work, but, you know, my wife, guilt free evening, kids were asleep. She was just going to chill out on the couch and whatever, but she was going to watch some. Some tv, some Netflix. And so I said bye before I came up here to work with you. And she was on her phone before she started watching. She's like, yeah, yeah, I'll watch my show in a minute. And we finished our work, like an hour and a half later. And when I went downstairs to go and hang out and get ready for bed, um, the. The tv was on, but Netflix wasn't on, and she was still on her phone. And I said, oh, do you watch the show? How was it? She said, oh, what? What do you mean? I said, have you, have you watched it? Like, she goes, no, I haven't watched. I've been on my phone. I said, what did you seriously not watch? Wow. And it was just this whole distraction thing, right? It was one thing after another really got me thinking, because it was, you know, a Reddit hole that linked to something on, you know, I don't know, TikTok, to Instagram, to Facebook. And it was just this round, this vicious cycle of distraction for, like, an hour. And, you know, it doesn't matter because that was, like, her guilt free time to chill out. Of course, she's entitled to it. It just cracked me up because. And her as well, because she's like, wow, I can't believe I just lost a full hour. Oh, I really wanted to watch that show. Well, just do it tomorrow. But yeah, it's amazing how much just the content online. And that said, I will say this, it wasn't all social media, it was actual articles. So how. Actually, that's a great segue as well. How do you deal with the flow of articles? Because we always get hammered with Python coding and developer type articles. Yeah, use pocket again. Get pocket.com or something. So, yeah, if there's something you want to read later, you can just install that browser plugin. You have that blue button or that pocket button and you just click it and it gets saved on the stack. And then you can have dedicated reading moments where you go through those articles. Time box. We get picoter in the email. It's very easy to click those links and start reading, but that's probably not in the best interest of what I'm doing at that moment. So it's nice to kind of queue them up and then have your dedicated reading space. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're just like any tech heads, right? Any tech nerds. We love our articles. The new tech that's coming out, whatever it happens to be, we love reading about it. But if we would sit there with, you know, so many tabs open, that's another trap people fall into, actually, is just opening the link in a new tab and saving it for later. But, you know, later never comes. So throw it in the pocket and you'll be golden. Then set yourself

time, maybe 09: 12:02

00 p.m. Or something, chill out with a cup of tea and just read for half an hour. And that's your distraction free, guilt free distraction time. Yeah. And the other thing with 200 tabs, right. It slows down your computer, but it also gives you that restless feeling, like I'm overwhelmed. I'm never going to get to it. Right. I always feel more at peace when I have a few tabs open, ideally even one, but I never get to that. But, you know, it's under ten at least. I feel much better than having too many things open. That's a good point. I've never even considered my tabs as a distraction. I've considered them more of a, oh, man, this is stuff I haven't done yet. This stuff I still have to do, but not as a distraction. That's an interesting thing. It is a good point, because then every time I glance at the top and see the multiple tabs, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's something I still have to do. And that's distracted me instantly. An enclosed loop, right? Yeah, exactly. So tip just hit the red x and close everything. Yeah. Can bookmark them or they're in the cash anyway. Yeah, yeah. Another tip is to have an accountability partner because if you have shared goals there, the stakes are higher, right. Somebody's watching, somebody is relying on your work and. Yeah, it's just less tempting to, uh, to get distractions in the way of that goal. And for us, that's, uh, that's working really well. Right? Yeah, there's that social, um, pressure, right? You don't want to let your friend down. If it's a stranger, it's kind of almost even worse, right? You can beg for forgiveness from your best mate, but if it's a stranger, it's like, well, you want to make a good impression. Uh, so, yeah, it works well for us. We, we love doing it. This is how we get stuff done and this is how we stay, um, focused. In fact, some of our most focused sessions have been where we've just been on a Skype call and just silent. We're not working. We're not even working on the same task. But it's our given. You know, you're in Spain, Bob, and I'm in Sydney, Australia. We um, you know, it's our way of being in the same office together. Because when you're both sitting there, if one of you slacking off, we, uh, it's kind of obvious to tell because we're no, no longer head down, typing away or writing or something. Yeah, those sessions are awesome. Getting like ten things done in an hour. Yeah. And the occasional joke thrown in, obviously. All right, so for the last thing, wrapping this up, one of my favorite tips that I just discovered on Windows ten is disabling desktop notifications through windows itself. So I'd had everything disabled through the app, like slack and whatever else. But the notification bubble in the bottom right of windows, I noticed, had a focus assist section on it. And