The New Corner Office: Make a ‘later’ list

The real secret to staying focused

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the New Corner Office,
the podcast with strategies for thriving in the new world
of work where location and hours are more flexible than
in the past. Today's tip is to create a later list.
Whether you're working in an office or remotely, it can

(00:26):
be easy to get distracted, but the nature of the
distractions are a little different. When you're in an office,
you might be trying to write a report, but you
realize you need a particular statistic, so you go searching
for it online. But then once you're there, you start
checking headlines and whoops, there goes your focused work time.

(00:48):
This can happen at home, too, but there are additional
distractions that masquerade as productive activities. You start writing that report,
and then you remember that you need to check if
the hamburger made it out of the freezer and into
the fridge to thought for dinner, So you pop up
to go check, and then you see that the kitchen
is messy, and whoops, there goes your focused work time. Fortunately,

(01:10):
there's a good way to fend off these kinds of
distractions and create time for focus in any sort of workplace.
You just need to create a later list. Here's how
this works. Keep a notebook next to you as you're working. Then,
whenever a thought occurs to you of something else you
need to do or to find, write it down on

(01:32):
this later list. That way, you won't forget it. Indeed,
you should designate specific times during the day to look
at your later list so your brain trusts that you
absolutely will deal with anything on it. This gives your
brain permission to get back to the business at hand,
secure in the knowledge that the meat will be out

(01:53):
of the fraser in thirty minutes. That's still enough time
to defrost by dinner, but you won't have ruined your
concentrate now. To be sure, sometimes our distractions appear to
be wise praise away from our project. For instance, if
you're writing a report and you need a particular number
that you know is sitting in an email from a colleague,

(02:15):
it seems like it would make sense to go find it.
But when have you ever found one thing in your
inbox and then completely stopped looking at it. You know
full well that you'll see an email from a big
client and think you should open it, and loops, there
goes your focused work time. So here's a trick. That

(02:35):
journalists use. If they're waiting for a particular source to
call them back, they can still get started writing the story.
They just write around a missing figure or quote by
using the initials t K. This means to come. The
K is a funny way of abbreviating the word come.
You don't need to worry about the origins of that.
But the point is that you can stick in the

(02:57):
initials t K and then know that you will go
find that statistic later. You don't have to let the
lack of the exact statistic or quotes stop you. You
put finding the figure on the later list, and then
you keep going making the best use of your time.
If you try keeping a later list, let me know
how it goes. You can email me at Laura at

(03:18):
Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening, and here's to succeeding in the New
Corner Office. The New Corner Office is a production of iHeartRadio.
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