Kill distractions on your PC
Get rid of interruptions and time-wasters
Personal computers were once as distraction-free as a Remington typewriter. Then along came multitasking and always-on broadband connections, and our simple tools were transformed into do-anything devices. Now, while we work, we’re just a click away from unlimited music, movies and chat.
There’s no doubt that it’s making us less productive. A study by Gloria Mark from the University of California’s Department of Informatics measured how often we succumbed to these interruption opportunities, and their impact on our work. Speaking to Fast Company, she revealed that a typical worker was interrupted – or self-interrupted, by switching to eBay or a news site, for example – every 3mins 5secs, after which it took more than 20 minutes to return to the task in hand ( see pcpro.
link/263distraction). In the worst case this could see you spending less than one fully productive hour a day on your most important tasks. If you work for yourself that’s a huge waste of your time, and if you’re working for someone else then it means you’re likely cheating your employers.
It doesn’t have to be like that. With a little self-control, some free applications and a few tweaks to the way you work, it’s easy to set up a distraction-free environment that will help you achieve more and meet your professional goals within the limited time available.
We’ve broken down our advice into sections, so you can employ more or less of it, depending on how strict you want to be. You can reconfigure your main PC according to this advice, but we’d recommend repurposing an old machine as a dedicated distractionfree computer. If you have a spare laptop, you can also escape any physical distractions in your office or home by moving to a coffee shop or library. Don’t worry if the hardware is beginning to show its age, or if it isn’t running the latest release of all your software: the tools we’ll be using are featurelight, so they’ll play nicely with older, less powerful hardware.
Social media
Social media can be a powerful business tool – but often it’s nothing more than a time sink. It’s potentially harmful to your mental health, too, with a study by the University of Pittsburgh linking Facebook, Twitter, Instagram et al to indicators of depression. Lead author Lui yi Lin pointed out that while depression might be leading to increased use, rather than the other way around, it’s also true that “engaging in activities of little meaning on social media may give a feeling of ‘time wasted’ that negatively influences mood” ( see pcpro.link/263depression).
A simple way to keep yourself off social media sites is to block their web addresses. There’s no need to use special software or reconfigure your router to do this: simply edit your “hosts” file, which tells Windows how to translate web addresses into numerical destinations, superseding the off-site DNS database.
You’ll find the file at C:\Windows\System32\ drivers\etc\hosts. You can open it in a plain-text editor (Notepad will do), but make sure to run your editor as Administrator – since this is a system file, you won’t be able to save changes otherwise.
Once the file is open, you’ll probably see a few lines already there that detail IP addresses and host names. Add these lines to the end: You can do this for any site you want to block: you might want to add mobile editions (such as m.facebook.com) and API addresses accessed by clients (such as api.twitter.com). Save and close the file. Note that since this is a Windows system file, rather than a user file, all accounts on the computer will be affected.
Internet access and apps
Beyond Facebook, Twitter and other social media, there’s the wider web to consider. There are several ways to shut out the internet altogether: you can turn off Wi-Fi, unplug your Ethernet, switch off your router… it all depends on how disciplined you are. You may find it all too easy to reconnect if you simply disconnect from your wireless network, but the obstacle of having to physically get up to turn your router back on may help remove the temptation. If you want to block specific types of site, you can do it by taking advantage of OpenDNS, which offers preconfigured and customisable block lists: see our walkthrough opposite for a guide to getting set up.
A smarter approach is to put a time block on your internet access, which can be done using Windows’ parental controls. Again, these can be easily circumvented, but simply taking the internet away from your fingertips may discourage you from becoming distracted. To
“A typical worker is interrupted every 3mins 5secs – and takes more than 20 minutes to return to the task in hand”