when you turn that on, no more notifications. They just get queued up, but you don't see anything. And then when you disable it, they all pop up, which was kind of cool. It also showed me what I was getting notified on and didn't even realize. But yeah, if you're Os, I think all Os have them by now, but they should all have a focus assist type thing where you can turn off all desktop notifications because they are the worst, especially if you're presenting and a notification pops up from a mate saying, who? Weren't you at the pub yet? Not that that's happened to me. I'm joking. But it is, it's frustrating. It's very distracting to be writing an email, sorry, writing a document or something, even code. And then an email pops up from outlook and drives you nuts because then you were tempted to go into it and it's insidious because the actual interruption might be 30 seconds a minute, but getting back to the other task, that's where the wheel cost is because I think what was the sign saying like 1520 minutes, 15 minutes? Yeah, yeah. So the cost is always greater. Yeah. And related to that, be kind of picky on what you install on your phone because phones are very prone to notifications. So if you have social apps, just turn off notifications, which you can do at the OS level. But yeah, I ended up deleting Facebook, Twitter and stuff, LinkedIn from my phone because I rather just check them on the desktop when I want it because on the phone it will always be pushed towards you inevitably. And, yeah, type faster on desktop anyway. Yeah, exactly. And it's easier to set a structured time around it because it's very easy to pull out your phone while you're just waiting for something to happen. It's that same, that stereotype. Now you're standing at a train station waiting for the train and you look at everyone around you, every single person is staring at their phone doom scrolling, you know, it's just the worst distraction. So yeah, definitely mute them, get rid of them and you'll probably find yourself a lot more productive and distraction free. Yeah. And the other thing with constantly checking your phone when you're outside or doing something else is you're missing out. Right. There's a lot of great stuff you could be focusing on, especially with your, when you're with friends and family, just leave the phone in another room and go emerge and be fully with them. And then we like to say, right, when you work, work, and often these distractions are kind of work related anyway, that should go in the work bucket. Yet when you play, play, then fully play, be present because that's also the time that you recharge and recover to give it your all when you work. So I'm not sure who said it, but when you work, work, when you play, play is really related with the distraction thing because the distraction, you constantly contact switching and bringing private and work into each other's boxes and it's kind of a recipe for disaster. Yeah. And you don't want to, you want to nurture the relationships you have with people. You know, I know we're getting a bit off topic here, but I think this is an important one because I'm very aware of how often I use my mobile in front of the kids. I mean, I work from home and they see me on the computer all the time. I don't want them to see me on my mobile phone when I'm supposed to be spending time with them. So, you know, I have this unspoken rule that when it's bedtime and I'm reading stories and we're mucking around a little bit, I keep the phone in the other room, you know, I just don't bring it with me and get them to bed. And, yeah, you know, I miss out on notifications, but big deal. It's more important, you know, so, yeah, and I think they're very, kids are very sensitive to this as well. Like, like, they might not say it, but they, they feel it. Right. And they interpret it like I'm not important. So, yeah, yeah. When with the family, it's the family. No phones. Exactly. No phones at the dinner table. We could go on for ages, so we won't. But a nice thing that comes out of all of this is productivity. And one of the things I would be remiss if I didn't mention it, we have our productivity course. Bob, do you want to talk about that a little bit? The py bytes, practical productivity course. Yeah. Almost four hour video where we talk about distractions, goal setting, planning, and all the productivity things we learned over the years and that we implemented with pivots, and it worked for us. And that is saving a lot of time every week. Nice recap. Um, I like it. So if you are looking to be more productive, and we always should be, we always should be looking to, you know, try and get the most and out of our situations, try and optimize what we're doing so that we can spend more time with the people we love, you know, with the family being more present. And that's why I want to be more productive throughout the working hours of the day. That's my justification for this and for making the course as well. So please check it out, use the link in the show notes, give look. And that's pretty much it. So, Bob, thank you so much. Thank you, everyone, for listening, as usual. Stay tuned. We'll be back next week. Yep. Thanks, everybody, for listening. And we see you in the next episode. We hope you enjoyed this episode. To hear more from us, go to Pibyte friends. That is Pibit es friends and receive a free gift just for being a friend. Of the show and to join our thriving slack community of python programmers. Go to pybytes community. That's Pibit es forward slash community. We hope to see you there and catch you in the next episode.