Guy Reams (00:00.632)
This is day 54, distraction-free environment. 100 % completely distraction-free environment is an impossible ideal, but that doesn't mean we should not strive for this. This is an environment that needs to be cultivated, just like a garden would. I have a neighbor who is meticulous about his front yard. When I walk past, I always feel a sense of reverence as I pass by. Everything is cut with precision.
All barriers are precise and each plant is placed perfectly to highlight or accentuate a particular feature of the garden. then inevitably I will see him out there carefully working on one section. He is just as much a part of the landscape as the primary tree planted in the front of the lawn that draws your attention. He is always there pruning, sculpting, fertilizing, watering and picking.
This man's care and attention to his garden is the same level of rigor required to maintain a distraction-free environment. Distractions are like weeds. If you do not have constant vigilance, you will wake up one day and find your environment full of distraction. I have thought about this many times. If you do nothing, then your life will start to introduce new distraction into your environment naturally. Before you know it, the desk will be a mess again, the garage will have fallen into disarray, and the laundry will pile up.
There's an unwritten law that human organization will naturally gravitate towards complexity. There's just nothing you can do about that. Additionally, things will naturally decay and break down. So there are two big forces working against you to mess up your perfectly organized life. I came up with an exercise today, a worthy challenge for you to consider. Take a digital picture of your workspace, then print it out and color if you can.
Then go to lunch or somewhere and sit down with a highlighter and a pen. Examine this photograph. Ideally, you would have taken a picture with your setup the way you normally work. Now take that highlighter and start to highlight all the potential sources of distraction in your workplace. Then take your pen and give each highlighted distraction a score from one to five, with five being the most distracting.
Guy Reams (02:15.085)
Spend a few minutes doing this and after you are done, contemplate just what you might do in order to completely eliminate distraction from your workplace, or at least the big distractions. What decisions would you have to make to clean this environment up and make it distraction-free? I did this exercise today and wow! My environment is full of distractions. It is everywhere. I had no idea. But now that I think about it, I already knew this.
Whenever I sit down to work, there are hundreds of little things that draw my attention away from my primary work. I highlighted a few for consideration. Number one, my phone. This takes center stage in my working environment. I even have a nice setup right here so that the phone can dock and charge and be readily accessible. It is right in front of me, ready to disrupt me and prevent me from focusing. After pondering my distraction-free ambition,
I'm going to move my phone completely out of my office and charge it in another room. I should make phone calls when it's time to make phone calls, not at a moment's notice. Also, I should not be answering text messages or social notifications all day long. Two, my bills. I have a neat organization section right there of my office for all my pending bills and other correspondence. This is sitting right there as a major
source of angst and constantly stares at me and mocks me all day long. I'm constantly being nagged all day long about the stack of things over there that I don't, that I want to get done, but I don't really want to do it. This is the ultimate procrastination pile. I thought by making it front and center, then I would do something about it, but I don't. It just sits there and annoys me all day long. What I end up doing is waiting until the end of the month and then do it all in an agonizing four-hour work session.
So instead of just sitting here stressing all the time, I'll just accept that that is what I do. So I'm gonna create a secret drop box. I started making it in my garage today. I'm gonna put all these annoying things like a little slot like you do when you vote, I'm gonna drop them in there and let them slide in there. And when the box fills up, it's time to schedule my four hour torture session.
Guy Reams (04:36.023)
Third, my bookcase. My bookcase is right over here. I thought it would look cool to have my favorite books right at my fingertips. What ends up happening is I create a nice little visual workstation, a visual station of all the things that could distract me, of every little thing that I find interesting in life. Perhaps it's time to rethink that collection, that collect everything on the bookcase. In fact, now that I look at it, it's not just books there anymore. I have a whole bunch of little knickknacks up there.
Maybe I could free that entire space up for something more powerful that I can use in my concentration sessions. Four, workout stuff. I have a treadmill behind me and some other workout stuff over here. Who am I kidding? I think by having my Peloton and other gear here in my office that I will get inspired and put in some extra work in between my calls. That never happens. But it does sit there and mocks me and causes me to hang my head in frustration.
