Beating Distractions and Being Productive In Business

Staying focused as a Reiki practitioner in your business requires motivation, discipline, and a daily effort to overcome many obstacles. These aspects of motivation and discipline often feel difficult to implement in our lives, however, there are many strategies available to make our efforts more impactful.

Developing strategies for beating distractions is based on both developing actions to overcome the distractions as well as exploring why you may become distracted in the first place.

REASONS FOR DISTRACTION

We can usually define our experiences through the lens of three important components of our lives:

• Biological – our biological existence including genes and how we treat our body
• Social – how we interact with people in our social circles and interpersonal relationships
• Psychological – our cognitive and emotional experiences

At our most basic level is our biological functions. If we are sleep deprived, hungry, or in physical discomfort, it can be difficult to focus on productivity. Additionally, if our relationships and social interactions are disrupted, this can affect our ability to focus and cause significant distractions in our ability to pay attention to other aspects of our lives. Finally, if our psychological functions are disrupted this can have a significant effect on our ability to focus and be productive.

While these three areas can be discussed in isolation, it’s important to remember that all three domains affect each other. For example, if we are hungry, this can affect brain function and whether we can remember and recall important details. If we are psychologically affected through stressful emotions, this can impact our desire to eat or ability to sleep.

In many cases, we can fall into a loop of all three domains impacting each other. To be able to beat distractions and become more productive in our business, it’s useful that we have some insight into how the biological, social, and psychological domains of our lives are functioning. Once we have insight into these areas, we can then implement strategies to help us resolve any disruption to our wellbeing.

Distractions are a common experience that we all have. Furthermore, we are often distracted by the same things. While personal experiences can influence what distracts us specifically, common distractions can be found as shown below:

• Biological disruption – through hunger, tiredness, low energy, or physical discomfort
• Personal problems – if you have personal problems occurring in your life, you may find yourself ruminating over conversations or difficult memories
• Lack of interest – if you are not interested or invested in the task, you can become easily distracted by other interesting ideas
• Attention disruptors – in a business environment, this can come in the form of work colleagues interrupting, emails requiring attention, online activity (social media, etc), and multi-tasking
• Lack of organization – a lack of direction may create some internal tension and stress which we want to avoid. This can lead us to become distracted by other simplified tasks.

Many other distractions seek to take our attention away from a focused approach, however, the above are the most common that are experienced.

It’s also important to understand that we are wired in some ways to become distracted. Our mind can naturally wander when stimulated by its environment. It’s also unrealistic to expect ourselves to stay focused on single tasks for hours on end. We need physical, psychological, and emotional breaks to bolster our wellbeing when we are under stress or pressure to complete complicated tasks.

Regardless of how productive we strive to be, we should also incorporate a healthy dose of self-compassion as well as a realistic approach to healthy productivity.

Reiki can provide a boost to your productivity by calming your physical and emotional state.

Some suggestions for incorporating Reiki into developing your productivity are listed below:

• Conduct a Reiki self-care session (See Reiki Guidebook to Self-Care)
• Choose an intention for the next hour
• Develop mindfulness practice
• Listen to your body as you conduct Reiki
• Calm your mind
• Implement techniques to promote productivity such as the Pomodoro Technique which can be broken down as follows:

• • Work x 25 mins
  • Break x 5 mins
  • Work x 25 mins
  • Break x 5 mins

You may want to break for 30 mins after 1 Pomodoro and continue your next session as above. Alternatively, some people may prefer to work 2-3 Pomodoro sessions before taking a larger break of 30-60 mins.

A good method of improving your productivity includes defining a purpose using the Reiki principles as stated below:

JUST FOR TODAY

• Do not worry
• Do not become angry
• Be kind to others
• Work diligently
• Be grateful

You can use Reiki at the start of your day as well as at intervals during the day to help keep you on track as your motivation wanes and distractions occur.