-Life is often full of distractions that are beyond our control. Someone walks up to our work-space and needs our attention at that moment. An email thread that we thought was settled becomes a heated discussion and needs our attention. Something happens at home and now our minds are split between work and home. Whatever the cause may be there are times when our attention isn't where we feel it should be and we feel pulled in every direction at once.
+Life is full of distractions. So many things want our attention, and many of these distractions are outside of our control. Someone enters our work-space and needs our attention at that moment. An email thread that we thought was settled becomes a heated discussion and our attention is drawn to it. Something happens at home and now our minds are split between worrying about our work tasks and worrying about what's happening at home. Whatever the cause may be, there are times when our attention isn't where we want it to be and we feel pulled in every direction at once.
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+This is when the containers are most helpful. If something interrupts the container we can determine if it's more important than the work we're doing. If we determine that it is more important than what we're currently doing we can stop the container with the understanding that we'll return to the work once we've handled the interruption. If the interruption is not more important then we can agree (both with whomever is interrupting us, or with ourselves) that our focus needs to be here with the work until the container ends. We'll be able to give that disruption our full attention once the container ends. We won't try to split our attention between the work and the interruption, rather we'll give each of them our full attention at the appropriate time.
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+This method creates a simple delineation between our work and the rest of the world, but just because it's simple doesn't mean it's easy. Keeping the delineation between our work and the outside world can be challenging, especially if the culture you're in is about immediate results.
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+I don't have good answers if the culture you're in demands your attention at all times. The best I can offer is a containerized approach that gives you at least some periods of undisturbed concentration. If you feel on-guard all the time because something might happen at any moment then you're going to remain less effective than if you can shut the world off for a bit. I'd also challenge you to examine whether that perception is really true; are you constantly being ambushed by interruptions? Testing that theory may be in order. Keep a log (whether it's a sheet of paper, text file, spreadsheet, or database is up to you) of when you did a focus container and if that container was interrupted or not. If you find that you are getting interrupted more often than not then you need to determine what is causing the interruption and assess if it's something that you can control. There are many ways to handle and minimize workplace distractions that I won't go into here, but being aware of the distractions and determining where they are coming from will be key to figuring out how to mitigate them in the future.
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+Also be aware of the self-imposed distractions you've added to your life. Do you need immediate notification that someone liked something you shared? Is the funny anecdote you just remembered important enough to warrant switching out of your current context so you can post it to your friends and colleagues? Do you really need something to pop up in your field of view to let you know that your music player changed a track? Are you willing to sacrifice your attention and flow throughout the day because a program detected a change in your environment, regardless of the importance of that change?
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+We add these distractions into our lives because we worry that we might miss something important. Programs also come configured with most of their notifications turned on so a user can be reminded of the status of the program at all times. Perhaps it's useful, but for me they are very distracting. In my career I've sat at the desks of many other folks and have cringed at the number of notifications they receive in the short I period was there (a span of ten minutes or less). I've seen folks interrupt their current line of thinking because a notification for a message unrelated to the current task distracted them. What happened to the original thought? They had to mentally switch back to it and remember where they left off, usually at great mental effort.