I do my workouts already on a set schedule, so why do I have all this distraction right here in front of me all the time? It's time to clean it out. Five, clutter. My desk just gathers clutter. Whenever I sit down to work, I think about this. It bothers me. So instead of reorganizing, shifting the clutter from one location to another location, I'm just going to remove it all. Distraction-free and no potential for gathering because there's nothing to gather. Six, projects.
There's a cardboard box right behind me. I embarked on this massive home improvement project a few months ago, home automation version two. It's working out great. It's been a lot of fun, but I used my office for this project and all the remaining elements that I've yet to clean up are still in here. New rule, no more doing projects in my office space. That's what I have a garage for. Finally, my computer. You know, I spent a lot of time working on my computer.
I use a fixed desktop and it is equipped with every cool thing you can imagine. I spend a lot of time on this thing. I've got many monitors in here. You don't see them on camera, but I've got monitors everywhere. And I've got cameras and multiple microphones and sound system. I mean, this is a great workstation for doing computer work or production work or general task management. However, this is a distraction demon.
Guy Reams (07:03.423)
I have many monitors open right now, all with hundreds of applications, Chrome tabs and various things screaming at me. This is a multi-processor machine with big GPUs in it. mean, this machine is designed to be a task master machine. But the problem with that is I can run a whole bunch of things at once. And because of that, they're all sitting here just bothering me all the time.
I have multiple email inboxes open all the time wanting attention. I even created a way to have all the inboxes open up on one of my monitors so I can see them all at one time. I even have my social feeds all feeding into one location. This is just a stress and anxiety magnet. When I do want to sit down and do quality work or even have a quality phone conversation, I'm unable to do so because there's just so much eye candy right here.
So I put some thought into this, and this is gonna be hard for me to accept, but I think I'm gonna create a whole separate desk in my office right over here just for my thinking time and my single task work. For example, when I'm writing, I don't need anything else. I just need something to type with. I don't need a fancy monitor, anything. I just need a place to collect my thoughts. When I'm on conference calls,
I just need a phone. I don't need to sit there and type away while I'm talking to people. People complain that I'm too distracted as it is. So I need a place where can have meaningful conversations. The workstation set up here is not conducive for these types of discussions. Also, I need a place to just think. right now I have to like sit out in my living room or sit in the backyard and there's just distractions everywhere.
Wouldn't it be nice if my domain in here could have a pleasant place to zen out? But I can't because I've always clutter in here. So sitting at my desk right now is a disaster for any type of real thinking activity. It just never happens. If I have to come up with something, a new idea for my blog or what I'm writing about or a phone call, I have to get out of my office and go walk somewhere else because they just can't do it in here. So I can't do, so.
Guy Reams (09:24.373)
I'm actually paid to think, like that's what I'm paid to do. Like I'm paid to think, right? Ultimately. So the most important thing I can do is think of things to do that are really going to help me, you know, my business. So shouldn't my work environment be set up to so that my primary activity can be done in my office? That just makes too much sense.
My office setup right now has no place where this can occur. It's time to rethink office space in general. Instead of the den of the Taskmaster, it needs to be command central for the Zen Master. A distraction-free environment may be impossible to achieve perfectly, but the effort to cultivate one is invaluable. Just as my neighbor tirelessly tends to his immaculate garden, we must commit to constant vigilance in pruning distractions from our lives.
The exercise of analyzing and scoring distractions revealed a harsh truth. We often enable the chaos that disrupts our focus. But awareness is the first step to change. With clear intent, I am reimagining my workspace, not as a productivity battlefield cluttered with distractions, but as a sanctuary for focus and creativity. Each change from moving my phone to a different room to creating a dedicated space for deep work is a step towards reclaiming my concentration.
The journey to focus is ongoing, not a destination. It requires persistence, adaptability, and the courage to re-evaluate truly supports your goals. Let your workspace reflect your priorities and your primary work tasks, and let each small step clear the path for greater clarity and purpose. After all, a well-tended environment is the foundation for a well-tended mind.