Ah… productive distractions are fun… still one of my favourite brain hacks for swapping between tasks smoothly. Seems to work well for a lot of neurodivergent people :)
The basic idea is to smooth the transition between two things (say waking up & getting to my desk) but placing a ‘productive distraction’ in the middle…
That way the transition is smaller and spaced out. Small transition to the distraction. Do that for a bit. Then another small transition from the distraction to the next task.
It sounds like a terrible idea… it’s easy to get stuck in the ‘distraction’ task… However, if you pick the distractions carefully it works rather well. Ideally it should be somewhat time limited… so the distraction is initially very compelling but it gets a bit boring after a while.
Today my ‘productive distraction’ was playing Animal Crossing on my Switch.
It’s ‘productive’ as I have a few daily tasks I needed to complete… meaningful to me and something I value.
A distraction as it’s unrelated to my work or goals for the day.
Transition from doing emails on my phone to Animal Crossing… pick some fruit, water some carrots, dig up some fossils… get a little bored… wonder downstairs while waiting for it to load a shop… tada. I’m now up and moving. Big transition complete :)
It’s all about moving smoothly through flow states into different things. Rather than trying to force or crowbar my brain. It’s way less energy, way more effective and it’s good for my mood.
Neurodivergent or not… give it a go… the ‘productive distraction’ can be almost anything. A bit of reading, feeding the cat, a game etc.
Ideally it’s a somewhat time bounded task, which is meaningful and is unrelated to whatever other stuff you have to do today.
If ya give it a go, please lemme know how it went.
Anyone else use a similar trick?
