"Dam it, I’m Trying to Work": When and How to Leverage Distractions to Get Things Done

Whether it’s someone smacking their gum or an acquaintance who won’t stop calling, everyone has to deal with frustrating distractions getting in the way of their goals.

Tennis player John McEnroe was a master at leveraging his frustrations (usually directed towards chair umpires) to motivate him to battle through difficult matches, helping him win 17 grand slam titles.

McEnroe went too far, but he teaches us that frustrations can be harnessed to increase performance. The trick is to know when and how frustrations should be leveraged.

When Frustrations Should be Leveraged

There are two good instances when distractions should be leveraged for our productivity

1.) when we are utterly unmotivated

2.) when we are procrastinating

3.) when we are too nervous, anxious, or excited to be productive

In order to understand why these are the best times to leverage distraction, you need to understand . . .

The Relationship Between Emotional Arousal and Performance

As the chart below demonstrates, increased emotional arousal leads to increased performance — but only up to a point. Moderate levels of stress, anger, anxiety, etc. can help us get things done, but high levels of these emotions can render us dysfunctional (and wreak havoc on our short term memories).

If you have a healthy amount of worry about that paper you’re writing, it’s a good thing, if you’re freaking out, then it’s not.

Now, back to when frustrations should be leveraged. We said earlier that frustrations should be leveraged (1) when we are utterly unmotivated, and (2) when we are procrastinating, or (3) when we are too nervous, anxious, or excited to be productive. This reason for this is that states of unmotivation, procrastination, or anxiety, are states of overarousal or underarousal (see the "inverted U" chart above), and annoyances may be used to bring us from these states into states of optimal arousal.

So, we know when to leverage distracting people to get things done, but we’ve yet to talk about . . .

How to Leverage Distracting People

When you are procrastinating, or are feeling unmotivated or anxious, try the following:

1. Go to a busy coffee shop near your house and try not to get distracted. You’ll find that the goal of avoiding distraction will displace your anxiety and/or motivate you to get things done.
2. Go to a place where others will try to pull you away from your work, and then politely turn them down. Often, we will let ourselves do our own procrastinating, but we get right to task when OTHERS try to aid our procrastination (it’s the "dam it, I’m trying to work" phenomenon). If you’re anxious, this will work for you also because distracting people help us shift our energies from away from worries and we focus on getting things done instead of our own task-related anxieties.
3. Turn on the television AND the radio, and try to work without letting them bother you. If you can’t stand it, put on headphones, but don’t turn off the distractions. We are often most productive when our energies are united against attentional enemies!
4. Let a dog or cat into your office and don’t let it distract you.

The important thing is to allow distractions into your life that are likely to elicit the "Damn it, I’m Trying to Work" response.

Conclusory Warning

Negative energy is unhealthy and certainly not the best energy for getting things done. I am not encouraging you to get angry with another individual or your self, I am only suggesting that, under some circumstances, allowing yourself to feel frustration might provide a short-term solution when you are under a tight-deadline and need to get things done. If you are habitually prone to anxiety or procrastination, then you might want to look for longer-terms solutions.

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