Second Cup: Unplug to get things done

Fight procrastination by turning off digital distractions

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is too unplug to get things done. Consciously putting
yourself somewhere without digital distractions might help you power through

(00:27):
something you have been procrastinating on. So a few weeks ago,
the Wi Fi went out at my house. It's kind
of a long story about how this all happened, and
it wound up being out for about a week. In
the first day, before we figured out some workarounds, we
truly had very little digital access. I couldn't load web

(00:50):
pages or email on my phone when I was inside
the house, and my laptop couldn't access the internet either.
This was all frustrating, but there was this silver lining.
I had been putting off working on a draft of
an article. On Friday. After my internet went out, I
couldn't do a lot of other things, and I couldn't

(01:13):
pretend to be productive by checking my email a lot.
So I wrote a draft. It only took me a
few hours when I wasn't giving myself the option of
doing a million other things at the same time. Perhaps
you've experienced something similar on a plane now I know
you can get Wi Fi on a lot of planes

(01:34):
these days, but sometimes you can't if you are over water,
and sometimes the system is a little buggy or expensive.
If it is a short flight, I tend not to
make an attempt. I have often assigned myself a writing
project on the plane and found I have been able
to crank something sizable out by the time we land.

(01:55):
We often rely on connectivity to take a break from work.
Now we don't necessarily think of it that way. We
can convince ourselves that the emails need to get sent
and such, and maybe they do, but maybe not immediately.
Depriving ourselves of easy brakes sometimes means we soldier through.

(02:18):
If you find that to be the case for you,
then maybe you can consciously unplug for a bit now.
I would not recommend asking your yard crew to accidentally
cut the cable, which is what turned out to happen
for us, but you could create the equivalent. Put your
phone in airplane mode or put it somewhere else. Go

(02:40):
somewhere with no WiFi, assign yourself something that is going
to take some serious concentration to do. Now, you will
probably want to check things at some point, and that
is fine. It is actually really hard to concentrate on
anything for more than ninety minutes or so, so you
might take a ten minute break. Make sure nothing disastrous

(03:01):
has happened in your world. My guess is that it hasn't,
and hopefully that truth will empower you to try disconnecting
more often. In any case, we eventually got the Wi
Fi working again, so I haven't had to go work
in Starbucks or the library. I can check email constantly
if I wish to, but remembering all I got done

(03:24):
on that Friday, I am trying not to. It is
best to keep these things in check in the meantime.
This is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.

(03:47):
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

(04:09):
listen to your favorite shows.