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Staying on task is hard enough without a whole new world to discover.
Digital nomads enjoy a life that can be truly fulfilling. You’ll treasure your time exploring the local culture, their history, food, and natural beauty. It's a captivating experience that can be genuinely life-affirming.
Of course, as a digital nomad, you carry your work with you, creating an ongoing battle between drudgery and excitement. However, even while the most tempting distractions are within reach, your distracted mind can be tamed with time, practice, and a few handy tools.
Why Do We Get Distracted in the First Place?
Evolutionarily, distraction allows us to focus intently on one task while maintaining an awareness of our surroundings (Especially valuable when your surroundings contain threats to your survival).
Even though our modern lives are very different from those of our ancestors, our brains still function in the same way. Even while you read, your attention is still partially divided.
As such, we all need ways of maintaining focus that work the way our minds do. Each of the following seven tools and tips addresses one of the three approaches productivity researchers recommend: scheduling, self-monitoring, and environmental isolation.
1. Use Scheduling to Lighten Your Cognitive Load
Procrastination is often rooted in a fear of failure. Doubting your ability to complete a task can make you feel like it’s already over. Past negative experiences—like missing deadlines or making costly mistakes—can erode enough confidence to discourage even the most experienced professionals.
As strange as it sounds, effective scheduling is a powerful solution. Since so much of the fear is fueled by any given project's time restrictions, scheduling can prove to your anxious mind that you actually have a sufficient amount of time.
Recommended time tracking app: Clockify
Clockify is a time management app that has a perfect feature set for solo digital nomads. You'll get precise time tracking, a great calendar view, and an intuitive interface.
Beyond that, Clockify’s reports help prevent burnout by showing you exactly how much time you dedicate to various projects. Trust me, you probably work more than you think.
2. Schedule Recreation And Work
Our culture's obsessive focus on productivity leads many to adopt a strict approach to self-regulation.
However, you can throw all these tips out the window if you don't give yourself time for breaks and purely fun adventures. Scheduling fun time actually makes it more likely that you’ll have fun, which your mind needs to recuperate after accumulating pent-up work stress.
3. Get an Accountability Buddy via Online Body Doubling Sessions
Pop Quiz: Who is more likely to stick to a new exercise routine?
- A person with a personal trainer
- A person without a personal trainer
You already know the answer. Having help keeps us accountable and on-task.
Thankfully, there’s an equivalent for working out your self-control muscles: body doubling. Body doubling is an activity where two people hop on a video chat to use the magic of social pressure to keep the other on-task. It’s a powerful means of combating procrastination.
Recommended Body Doubling Platform: Focus101
Focus 101 removes the two most difficult aspects of body doubling: finding a partner and coordinating a joint session.
Use Focus101 by creating a free profile, using the calendar page, joining an open session, or creating your own.
4. Use Blocking Tools to (Temporarily) Cut off Access to Distracting Apps and Websites
Focus apps have become the de facto productivity tool for today's digital workforce. Research shows that these applications, which restrict access to a self-set list of distracting sites and applications, actually increase productivity and lengthen focus.
Like any popular software category, you'll find an overwhelming number of paid and free applications. Which should you pick?
Recommended Site and App Blocking Software: Rescue Time
Rescue Time is a favorite distraction-blocking app. It’s available across Mac, Windows, IOS, and Android, helping you focus no matter the device. You can also better understand your distraction triggers with reports that display your total time spent across all apps.
What’s more, you can set goals for reducing your nonessential screen time, letting you take back valuable free time from the clutches of work.
5. Keep a Distraction Journal to Silence Nagging Thoughts
While most think of distractions primarily as fun activities, stray thoughts can steal away just as much time.
When working, how many times have you caught yourself thinking thoughts like:
- ‘I’m out of coffee filters; I need to get more.’
- ‘How long ago was my last teeth cleaning?’
- ‘Am I going to finally find love this year?’
While thoughts like these can break your hard-won focus and increase your anxiety, research shows that simply acknowledging recurring them—for instance, in a distraction journal—makes one more aware of them. This awareness helps our brains to compartmentalize them.
Recommended Distraction Journals: The Day One App or This Printable Distraction Tracker
Day One is a widely praised journaling app available for Mac, Windows, IOS, and Android. On top of its intuitive UI, the app’s template feature allows you to create a custom distraction journal template, which you can set to populate on each new diary entry.
Also, this distraction tracking PDF template from Bernard Zitzer can help you track your recurring distracting thoughts and gives you space to address them productively.
6. Block out Distracting Sounds With Noise-Canceling Headphones
Noisy coworkers have been consistently rated the number one distraction in today's workplaces. Irrelevant sounds have been shown to majorly throw off our focus.
Today’s noise-canceling headphones are more than equipped to shield you from such noise, reducing your stress levels while increasing your productivity. They also sound incredible for music.
Recommended Noise-Canceling Headphones: Sony WH-1000XM6
Sony's WH–1000 XM6 features the best noise-canceling technology according to many reviewers. In addition to excellent sound quality and a 31-hour battery life, these headphones can block out the low rumble of an airplane engine, high-pitched sounds, and mid-range conversational chatter.
7. Use a Portable Monitor to Avoid Distraction When Swapping Windows
Portable monitors are among the most underrated productivity tools around. While adding another screen to your workspace may sound like a recipe for more distraction, the extra screen real estate accomplishes the opposite.
With more screen real estate, you can compare several windows simultaneously. This means less time spent hunting for the right window and no risk of forgetting what you were doing.
Research from Wichita State University found a 44 percent productivity boost on text tasks when participants switched from a single to dual monitors (Spreadsheet tasks got a 29 percent increase).
Recommended Portable Monitor: espresso Pro (for those that want to invest at the high-end), or our espresso Display (non-touch) for price tag that is a great first step into portable monitors.
A Healthy Mind is a Productive Mind
Our cultural tendency is to treat our minds like machines. In reality, our minds need balance, stability, and structure to stay healthy.
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