If you’re doing any kind of creative work, such as designing or developing e-learning modules, you know how hard it may to be get your thoughts together and get into the groove of creativity and productivity.  So, it’s an absolute MUST for any creative workers to be able to create the right environment, conducive to focused tasks and creative output.

If you’re struggling with finding quiet time and space at work to focus on your creative e-learning design work, you’re not alone.  There are a ton of studies of the dangers of disruptions and distractions, making the quality of our ideas suffer and causing a major stress to our mind and body, which further impacts our health and our ability to produce great work.

You may be working in a busy and loud office, one of those open-space focus killers.  Or, you may be one of those people magnets who either, by gift of your greatness or friendliness, attracts a ton of visitors with questions, comments, and well-wishing, but still distracting conversations.

Here are some best practices and strategies that may help you deal with this challenge.  I picked them up from other instructional designers, so they have been tested and may work for you too.

• Dedicate 2 to 4 hours at a time to deep work.  The “deep work” concept is defined here as uninterrupted, focused time dedicated to your designing or development task at hand.  It is very well described in a book by Cal Newport of the same title – Deep Work.  A must read for all creatives.
• Hide.  Ideally you can get away from your office or a cubicle.  Book a conference room, and if needed, pretend you’re on a speaker phone so people will be less likely to budge in.
• Leave.  Go to a coffee shop, library, or home, and make sure your coworkers can’t find you there.
• White noise or music.  If you can’t leave, put on BIG headphones for everyone to see, so they understand you’re working.  Listen to white noise, nature sounds, or calm music – whatever get’s your juices flowing and blocks out the other sounds.  Coffitivity.com is a cool website playing background sounds for creative and focused work.  Apparently, some studies show that some level of background noise is better than total silence, for creative work.
• Get rid of extra chairs in your office or cubicle.  If people have nowhere to sit, they will be more likely to keep things brief.  If you can’t move the chairs out, put stuff on them.  If you have filing cabinets or other random furniture with a surface that could potentially invite people to lean or sit on, cover it with stuff, like books or pictures, or cactus plants perhaps.
• Watch your body language.  Don’t make an open, inviting gesture when someone stops by, or they will misinterpret it as an invitation to stay and chat.  Lean over your computer, frown your  eyebrows, and don’t keep much eye contact.  Look focused and busy and they will get the message.
• Hang a sign.  Close the door, if you have one, and hang a sign.  Something like “recording in session” might be more effective than “please do not disturb.”
• Turn off ALL notifications.  Cell phones, messengers, computers, fit bits, you name it.  Just turn them off, which does not mean silencing them so they can vibrate.  Just OFF is the best option.
• And finally, under no circumstances should you look at your email.  Not even for a sec.  Every episode of distraction, even tiny, leaves a mental residue in your brain, which takes time to clean up.  Imagine you just ate a PB&J sandwich and a little drop of peanut butter fell on your hand.  No matter how tiny, it will smear on anything you touch next and it will take you a long time to clean it up.  Especially if you touch a lot of stuff.  A quick email check leaves this mental “peanut butter” drop on your brain and smears it on many thoughts you may try to entertain after, leaving you with a lot of clean up afterwards.

I think this is a good start.  Big thanks to all who contributed their ideas.  If you have any other great productivity or efficiency tips you’d like to share, please add them in the comments.

Thank you for reading.  Agnes