Before starting this post I responded to a text someone had sent me and then put my phone away on silent so I wouldn’t be tempted to look at.
Why? Because I HATE getting distracted by texts when I’m trying to work on something.
My usual mode of working involves disconnecting from my phone and all the distractions that come with it when I’m trying to get something done. This normally works pretty well…except when I’m feeling down, or having trouble with my work, or waiting for something important. In these cases I’ll intermittently pick up my phone hoping for a new message that’ll boost up my energy,.
That kind of compulsive phone-checking is…not good, and I don’t like that it invades my work habits. At best, these microchecks distract me even further from what I was doing and cause me to lose steam while I fight to get back to where I was in my actual work. And at worst, they lead to me getting sucked down rabbit holes that eat up tons of actual time.
Either way I waste time, get less done, and end up feeling more stressed than I did before…which is all kinds of terrible.
And answering Day Job-related texts just makes the whole process worse.
Day Job Texts Add Another Layer to the Distraction Debacle
Since schools in my part of Japan have been mostly closed since March, the foreign teachers in my city have teamed up with the Japanese teachers to make some English videos that students can watch at home. These video projects have been pretty fun (not gonna lie!), but they involve planning, coordination, scriptwriting, Japanese-checking, video labeling, uploading, and distribution, in addition to the actual filming and acting. All this has required a LOT of effort by a lot of people (shout-out to my English team!), though unfortunately it also means a LOT of text exchanges between a lot of people are needed to make them happen.
The problem with these Day Job texts is that unlike 95% of the other texts I get, they tend to require more of a timely response, especially since I started working from home during COVID-19. Most days I keep Line chat open on my laptop so I can communicate with coworkers, which means that every time a text comes in I get a big ol’ flashing icon on my taskbar to let me know.
And that flashing icon is REALLY hard to ignore.
I usually open Line to stop the flashing but may not open the actual text right away, especially if it’s not urgent—this is a way of getting back to what I was working on without the distraction of the flashing icon. Though these momentary focus shifts are small, they’re still distractions, and I try my best to keep them to a minimum.
Sometimes, though, the Day Job text requires me to respond relatively quickly, particularly if it’s part of a longer conversation. This can lead to me focusing on the Day Job-related conversation to the point where I lose track of what I was really doing and the time gets sucked into an Evil Distraction Vortex (or, it just takes me longer to finish my other work).
Some days when I have multiple Day Job-related things to do that involve texting, I’ll try to start these conversations at the same time so I can keep Line chat open and switch between them, since my coworkers tend to respond fairly quickly. This works REALLY well as a time-saving measure, since I can focus on all my Day Job and other chat messages at once. Though jumping between multiple conversations can still be exhausting, I find it ultimately works better than spreading them throughout the day, where they cause smaller micro-distractions.
Sometimes I also keep my chat window closed or muted so I won’t see any flashing boxes—or I’ll leave my computer off and work on something analog like studying Japanese, reading, or editing a hard copy manuscript. This is ultimately the best way to avoid distractions, but it’s resulted in my getting burned on multiple occasions when I missed Day Job texts and had to scramble to respond or finish something, which often cut into my lunch or dinner breaks and led to some pretty stressful episodes. D’oh!
This is the game I’ve been playing every weekday since I started working from home.
Checking In at Set Times Seems to Work Pretty Well
The best solution I’ve come up with is to leave my phone on silent and the chat window closed most of the time, but to check my phone in between projects (or at least once per hour) to make sure I don’t miss anything Day Job-related.
For instance, I last checked my phone thirty-nine minutes ago before I started writing this post, so it’s possible that a Day Job message may have come in since then. Thirty-nine minutes isn’t that long for most of my Day Job conversations, though, so I feel comfortable potentially letting the message go unanswered for a while longer so I can finish this post distraction-free.
If, however, I’m working on something more involved like novel-writing that takes up two or three hours, I’ve started checking my phone once at the halfway mark to make sure no Day Job texts came in…and doing my best to ignore any non-Day Job-related texts I see during the check. I HATE doing this during focused writing time and find it REALLY hard to manage, though, since even non-urgent texts tend to cause a distraction.
In an ideal world, I’d be able to completely disconnect during my focused worktime, but that would be…irresponsible, and can lead to bigger stress further down the line. That sense of responsibility comes with having a Day Job you don’t completely detach from, I guess, and the spread-out checks seem to be a fairly good compromise.
Final Thoughts: Too Little Too Late?
I’ve been grappling with this back and forth desire to disconnect while also staying on top of Day Job work for weeks now, and I feel like I’m only just getting the hang of it. Unfortunately my ideal text-handling system may have come too late: Coronavirus cases in Japan are WAY down and the foreign teachers in my city are scheduled to go back into work on June 1st, which means no more working from home for me unless there’s a second wave of the virus.
It’s been a good run while it’s lasted and I’ve definitely gotten a LOT done during this time, so I’m thankful that I was able to salvage some solid creative worktime out of this whole mess. A part of me wants to keep this same schedule up for much longer, though—which may be because it’s moved me closer to the ideal paid work-creative work balance that I got a pretty good handle on after I left my last Office Day Job. But, another part of me wants to get back to work and be more active again, because being stuck at home all the time can be rough, as most of you know….
Either way, I’ll update you next week after my first day back—which, if nothing else, should be an adjustment. In the meantime, stay safe, wherever you are.