Things That Ding
{Free Worksheet Below}
Last week, I was working with a group of emerging leaders. During our opening check-in, the facilitator asked: “What are you putting aside to be present this morning?” One of the participants said she was silencing the “things that ding” – and that phrase stuck with me through the morning (thanks Nicole!).
In response, I created the worksheet pictured below to explore this phenomenon, following the constraints of my Worksheet Wednesdays Experiment. The Things that Ding worksheet is a way to identify and map the common distractions in your context. Life is busy. There is always something that needs your attention. Some of it is urgent and some of it can wait, but frequent interruptions are a modern-day reality.
First task: identify the distractions you encounter on a regular basis, and assign them to one of the following categories:
Interruptions: What is breaking up your flow of attention – even momentarily? These are short, frequent distractions like app notifications and text messages.
Intrusions: What are the unscheduled and unwelcome moments that intrude on your space? These are the things that require you to switch tasks and focus your attention elsewhere.
Incursions: What is aggressively pushing into your territory? These are the moments that are an absolute train wreck on your concentration.
Since I like alliteration more than a normal person should, I also threw in a step for Interventions: What are the deliberate actions you can take to reduce distractions? Not all of them will work in your context, so feel free to write in other options in the margin.
Ok, last step: Implementation. Commit to one tangible action that you can make to reduce the distractions in your environment.
Let’s aim for fewer things that ding.
Copyright, Use and Distribution
This worksheet is part of my Worksheet Wednesdays experiment. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. You are free to copy and redistribute this worksheet. You can remix it or adapt it to your purposes, providing you share your revised version too. If you use this worksheet, please attribute Thirdway Think and link to thirdwaythink.com
Inspiration
Perry, E. (2022, Sept 13). Boost your productivity: how to avoid interruptions at work. Better Up. https://www.betterup.com/blog/how-to-avoid-interruptions-at-work
Note: This has been updated from an archived post and republished.