HOW TO Eliminate distractions easily

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SHAKE IT OFF Are your open apps distracting you or just taking up screen space? Shake them off with a flick of your finger or mouse. Simply select and hold the window you want to focus on and give it a little shake back and forth. All the other apps will get out of the way by minimising themselves. Above, we’ve given our browser a shake – you’ll see all our other apps have hidden themselves.

2

MAKE IT QUIETER Focus Assist – formerly known as Quiet Hours – is a really useful Do Not Disturb mode. To use it, open Settings, click System, and select Focus Assist. You’ll now see three options: off, priority only and alarms only. Off disables Focus Assist, Priority only shows notifications from apps you’ve added to your Priority List, and Alarms disables everything but important alarms.

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FIND YOUR FOCUS To customise your Focus Assist settings, go to Settings > System > Focus Assist and click on Customise Your Priority List. You can now detail what kind of calls, contacts and apps you’d like to hear from even when Focus Assist is on, and you can also adjust Focus Assist so that it comes on automatically when you’re mirroring your screen, for example, or if you’re playing a game.

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NOBBLE THE NOTIFICATIONS Would you prefer not to have notifications trying to get your attention and derailing your train of thought? Go into Settings > System > Notifications & Actions. You’ll see several toggle switches you can use to disable notifications, stop Windows showing you tips and tricks and disable the Windows Welcome Experience after some software updates.

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BIN THE BADGES Notification badges are the little alerts that appear on app icons when they want to tell you about something such as the arrival of new email in your inbox or an event in your calendar, and their little red bits can be awfully distracting. If they’re spoiling your concentration you can get rid of them in Settings > Personalisation > Taskbar. Turn the Show Badges On Taskbar Buttons switch off.

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STOP THE SUGGESTIONS If you’d rather not get app recommendations and other suggestions popping up in the Start menu, you can disable them in Settings > Personalisation > Start by turning off Occasionally Show Suggestions In Start. If you want to disable all Windows’ suggestions, you can do that in Settings > System > Notifications & Actions > Get Tips, Tricks and Suggestions As You Use Windows.

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GET A FOCUSED APP If you want to concentrate because you’re writing, there are some great distraction-free writing programs available. Some, such as Calmly Writer ( www. calmlywriter.com), are free and run in your web browser: put it into full-screen mode by pressing [F11] and you can take advantage of Focus Mode and Dark Mode to eliminate everything but the bit of text you’re working on.

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GET OUTSIDE HELP If you keep falling down YouTube rabbit holes or can’t stay off social media, it might be wise to get outside help from an app such as FocusMe. It enables you to block access to specific apps and sites or the entire internet at specific times, and it doubles as a parental control app too. FocusMe costs $8.99 a month: cheaper than a coffee & criossant and more likely to boost your productivity.