“We WILL get through this together.” 

Silence Your Technology.

This is one of the most common and perhaps most relevant of all the time management tips you hear and read about.

If you are working on something, put your devices across the room with the sound off. Shifting your attention from one task to another, as we do when we’re answering text messages, disrupts our concentration and saps our focus. Each time we return to our initial task, we use up valuable cognitive resources reorienting ourselves. Research shows that when we an entrepreneur is deeply engrossed in an activity, even minor distractions can have a profound effect. The trouble, of course, is that multitasking is enjoyable. It’s fun to indulge your curiosity. Who knows what that next text message holds in store? Finding out provides immediate gratification for an entrepreneur. In contrast, resisting distraction and staying on-task requires discipline and mental effort. It’s up to you to protect your cognitive resources. The more you do to minimize task-switching over the day, the more mental bandwidth you’ll have for activities that matter.

Do you find yourself constantly jumping in and out of your email during the day? I know – we want to be sure that the world is still paying attention. And while I’m sure the “you’ve got $2 million dollars waiting for you in a bank account in Algeria,” this is incredibly unproductive. In the times when you are working, turn off your email and focus at the task at hand. Put aside separate time to go though and clear out emails. But in the other times, give your brain the focused time it needs without the constant interruptions of the million dollar bank account you forgot to collect.